LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT - The Language of Texting...
...or "Text & How to Understand It"
Stk? Sum1 u no txtg all dy? TLK-2-U-L-8-R mn 0 2 u?
Many young people now have mobile telephones. To a lot of parents they are a valuable device for ensuring the safety of their children enabling them to keep in touch when they are out and about. To some children, however, they a great status symbol and a really useful means of keeping in touch with friends and mates outside school.
As a result of this, English almost became a second language to an entire generation as many children starting communicating using the text facility on their mobile telephones. While they seem to know exactly what they are talking about, to many parents text is a mystery.
An Example
The opening sentence of this section of BEST Advice shows the problem.
Stk? Sum1 u no txtg all dy? TLK-2-U-L-8-R mn 0 2 u?
Most children would get it immediately, but for the benefit of parents, we shall translate...
"Stuck? Someone you know texting all day? Talk to you later mean nothing to you?"
With over 50 character abbreviations and more than 1200 text abbreviations in common usage many parents are left bewildered by text and its abbreviations. So, 2 hlp u geddit, sorry, to help you get it, we have listed two excellent sites which will give you all the information you need to decipher what on earth your children are saying.
The sites which list all the commonly used text abbreviations are:
Just copy and paste them into the address bar of your browser.