1337. To the average computer user it’s just the numbers one, three, three, seven. To others, others in the new generation of Internet users, this means something more. Translated to English symbols, this becomes ‘leet.’ Further translation, it becomes the English word ‘elite.’ Anyone who has used the Internet or text messaging will recognize terms such as ‘lol’ or ‘g2g’ or ‘brb.’ And if you haven’t…Congratulations, you’ve just taken your first step into 1337speak.

1337speak, or also called leetspeak, has been previously seen under the headings of ‘Engfish’ or ‘Engrish,’ comical mistranslations of foreign signs into English or just plain old bad grammar. This growing phenomenon has stormed the online world as well. To save time, or to seem hip, we abbreviate common terms, change spellings, develop acronyms, change word tenses and sentence structure, throw in numbers or completely abandon the English language and write purely in symbols. This is a gold mine for people who study in the field of linguistics. Anyone who would argue otherwise would be silly to throw away a chance at seeing the development of a brand new language.

Leet was developed in the 1980s on BBS (bulletin board systems), where a user having “elite” status had access to special files, oftentimes illegal or dangerous content. It was once used by hackers to bypass certain chat or spam filters but it has since leaked into mainstream culture. Unskilled hackers (labeled ‘newbies/noobs’ to denote their lack of experience) would try to emulate the ‘elite’ hackers by adopting the same script language. As it became more widespread different forms began to emerge, such as emoticons, and different levels of ‘leet’ have developed. The depth of the usage varies from person to person and situation to situation.

As I said before, this is a linguist’s dream. Within online gaming, the dominant language is usually English. This is fine for some of you but it doesn’t sit very well with people from other countries who don’t speak one wit of it. Leet then becomes a way they may still communicate with the majority of the gaming population without having to learn the entire language. Numbers have become universally recognized so by learning the English word for the number it means they will not have to learn the score of letters associated with it.

And example would be: ‘4get it’

By just pronouncing/typing the 4, a foreign gamer won’t have to bother learning ‘f-o-r.’ This in combination with a minimum amount of the English alphabet allows gamers to interact with each other around the world.

It is in my honest opinion that this is the first step for a global language. In years past it was impossible to talk to someone from Belgium unless you went there. There wasn’t a need for the bulk of the population to learn their language so only a handful did. But because of the Internet, it’s easier than ever to chat with someone from France here, someone from Greece there and someone from China over here. Slowly, using the tools available, people are developing a common language that everyone can understand. By integrating symbols, characters and numbers from everywhere, we are taking a step towards breaking language divides and, in a sense, being united as a planet.

Before I said there are different depths of leet. They can be thought of as 'dialects' since it is basically the same language, just varying characters. Here is a compilation of how it divides up, scaling from the amount of usage in mainstream and difficulty level:

Everyone uses these I’m sure. Some of the examples I used earlier are part of this lower rank leetspeak. It’s a series of letters that are condensed down to form a new word(in case you need to know what an acronym is). Usually used to express a feeling or action, this is the most accepted form of leet today. The severity and urgency can be manipulated by the use of capitalization.

Examples:

lol – laughing out loud. Said in response to an amusing statement or action or event. Also note, that using 'lol' doesn't mean you are actually, physically laughing. It is just a way to express your amusement

rofl – rolling on the floor laughing. The ‘next’ level of showing amusement. More often this is used when an actual, physical laugh is emitted (the ones above are also examples of this)

lmao – laughing my ass off. Said in response to a particularly humorous statement/event/action

ROFLMAO – rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. A highly exaggerated form of amusement

brb – be right back. Said when the speaker plans to be away for only a moment or two

afk – away from the keyboard. Said when the speaker plans to be away for a long while (5+ minutes or so)

diaf – die in a fire. An extreme way of saying ‘shut up,’ ‘go away,’ ‘stop it,’ and the like. Mostly in response to an idiotic action or statement

gtfo – get the fuck out. Another extreme way of saying ‘shut up and get out’

wth – what the hell. Said when something startling or confusing just happened, or when someone says something that doesn’t make any sense

wtf – what the fuck. Same as ‘wth’ but has more angry overtones

This can be confused with (or sometimes actually is) poor spelling skills. The leetspeaker will change or add words to spell out phonetically. When it is not actually due to an inability to spell correctly, it becomes a way for people to mock those who really can’t spell…by spelling even worse than they do. When used intentionally it has many meanings, but is most similar to baby talk. If you’ve ever spoken to a baby or a dog/cat then you’ll notice the tones and pronunciations change in comparison to how you would speak to another adult. Letters deemed unnecessary can be dropped out, leaving the bare minimum to be deciphered. This is mostly used to ‘save time’ (it should be interesting to note that it takes just as long to consciously leave those letters out than it does to just type them all) but can also be used as a way to convey sarcasm. This can be combined with the acronym version of leet but at times the acronym is sounded out phonetically to become its own word with the same meaning.

