A couple of years ago, my mom peered over my sister’s shoulder and read the message on her phone. “Lol? Who is lolling you? Is that some kind of rude word?”
With e-mail, instant messaging, facebook, twitter and SMSs or text messages, a new form of writing has emerged. Due to the fact that many of these new systems limit the number of characters you can use, people try many different ways to get a meaningful message across in the smallest possible way. This includes substituting numbers for letters, letters for words and numerous misspellings of words in order to try and use fewer characters.
I decided to try and create a list of the more common words used in SMS language, or Textese as it is sometimes called. I did this by going through my and my friend’s face book pages and SMSs and finding all the abbreviations used, and then finding a few more words from blog comments. What really interested me was how people from different groups of friends use different words and spellings, people I knew in Pietermaritzburg use different words to people in Joburg and Margate, and even people from different churches in Joburg have their own way of writing.
For those of you who are like my mom and think this is a completely different language, what follows is my list along with the translations 
2 – to, too
2morrow – tomorrow
4 – for
4eva – forever
b – be
bk – back
bt – but
c – see
cud – could
cum – come
da – the
dat – that
dis – this
dnt – don’t
enuf – enough
frm – from
gr8 – great
gt – got
gud – good
hw – how
ill – I’ll
knw – know
lol – laugh out loud
lyk – like
msg – message
n – and
nite – night
num – number
nw – now
omg – oh my gosh/golly
omw – oh my word
Ppl – people
pls – please
r – are
rofl – rolling on the floor laughing
thx – thanks
tmrw – tomorrow
u – you
ur – your, you are
v – very
wen – when
wit – with
wld – would
wud – would
yr – your
There are so many different words and variations that can be used, if you are stuck here are a few tips:
- First of all, often vowels are left out in order to shorten words.
- Second, letters that do not have any sound in the word (“silent letters”) are also often omitted, eg. The “l” in “would” and “could”, and the “e” at the end of many words.
- Try saying the sounds of the letters, often a letter that sounds like a word is used in place of the actual word, eg “c” instead of “see”
- Numbers can sometimes be read as the sound they make, eg. 8 as the “ate” sound, or 4 as “for”. Other times however, numbers can represent letters, eg. 4 as “a”, and 3 as “e”.
There are many site on the internet giving hundreds of translations, so if you are still stuck, try to just “google it ‘!
0 Comments.