Communication among speakers born of one native land and governed by one common government is expected to be bounded and bonded by one choice of language and that is, their first language. In general, the English language considered to be the international channel to reach out across the globe is the center of it all. Through the years, the basic and standardized usage of English grammar has always been consistent with the Library of Congress and the other accredited language organizations there are on the face of this earth.
The first or only language of each individual is inherent in him, for it is related to the first sound or syllable that he makes. Syllables, on the other hand make up a combination of a vowel and a consonant pair to make an audible sound Pa-pa and ma-ma, and da-da-da are very common firsts for a baby’s early display of his speech patterns.
Yet, in the olden days when bilingualism and colloquiallism were unheard of, and televisions were not even born yet, much more the game boy, atari, and now the MP3, and the X-Box, and the I-pod, much less the I-phone, the syllables which make up words and eventually are used to make up sentences have now been converted into abbreviations, shortcuts or acronyms.
For reasons other than time limitation or space savers, it can also be a code where the older generation couldn’t decipher right away.

Let us begin with the abbreviations that our older generations were born into. How much does a typical baby weigh would bring an answer to ounces (oz) and pounds (lbs), depending on where you live if your country uses the metric or the pound system. Measurements be it liquid or solid use calibrations that are abbreviated from gallon (gal) to milliliter (ml) to quart (qt), and so on.

At the hospital where most of you first saw light, there would be departments there that would use letters or shortened words like OB-Gyne and OR and DR as well as LR. The doctors would have their usual title next to their names (Dr.) and the medical crew also go with RN, and RNP, or LVN, and other tech staff. There would be a suffix in your name as Sr, Jr, etc....

As you either be a patient or a hospital employee, they monitor your temp and your BP (blood pressure). Temp may be temperature or temporary. Medications are administered using abbreviations as well. Tbsp for tablespoon and tsp for teaspoon as well as the BID or TID which may stand for three times a day or twice a day.The weight of the tablet or capsule is also measured by (mg) milligrams.

When you are out of the hospital, you may get a prescription (Rx) from your physician (Dr.). Because you are unable to go to work, you think of things to do to while away the time. Some thirty years ago, you turn on the boob tube which is the television (TV) and select from only a
handful of channels that were very basic and easy to remember, from Channel 2 until 13. There are no remote controls to press so you do not switch channels every minute. Ten years later, there came the birth of betamax and the VHS, so out came the unit, and then the tape, where you could watch movies at a convenient time in the privacy of your own home. If too much TV bores you because of quite a number of channels that are up to three-digits channel , you turn to playing and listening to music. It used to be the music record , one popular one is the Tower Records recording. It used to be in 45 rpm which carried a back to back single and then there was a bigger record of 33 rpm which consisted of at least twenty four songs on both sides of the record. Ten years later, the rpm became obsolete as to the launching of the cassette tape. In a few years, the CD’s came into picture. The compact discs carry music that moves on forward as you listen, No turning back. Then the CD rom came about, that which may contain computer data, and then the DVD, the compact disc that contain a movie or a documentary.

As public servants , you see the people who service the community. The LAPD, NYPD, LAFD, CHP. Professions and career that you work or pursue in college be they be in eng’g, or educ, or business ad. The college degrees always would add a feather in your cap when you complete your BA, or your Ma, or even your PhD.

In the Bible, the old and the new testaments would always have the abbreviations of who the writer is for every chapter and verse there are. Verses and verses of Gen and Lev, and readings from the saints (St. Paul and Peter and Matthew) down to the Psalms of praise and joy.

As you get out on the street and drive around, there’s too many symbols like P for parking and the streets and roads that are named with a blvd, and an ave., and a cny. If you need a driver’s license (DL) and an ID (identification), you go to the DMV.

In formulation of internal office memorandums, there is what we call addressee and furnishing copies to those concerned using CC or BCC. Abbreviations like ASAP, MWF, T-Th, AM and PM almost always are present on such memos. When there is a sense of urgency, you read abbreviated words as STAT, and FYI. Some more of the common when I was growing up and was trying to read the series of Mills and Boons during my salad days were acronyms that were shared by my aunt who was a teacher. Examples are

CHESTERFIELD - Come home every Saturday to eat ripe fruit in every lonely day

CAMEL - Can a man ever love?

