English: Part of a text written in Gregg shorthand, in English, from John Robert Gregg’s book “Gregg Shorthand. A Light-Line Phonography for the Million”, 1916, page 153. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Textuage is Gregg shorthand for the 21st century/textuage S Gregg shrth&
4t 21st century. I should know – I learned how to take dictation in shorthand and transcribe the squiggles back into English. The website lingo2word translates textish into “plain” English and English into textenese. Before I discovered the website, and at a lost when textuage was the language of choice, I bought a book, aimed at tweens, that gave the basic emoticons and textish with some of the more colourful expressions edited out.
I still need the website and handbook to negotiate my way through facebook conversations. My less-dumb-than-my-first-cell phone has txtng capabilities, but I’m still on a very large learning curve. To me, it’s like a secret code for those in the know; a rite of passage for the those who passed the initiation. Lingo2word has quizzes to see how good your grasp of textuage is; I won’t tell you my score!
Trouble is, I’m torn. As someone who, for almost 20 years, helped students improve their writing and analytical skills, the abuse of the English language bothers me on some levels. But in the 142 character universe, something has to give. I find the similarities and the dichotomies between this written and unofficially codified language and spoken English interesting. There isn’t quite the line between spoken and written that separated the two forms of communication in ancient Rome; but if you listen closely, you can hear the slippage into a new English based on textish (or txtsh).
And, as a language, it simplifies the writing, but doesn’t resolve the issues of words with multiple meanings, or words that sound the same but aren’t spelled the same. In cases where the textish version is uniform, the meaning may not be. As a neophyte this confuses me the way folks learning English as a second language have difficulties. Being cognitively challenged these days, I will forget as soon as I’m told what an emoticon or textish statement means. Hence, a website and tween book is essential!
For example, I thought btw was by the way – makes sense. But, it can also be “translated” as between. Context, context, context; but can that be established in 142 characters? So watz a pRsN
lk me, unfamiliar W txtN 2 do? Especially, when Lingo2word seems to apply a pattern of lower and upper case letters for what reason? I know ALL CAPS is yelling or for emphasis, but within a word? Sigh. Back to my tweenie book for help, lol. (laugh out loud – how I mean it; lots of luck; lots of love; lost in London?; last in labels? Please feel free to add your own!)
Heard about Texting for Seniors on the radio Thursday afternoon. Found lots of postings and many of the short forms work for chronics* too. So, I’ve taken some of the texting for seniors (in italics) and added some for chronics. Since I don’t twitter and tweet, I’m not up on most of the texting short forms. I’m sure there are acronyms in textingland that can be given a chronic twist (of lime with g & t, please)
