"Lolspeak" drives me nuts

[K9soul]

Ok, I may be in the minority about this as I often am on such things, but the new 'fad' of lolspeak drives me absolutely nuts and I just have to get it off my chest. Maybe it's because I have worked as an editor, and now as a transcriptionist; have been an avid reader and listener of song prose all my life and love the beauty of well communicated language.

Lolspeak seemed to become the thing when the website, icanhascheezburger, used this type of speaking to caption photos, but now it seems to have exploded and I feel like I am seeing it more and more everywhere I go on the net: blogs, message boards, youtube, etc. I did not think much about it when I saw it here and there, but since it has become such a popular thing to do, it has become like nails on chalkboard to me LOL.

I realize to a lot of people it's cute/funny and not a big deal. For folks who may wonder what in the world I am talking about, "lolspeak" is the deliberate use of improper grammar and misspelling, I think intended to be humorous, but in my opinion becoming overused and overdone.

Now I know, some may feel I need to lighten up. But we all have our peeves and this one happened to be niggling at me enough lately to vent it .

[Taz_Zoee]

I agree with you. I think this way of "talking" started with texting. So you didn't have to type out all the letters on the phone. But people are now using it everywhere. I don't even use it while texting, except the LOL part. I get texts from my niece and it takes a minute to understand what she is saying.

[kuhio98]

Drives me nuts too. Seems most people think it's cute and funny, but I just think it's dumb. (I also think the pets on icancheezeburger are better spellers than their families who post their photos).

[K9soul]

It isn't so much acronyms, like LOL or ROFL etc. It's things like "I iz hungry" and "I takez ur cake"

I do know that texting kinda started its own type of typing with shortened words, letters and numbers though. Which I don't mind being used when texting, understandable to not have to key in so much, and I don't mind acronyms used.

[RobiLee]

I say go Jess! I'm with you on this one. It also drives me nuts. I find it hard to follow. Maybe its my age. I don't know. All I know is that it just drives me crazy. I really don't understand the whole thing and sometimes i find it hard to follow. I know we have talked about if for awhile but I'm so glad that you spoke up and said something. Way to go, Jess!

[Pam]

Agree totally! The only ones who should be speaking like this are Phred and Chopper!

[lizbud]

Agree totally! The only ones who should be speaking like this are Phred and Chopper!

I never really run into it much, but I don't frequent blogs,U tube,etc..

[momoffuzzyfaces]

Fox news ran a report Friday about how the text shorts like u for you and " r u" for "are you" are being used by students in reports and stuff. If I were a teacher, they would be warned once then made to do the papers over and marked down a grade point. People are just getting so lazy!

[chocolatepuppy]

Some of that 'speak' that I'm unable to translate easily, I just give up.

[K9soul]

It's actually even kinda different from Phred's "dawg talk" too. It does seem to kinda mingle the texting talk in with it to a degree, but also just deliberate misspellings such as "bai" for bye, "hai" for hi.

I found this "guide" to lolspeak:

Step one: Think of something to say.

Step two: “Engrish” it.

1) Mis-decline verbs, especially misuse the verb “to be”
2) Misuse gerunds
3) Overuse prepositional phrases
4) Blatant rearrangement of syntax
5) Incorrect plurals and past-tense verbs
6) “noun” your adjectives. (For instance, the adjective “blue” can become the noun “blueness”)
7) Improper pronouns
8 ) Drop the articles (”a”, “and”, “the”) in favor of adding “-age” to the end of a noun
9) Use “younger” words (”kitty” versus “cat”, “fuzzy” versus “furry”, etc.)
10) Use the word “with” inappropriately.
11) If you really can’t wrap your head around the concepts behind “Engrish”, try this: Go to babelfish.altavista.com, type your desired comment in, hit “english-to-Japanese”, then re-translate back to English. You have to be able to view special characters (the kanji). If you can’t get that to work, try translating to a different, european-text language, like German.

Step Three: Misspell words

Example:

Normal speak
“The cat has a bow on his head!”

Lolspeak
“Kitteh gots bowage on hims hedz!”


Here is also a lolspeak wiki page... http://speaklolspeak.com/?t=anon

I have seen lolspeak popping up more and more on PT, maybe some lolspeakers here could explain it better

[Lady's Human]

No need to explain it, when I see it I just move on.

If it's not important enough for the poster to spell and use proper grammar, it's not important enough for me to read. (Note.....this is specifically directed at "leetspeak" users, and NOT directed at people who do not speak or write English as a native language.)

[K9soul]

By the way, the term "lolspeak" that is actually what it has come to be called. It has nothing to do with acronyms, LOL and IMO for example. The icanhascheezburger site called their photos lolcats. And thus the way of speaking there became called lolspeak.

[carole]

my apologies, i should have read all the post's and i obviously mis-understood, i have deleted my original post.

[Catsnclay]

No need to explain it, when I see it I just move on.

If it's not important enough for the poster to spell and use proper grammar, it's not important enough for me to read. (Note.....this is specifically directed at "leetspeak" users, and NOT directed at people who do not speak or write English as a native language.)

I can't agree more!

My delete button is getting a LOT of use lately!!

If you can't use the language correctly, then don't use it at all!

[.sarah]

Well I guess I will be the first to say that I find it hilarious.