YSIS- This is female talk where in “your slip is showing”

SWAK - Sealed with a Kiss (gone are the days when we receive and read love letters-missed them)

TY(VM) - Thank you (very much)

YW - You’re welcome

Computer acronyms that mainly distract the parents from snooping or spying while the minor is currently online are:

PIR - Parent in room

POS - Parent over shoulder

99 - Parents are no longer watching

B15- Back in 15 minutes

PAW - Parents are watching

Other widely-used and widely accepted computer codes are:

LOL = laugh out loud
ROFL = rolling on floor laughing
BRB = be right back
FYI = for your information
BTW = by the way
TTFN = tata for now
CYA = see ya
HTH = hope that helps
IMHO = in my honest opinion
IYSWIM = if you see what I mean

A sampling of some popular short_hand texting terms are listed below (courtesy of yahoo)

* UG2BK . . . . . . . You got to be kidding
* GBTW. . . . . . . . Get back to work
* NMP . . . . . . . . . Not my problem
* GFTD. . . . . . . . . Gone for the day
* FYEO. . . . . . . . . For your eyes only
* DEGT . . . . . . . . Don’t even go there
* BIL . . . . . Boss is listening
* PCM . . . . Please call me
* IMS. . . . . I am sorry
* TOY. . . . . Thinking of you
* KUTGW. . Keep up the good work
* CID . . . . . Consider it done
* FWIW. . . For what it’s worth
* HAND . . . Have a nice day
* IAT . . . . . I am tired
* NRN . . . . No response necessary
* 4COL. . . . For crying out loud
* WRUD. . . What are you doing
* LMIRL. . . Let’s meet in real life
* ^5 . . . . . . High five


As text-messaging codes and shorthand become increasingly widespread and interchangeably used in electronic mails, messages in tweets.com, adults like Mr. Mom and Super Dad are fumblingly scrambling to decode and break what has developed from the children’s last resort to be in secrecy from their parents. In quite a number of business establishments, a working knowledge of text-speak is becoming strictly required. Back home, with privacy or not- parents need to know the lingo in order to keep up with, cope, try, get aligned—and sometimes police—their children and their children’s speak-talk-texting.

There is one sure reason why such a surge in texting abbreviations—more than 2,000 and one and counting, according to NetLingo’s survey—is the boom in social-media sites like Twitter, that in order to convey the message, such websites limit the characters to a hundred and forty, around two short paragraphs or 14 sentences. This has resulted in space-restricted messages. Also, they are limited in length, so users have developed an alphabet soup of shorthand abbreviations to save time, their thumbs, and their manicure.

“To learn the linguistics may seem like a WOMBAT (“Waste of money, brains and time”). But with over one trillion text messages sent and received, interchanged in the U.S. last year, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group, you run the risk of feeling you do not belong or you are out of circulation if you are not a texter, or an email person who uses computer jargons.” (Stephanie Raposo- Wall Street Journal cia yahoo)

A speech trainer once said that “If a CEO does not appear to be tech-savvy, people may start to wonder, ‘Is the company not plugged into today’s technologies also?’”

The confusion amidst the mingling and the melting of cultures, much less the language barriers among peoples originating from different demographic locations has given rise to a number of resources that provide English translations for terms like WRUD (“What are you doing?”) and TTYL (“Talk to you later”).Some independent websites like NetLingo.com and UrbanDictionary.com and other corporate ones like LG Mobile Phones’ DTXTR.com. Textapedia according to a reliable source, is a pocket guide to texting terms released in 2008, is sold in over 4,000 stores nationwide. Also, in the book of information that Direct TV has included in their welcome packet there is a list of all these acronyms that you thought you would never find them there, what it meant but you would eventually. NetLingo reports a 391% increase in the splurge of hungry-for-meaning-visitors over the past five years, while UrbanDictionary says it saw a 40% jump in its unique visitors last June from June 2008.

It is said that all languages are growing that each month, these experts would be sitting down and meeting and monitoring the newly-coined words for the month. Also, the English language is growing, and ever growing- but we need to go back to our basic vocabulary- in order to be made aware of the letters used to make up the word....

OMG! Guess whatttt!!!! Both the Stylebook and Merriam-Webster Dictionaries recognized texting shorthand for the very first time in their 2009 editions, which were released in June. What is this message- The AP Stylebook now includes IMO (“In my opinion”), ROFL (“Rolling on the floor laughing”) and BFF (“Best friends forever”), among others. Merriam-Webster defines LOL (“Laugh out loud”) and OMG (“Oh my God”). The younger teen-agers tend to be not wanting to mean laughing out loud for LOL, but LOTS of LOVE , not really following the trend:

Some of sub-topics for us that were suggested by a yahoo writer a week ago and are related to texting and acronyms are:

* Texting Truckers, Motorists on Mobiles and Other Reasons Why I Hate Driving
* Cellphones: Better Than Your Spouse and/or Alcohol
* Iowa Teen Wins Text-Messaging Championship
*Filipinos: The World’s Best Texters
* Beware ‘Cellphone Elbow’
* Its Over: Breaking Up by Text Message

“These abbreviations have shown they are very likely to be a part of our language for a long long time,” quoted by a Yahoo researcher .and according to Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster.

