Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Chinese Texting

People here are constantly on their cell phones.

They aren't necessarily "talking" to someone directly, but their thumbs are madly punching away at the touch pad.

They're fa duan xin or texting messages to each other as the air time is much cheaper than speaking voice to voice.

And they have come up with some interesting short cut texting vocabulary that involves lots of numbers and a bit of creative interpretation.

For example, "88" is ba ba which is similar to "bye bye".

Another is "3x" or "san-x" is "thanks".

"520" or "521" sounds sort of like wo ai ni or "I love you", while 537 is wo fang qi is "I'm angry".

There are so many numerical combinations to create phrases that pretty soon Chinese may become a numeral language kind of like pig latin for those in the West.

Except this may become a lingo that people won't let grow out of quite easily...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

this typr of computer language is eroding our classic culture. but this is the trend for the sake of efficiency. language is a tool for communication, so be it. but tremendous effort must be made to preserve and treasure our old heritage. that is the basis of civilisation.