Phonetics and Internet Chatrooms/Forums

Personally, I think it's a sign of adolescent lazyness. u 2?

Personally, it drives me nuts, and I think it weakens serious debate as u can't take anyone 2 seriously when they type that way.

roger, hello.

I am not an expert in fonetics and being a product of UK schooling system, I am all for longhand, pure english. But at times, you are either short of time, lazy as you might say, a slow typist or maybe you find punching keys on your laptop a bit too much of an effort. To each, his or her own.
But if someone does post in fonetics, would you respond or ignore that message?

cavfancier, true to form.

:-)

I hate it.

I do not mean it to influence me, but it does.

I can't just, generally, can't bear to read the posts.

Most of us on a2k write everything out, with a bit of leeway for emoticons - sometimes, and the odd LOL here and there.

I find them a little more challenging to read. However, I wish I was as creative. I'm not very good at abbreviations I'm afraid!

Point One: The trendy timesaving spelling of with-it adolescents has little to do with the study of phonetics. Abbreviations such as "u" and "2" and "4" are a written form of slang announcing personal identity as much as constructive thought.

Point Two: The "norm" is set by the majority of the users. I'm sure on some boards and chat rooms the trendy talk to the trendy in words of one letter rather than one syllable. I don't frequent these places.

Point Three: As earlier posters have said, the trendy chat is annoying to older posters who have attained some grasp of the workings of the English language. All the same if a trendy nitwit wants to ask, "How are u guys?", he/she has created a puerile posting whether we approve or not.

Point Four: Universal literacy is a fairly new concept. Literate people are still a minority--albeit a minority with considerable clout. Adolescence has always been a fact of life. Most people (and posters) will mature eventually.

What Noddy said!

Go, Noddy!

Ah come on! Look, I hate the phonetics stuff, but I do not try to elevate my subjective taste to something it is not - betokening an elegance and maturity of mind that the phonetecists lack!!!

It is a matter of custom and practice.

I hate abbreviations and don't stay in chat long with someone who uses them. I think people do it to save time and because they are too lazy to type the word out.

brb k

Dlowan--

They only do it to annoy,
Because they know it teases.


Besides, you are far too modest and self-effacing.

Noddy - they do it to communicate with each other - it is their norm, just as writing it out is OUR's!

But - flattery will, as you know, always get you a long way with me....

Modest, self-effacing, bi-lingual and exceedingly tolerant of deviant behavior.

Stop it, or I'll pop my cork!!!

Probably not, Sonny San. I may check out some headers that don't look very serious, but if it uses "2" "4", "u", and that type of thing, experience tells me that I will have wasted my time loading the thread. By the way, it is quicker and easier for me to type "for" than "4". Now, if I find this usage within a discussion I've already entered, I may very well respond, if it looks like an interesting comment. Anyway, that's my answer.

Of course, in something like a Yahoo Chat Room <shudder>, that's the norm. You deal with it, or go away. Actually, I haven't been there for a while. In a good chat, I will overlook a failure to capitalize traditionally. Things do move along quickly, and if you don't hurry, your answer is sadly missing any useful context.

But a woman with limits.

This is absolutely key in chat. It takes a while for the abbreviations to become natural, but you need to be able to manage them to keep up with the conversation.