Examples:

u – You

ur – Your

u r – You are

No wai! – No way!

Gewd foar yew. – Good for you

Moar! – More!

Oh rly? – Oh really?

Ya rly. – Yeah really

Leik, omg! – Like, oh my god!

Roffle – Phonetic of ‘rofl’

Lawl – Phonetic of ‘lol’

Elemaeoh – Phonetic of ‘lmao’

Hai guiase – Hi guys

This dood iz teh sux – Literally: This dude is the suck. Translation: This dude sucks. The addition of ‘teh’ removes the verb tense, making it the root verb instead which, in this case, would be ‘suck’

The next advanced form of leet incorporates misspellings, acronyms, letter abandonment and replacement with numbers of similar sounds. Since the sound of the number in English includes many of letters, those are dropped out of the word and only certain marker letters are left in to guide the flow of pronunciation. In some words, all letters can be completely converted to numbers. The use of numbers makes the statement or word “stronger” or conveying more feeling than simply writing it with letters.

Examples:

g 2 g – Got to go…OR…Good to go

H4x0r! – Hacker!

1337 – Leet/Elite

L37’5 r0x0r! – Let’s rock!

4f73r u m8 – After you mate

1 H473 U!!!! – I hate you!! (the number one can be used for both ‘i’ and ‘l’)

No1 w4n75 2 h34r ur v01c3 – No one wants to hear your voice

The most advanced form of leet, it is both the most confusing form and also the hardest form. But it also leaves much room for creativity since it incorporates ASCII symbols ($, #, &, and the like). Some people choose to type completely in symbols, without relying on numbers or letters, but using all three in conjunction is the more popular method (since using all symbols takes an inordinate amount of time and dedication). The reason why people do use complete symbol language is to bypass filters. And example would be when the MMORPG World of Warcraft first opened and players of opposing factions would type in symbols to communicate with each other. Also, for it's difficulty level in deciphering, it's used when two people must communicate publically but don't want someone to 'listen in' on their conversation (since they will lose interest in decoding it or be put off by it).

Examples:

|) () () |)! – Dude!

|_| |)()|\|-|- |<|\|()\/\/ /\/\[- ! – You don’t know me!

7|-|47 9|_|y 15 73|-| \/\/1|\| |24|2 !– That guy is the winner!

1 |-|8 7y|>1|\|9 1|\| 1337 – I hate typing in leet

1 7|-|1|\| |< \/\/3|23 |)0|\|3 |-|3|23 – I think we’re done here

Those are the basic forms of leet as we know them today. As time goes and English computers incorporate more symbols of other languages we will see further changes in the written language. Leet language has spawned several suffixes, prefixes and verbs which I will go over at a later time. This is just to wet your whistle a bit and to hopefully give some linguistics intellectuals an idea on where they should be concentrating their studies in the near future.

A : 4, /-\, /\, @, ae

B : 8, |3, I3, ]3, ß

C : [ , ( ,©, see

D : |), [), cI,

E : 3, [- , iii

F : |=, ph, eph

G : 9, (_-, gee

H : #, |-|, }{, aech

I : 1, !, |, ai, eye

J : _/, _], (/, jay

K : |<, |{, kay

L : 1, |_, el

M : |v|, /\/\, (v), ^^, em

N : |\|, /\/, in

O : 0, (),Ω, [], oh

P : |>, |o, |7, pee

Q : <|, (_,), kew, cue

R : |2, |?, /2, 12,®, arr

S : 5, $, ,,\``, es

T : 7, +, -|-

U : |_|, (_), v, yew, yoo, yuu

V : \/,√

W : \/\/, vv, \ ^ /, ( /\ ), double-uu

X : %, ><, * , )(, ecks

Y : Ψ,¥,wai

Z : 2, 7_