One such strategist E. Kanna, 50, maintains a “Mom’s Text Talk Sheet,” a cheat sheet of over 30 textisms created and updated constantly by her three teenage daughters, on her desk at work. She who lives in Sacramento, this side of town says she refers to it daily as many of her clients prefer communicating through text shorthand like SWDYT (“So what do you think?”) and WDYM (“What do you mean?”).

“This situation is much amusing to note when last year a certain company- a Houston-based consulting firm, has hired a 20-year-old expert and two teen-agers in texting to help teach texting vernacular to its staff of six. “It gave us the confidence that we could use the lingo and connect with the younger clientele on their level,” says Bert Martinez, president of the firm, which now conducts and adheres to conformity by about 20% of its communication with clients via texting.”(Yahoo seach and news).

Allow me to quote a researcher/writer from yahoo when he says that, “Teenagers, for their part, text in code for a reason.” Anne Mitchell, president of the Institute for Social Internet Public Policy, based in Boulder, Colorado is usually because they are involved in activities which they don’t want their parents to discover, such as casual sex, drugs and alcohol,” she says. Indeed, parents may be startled by such popular terms as careful- these are up for censorship: GNOC (“Get naked on camera”), LMIRL (“Let’s meet in real life”) and IWSN (“I want__ now”).



There is a website called ParentDish.com that have observed that parents are seemingly upset about not being able to decipher their own children’s lingo. One editor suggested that parents embrace the method of cutting it short or abbreviating it which could lead to a bonding experience
with the kids.

“Quite a handful of moms do what this mother did like , here goes–“The fact that 15-year-old Jack Beisel’s mother uses texting shortcuts like HBU (“How about you?”) and CIL (“Check in later”) strengthens their relationship, he says. “It makes her seem like she’s a little more understanding about modern culture,” says Mr. Beisel,” (More research from Yahoo)

The consequences of misunderstanding and mix and matching the lingo can be ultra challenging. Some more of the convoluted, sometimes unpredictable words, and bunches of letters that you think can no-way be together are joined in the following:

IDC - I DON’T CARE

DSI - DOING SOMETHING ILLEGAL

BRB - BE RIGHT BACK

BBL - BE BACK LATER

NP - NO PROBLEM

GTG - G2G –GOT TO GO

TMI- TOO MUCH INFORMATION

IDK - I DON’T KNOW

AFK - AWAY FROM KEYBOARD

HSN - HAVING ___NOW

BTW - BY THE WAY

BMW - Bayerische Motoren Werke (in German), Or Bavarian Motor Works (in English)

These two are the real meaning of BMW- the auto manufacturer. To follow is alist of fun or deceptive yhree letters that answer to bmw.....:Bad Man's Wheels, Bad Man WagonBald Middle-aged White guy, Be My Weapon, Be My Wife, Be My WingBeats, Most Women, Beautiful Mexican Women,Been Months Waiting, ,Beer,Motorcycles,Women
Best Man Wins, Beyond My Wages, Big Mean Woman ,Borrow Money Weekly, Break My Wallet, Break My Window (car),Bring Me Women, Bring More Wine, Bringing More Weight,
Bring My Wallet, Brings Me Women, Built My Way, Bust My Wallet. Another OMG! These three-letter words are probably the most-studded and stuffed when it comes to coming up with meanings that make sense.

Above all these, one doesn’t even realize how the combination and mixed-up, juggled up or scrambled even the letters roll up into so much innuendoes, one never knows when this will end. There is a dictionary called urban dictionary where it says that you wrote it, where a part from the Webster’s version of the English standard dictionary, this is the other side of it. Yes, the English language is growing and who’s counting when we see that the trend not only focuses on the word but on the beginning letters of the words in a phrase or short commands, or short sentences. It has quite a number of definitions yet there seems always to be a new meaning or a new coining of root words together to come up with something new, day in and day out....so the questions of how many English words there are to date, based on the published abridged or unabridged dictionaries- it is not possible at this time to come up with an exact figure. The world of communication out there is limitless and beyond.

The abc of the xyz and the order to which the letters are used or abused dictate the times. As the IM and the texting via the cell phone evolve, we now have the ability to just remember some of them or maybe memorize as they come in handy when need be, for we are on a fast-paced world that we hardly find time to halt and pause , no more gasping for air or stopping and smelling the flowers or just the coffee.

How neat it is to learn all these although if you don’t use it, you may not remember it, that when you see it, you need to open up a search to understand what it means...This is just saying that when in doubt you goo=, or ya==.SYL@H (See you later at the Hub!)