(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Okay, I give up, WTF does IDK mean? I looked it up on Google and it says I Don't Know, but that can't be right?

So far we have:

TMI - too much information
ETA: Edited to add and Estimated time of arrival
ETC: edited to clarify
BFF - Best Friends Forever
WFT - What the Fuck (which actually works for me)
ADA - Americans with Disability Act
LIRR - Long Island Rail Road
DOT - Department of Transportation
WFD - Weaving the Fabric of Diversity
First UU - Unitarian Universalism
RFP - Request for Proposal and Red Frigging Print depending
MTA - Metropolitian Transit Authority
ATM - Automated Teller Machine
LOL - Laugh out loud
BAMF - no idea
WOL - no idea
TNT - I think Turner Network?

I live in a world that is too lazy to spell things out and actually write. Ugh.
We're starting to speak babble people. I need a dictionary for text abbreviations.

Comments

[honorh.livejournal.com]

IDK - I Don't Know

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I don't know.

As in, that is what the acronym stands for, not that I am unknowing.

BAMF = Bad Ass Mother Fucker (Pulp Fiction popularized this, I think).

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

BAMF - "Bad Ass Mother-f#$(&#er

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I thought etc still meant: " et cetera, a Latin expression meaning "and other things" or "and so on"." (that being one of the old ones, like RSVP, that pre-date the internet/world wide web).

When I was first online visiting fan sites I actually printed out a long list of 'textspeak' acronym (because you gotta learn this stuff somewhere, the kids aren't always going to translate). Here is a helpful site: http://www.acronymsearch.com/

[angearia.livejournal.com]

It's always been this way. Just a basic human tendency to create connections and simplify things into more easily managed symbols of expression. Think of the Anglo-Saxons smooshing two words together to create one, then the more modern example of how radar actually is an acronym. Think of French smooshing words together. Of are not becoming aren't. The acroynym is just part of the same endless tendency to make the world accessible.

I think the only reason it seems like there's more is that we communicate more than we ever have before chatting online and through texts and emails.

It's like morse code only using the alphabet. We're always communicating in symbols and transforming the symbols into forms that allow faster communication.

So no lazier than usual, I don't think.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Exactly this. Language warps and changes over time, that's just how it works. The internet slang and abbreviations are just another dialect that's developed and which mostly makes sense only to the people who speak it. And of course, within this dialect there are lots of sub-groups, depending on what areas of the internet you frequent. I hadn't encountered GPOY before, but it would make a lot of sense in communities like tumblr and facebook that are very image-oriented. The anime groups borrow a lot of Japanese terms and shorthand. Online gaming has an entirely different set of acronyms and jargon.

It just seems overwhelming because what ordinarily would have taken a very long time to develop has, because of the speed of communication the internet allows, only taken 20 years or so. Also, I know there have been some studies done that show that some online communication (especially chatting/texting) is treated much more like conversation than written communication, the former being a place where people take many more linguistic shortcuts in any case.

It hasn't changed standard English, except by adding new words, but new words get added all the time anyway. I don't think that it's going to be acceptable to write formal papers in internet slang anytime soon, though.

[anomster.livejournal.com]

Gee, I thought "BAMF" was the sound of Nightcrawler teleporting!

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

That too! Haha, I'd totally forgotten that connection for the moment. Obviously, with any acronym or abbreviation, there's going to be multiple meanings. :D