How does a lover of French cinema invite a friend to the movies using just 11 characters? The savvy texter would type: “6né 2m1? A tt!”, which represents: Ciné demain? À toute à l’heure! (“Movie tomorrow? See you soon!”). Around the world, users of text messaging (a.k.a. SMS or Short Message Service) have developed a wonderfully witty linguistic subculture that is arguably changing the way we use written language. In any language, getting your point across in a restricted number of characters, as required by text messages, necessitates creativity. (Just think about how Twitter's 140-character limit has forced us to say a lot with so little.)

1. Multilingual Texting
This article was originally published on the Acclaro blog.
Category: Mobile
How does a lover of French cinema invite a friend to the movies using just 11
characters? The savvy texter would type: “6né 2m1? A tt!”, which represents: Ciné
demain? À toute à l’heure! (“Movie tomorrow? See you soon!”).
Around the world, users of text messaging (a.k.a. SMS or Short Message Service)
have developed a wonderfully witty linguistic subculture that is arguably changing the
way we use written language.
In any language, getting your point across in a restricted number of characters, as
required by text messages, necessitates creativity. (Just think about how Twitter's
140-character limit has forced us to say a lot with so little.)
Roman language texters commonly take advantage of the language-specific
pronunciations of individual letters and numbers, morphing them into words or
approximations of words, such as “c u 2nite” (“see you tonight”) and “l8r” (“later”).
Italian friends looking for each other in a crowded plaza might type “dv6” for dove sei?
(“Where are you?”). Or, star-crossed lovers on opposite ends of Verona would write
“mmt+” for mi manchi tantissimo (“I miss you so much!”).
Want to know how to text in Spanish, German, and Chinese?
Read the rest of this article in the Acclaro newsletter to find out.
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Page 1: Multilingual Texting Copyright © Acclaro 2012