Okay, I can see that. I read the message, I just didn't know what the words meant!
I guess there's really no way to salvage my "coolness" at this point, is there?
LOL!
Keyboarding 101
by little witch 33 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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Abaddon
Of course the problem is that language is not static.
You seperate populations (geographically or socially) and they will slowly start using words differently, saying words differently. Look at the classic Toe-May-Toe vs Toe-Maa-Toe and Poe-Tay-Toe and Poe-Taa-Toe pronunciation varients between American English and British English.
English is unique amongst the major 'Germanic' languages of Europe in never having undergone a proper spelling reform. In America certain changes have been adopted' color for colour, thru for through, etc., but it's far from the sweeping reforms German and Ducth have made to make the spelling match current pronounciation.
If we did it properly in English we would have to change spellings that are based on old old pronounciations; 'love ' used to be pronounced 'loave', which is why 'trove' is still pronounced the way it is, even if it means the phonetic value of 'ove' is different between the two words.
This is all by means of saying that defending the language is all very well, but all we are doing is defending a snap-shot of the language as we acquired it. Our grand-pappy would criticise some of the ways we use our language.
Having said that I think 'elite' (1 = L, 33 = ee, 7 = t therefore 1337= L- eet or elite) is an ugly, tiresome abortion conceived of geekboys and girls trying painfully hard to be cool and clever. I could only be impressed by it if it was used by someone who had a good command of conventional spelling and grammar; all too often it's laziness disgused as being trendy.
I mean, you can't submit a dissertation in it, can you? Well you can, if you want to hear hysterical laughter and the sound of a paper shredder...
I normally only ever lapse into abbreviated English in Chat sessions, and even then not much. It's pointless using it on a phone if you've got predictive text input; although I will use contactions if I have a message that woiuld be overlong.
I actually think that bad usage rather than elite or some-such is a far nastier thing; look at this taken from Yahoo! News today;
Did they? Who to?
Of course, the proper way to say it is;
EU chiefs receive letter bombs
Ov corse, as we r going to be in a situashun where halve the world's populashun speeks simpl English by 2050, we coud be looking at a eara wich will see a radical reform of spelling, eyether by sum central organisashun, or by most users of English not being native speekers and useing it in a simplistic form wiv fonetic spelling.
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Sassy
ok..I feel lost in this thread...
does that make me old??
oh yeah.. and what the hell does 1337 mean??
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Euphemism
Sassy... I don't know if you say Abaddon's explanation:
'elite' (1 = L, 33 = ee, 7 = t therefore 1337= L- eet or elite)
Specifically, it refers to someone who considers themselves an "elite" hacker, although it is used far more often by posturers than by anyone with real computer skills.