Twitter translated to LOLCATZ: Strangely this had not been done If you've got nothing better to do than faff around on Twitter, you're likely to be the sort who will enjoy having your Twitter account translated into Lolcatz, the language. Not your actual tweets, nor the tweets of anyone else, but just the various commands and buttons that furnish the page around the tweets. The languages …
I call it a monument to human ingenuity and persistence.
Mind you, I don't always think very highly of human ingenuity and persistence.
http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/
eg, this is what the article looks like in Swedish Chet or Hacker
"Always good to have a section of society to feel superior t , isn't it."
Sorry, but I'm afraid even cutting sarcasm isn't going to eliminate that particular human tendency.
Besides, I tend to be more concerned by the people - like your good self - who object to the use of the word 'chav' on the basis that we shouldn't be looking down on "a section of society".
If we were talking about ethnicity, or age, or disability, or sex, or sexual orientation, or gender identity, or any of those other characteristics over which people have no personal control, then I'd be right there with you on the moral high ground.
But we're not talking about those things. Being a 'chav' is about behaviour and attitude. I know people make a big thing about 'chavs' wearing hoodies or big hoop earrings, or whatever - defining them by appearance, albeit a chosen appearance - but what it's really about is behaviours and attitudes. 'Chav' generally indicates someone who - in whatever way - rejects the standards of the society they live in but still expects to be supported by it. Someone who demands respect but is generally unwilling to extend it to anyone else.
So when someone comes along and suggests that we should refrain from being judgemental about 'chavs' because we're victimising "a section of society", what they're implying is that a) these people should not be *expected* to behave in a socially responsible way; because b) these people couldn't behave in a socially responsible way even if they wanted to.
There's a parallel assertion that people who criticise 'chavs' are criticising 'the poor' or 'the disadvantaged'. This similarly implies that poorer people can't be socially responsible in their behaviours, and therefore shouldn't be expected to be.
All in all, I think those implications are pretty worrying in themselves. For myself, I believe that almost everyone is capable of conducting themselves in a socially responsible way, so I expect them to do just that - even if it only goes as far as basic politeness, the rejection of violence, and not trying to nick other people's stuff. If people refuse to adhere to those standards, if they reject the need to respect other people, their property and the society they're a part of, then I have no qualms about calling them out on it. (I might not call them 'chav', myself, because it's a tired-out word, but the principle holds.)
By gods. Can we have an icon for "I'm going to talk like a complete pompous arse for far too long", please?
...but I rather fear the joke is lost on 'yoof' and 'not so yoofs' that aren't net savvy enough re: the cat gag.
This being of course because a frightening percentage of people now text / email / socially networkalise themselves in this manner anyway*. I suppose it would be funnier if I thought potential participants knew how to communicate in any other way.
More a case 'LOLhumans', IMHO.
txtspk was just one in a pantheon of f*ckeries that edged me toward the 'EXIT' sign on Facebook - if such a thing actually exists, and my escape wasn't a hopeful fantasy.
* I had to go back to a correspondent once and request written English. She'd typed exclusively in txtspk, and not even phonetically accurate txtspk for that matter. I literally had no idea what she was trying to say.
"This being of course because a frightening percentage of people now text / email / socially networkalise themselves in this manner anyway"
People have always used shortcuts and abbreviations. The problem is not in the jots or tittles or particular grammatical constructs or spellings - it is entirely possible to understand these conventions. The problem is that often these people are inarticulate anyway meaning trying to extract sense was always going to be an uphill battle. Unfortunately I don't think that is a problem that would go away simply by eliminating a particular coloquial phonetic construct de jour.
People have always used shortcuts and abbreviations.
Indeed. People who think "txtspk" is a novel phenomenon should spend a few hours grubbing about in the archives of their nearest research library. Going through a stack of, say, publishers' chapbooks from the nineteenth century would disabuse them of that notion.
And most of that stuff was handwritten (before the introduction of the typewriter, late 19th C). At least with computers and SMS the glyphs are usually discernible.
Perhaps it's all a cunning plan intended to locate those ignorant enough to both use Twitter and combine it with the desecration of the English language known as "LOLCATZ" (*shudder* I feel unclean from merely typing that!) before unleashing a pogrom against those identified and thereby improving the human genome marginally?
Or maybe I only suspect that because it's very much what I'd consider doing...
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