By Glen Turner – Special to the Sydenham Current
In an earlier piece, I mentioned my love of ‘words’ and the fun that can be had with them.
This time, however, I want to comment on the new ‘word system’ the online equivalent of George Orwell’s NEWSPEAK in his novel 1984.
Luckily, our newspeak isn’t the insidious attempt to pervert language, but it’s fun to look at… in any way!
Mind you, some look at it as the beginnings of the end for the English Language as we know it.
I’m referring of course, to TXTTLK, or, the language of text and social media.
Lest I be accused of being stuck on ‘oldspeak,’ I’ll confess that I use text talk myself – terms like bbl, brb, ntmu, lol, lmfao and so on, and, of course I use some emoticons, when communicating online.
And don’t forget – some of them have been around for a long time.
We used to call them ‘short forms’ or ‘abbreviations.’
Actually, they’re acronyms, but that’s a different topic altogether.
BYOB, STFU, CXL, DOA, CYA, RSVP, SNAFU and so on.
Here’s hoping you don’t have to look any of these up.
Some of them, though, are hilarious.
Someone was referred to recently as a BHOF – a bald headed old fart. I howled!
Mainly because it wasn’t me.
And I loved P911 – parent alert!
Also saw DEGT – don’t even go there. DILLIGAD – do I look like I give a damn.
Too, I once saw DPYP – don’t poop your pants!
E123 – Easy as one two three.
Then there’s IIRC – if I recall correctly.
GAHOY – get a hold of yourself.
GGP – gotta go pee! IDK – I don’t know.
Did you know you can go online and look up the latest in text words AND text symbols?
Sooo…
SOTMG –ttyl & tyvm pls b wkewl, k? 
