txting inventing new words

Would you believe more than 79 million people are texting regularly? And that much texting on mobile phones is changing the use of language.

This Reuters wire story, Textonyms give mobile phone addicts a new language, describes heavy cell phone users in Great Britain are using SMS text messages in a new way, by using the first replacement word that shows up with T9 predictive text entry (on many mobile phones; not on smartphones.) This is called textonyms, words that map to the same mobile phone keys when sending text messages. One bloggers calls this "a more sophisticated version of pig latin".

For example, this text message, combining txtonyms and shorthand:

R U cycle? Book! Fancy an adds down the sub? There's a gr8 new carnage.

Actually means this:

Are you awake? Cool! Fancy a beer down the pub? There's a great new barmaid.

I get the sense that texting is much more popular in Europe and Asia than it is here in the United States (yet), partly because of how they do pricing plans over there. Or, you could say, how mobile providers do pricing plans over here.

Your thoughts?

-- DJ Chuang, Director of Digital Initiatives & more, Leadership Network

Comments

[Phil]

OK, while texting is far more popular over here in the UK, than in the US, our use of predictive text isn't largely going to that extreme. Text only works as a communication tool when both the sender and receiver understand the message. Some people may be able to translate some words into their intended form as per your example, but let's be honest, this isn't going to catch on in a major way.