chir.ag/tech [archive]

Here is an actual online conversation that took place between me and a good friend of mine. I know how the entire non-instant-messenging world deplores im-speak but for those of us that are online every day and night, expanding every word/phrase is sometimes meaningless, especially since nobody else is going to read our trivial chatter. That is until now. Read the following and see if it makes sense. I've included the English translations in the ajdacent column.

Speaker	Actual	Translation
Me:	yo	Greetings! My fellow Internet friend.
He:	ya?	Hello Sir. How may I help you?
Me:	sp	The cartoon show South Park is on TV.
He:	on?	Which channel would that be playing on?
Me:	cc	That would be Comedy Central, my friend.
He:	oh	Let me change the channel and see.
He:	ty	Eureka! Found it! Thank you!
Me:	np	You're welcome, kind fellow.
Me:	cu	I shall see you later.
He:	ok	Good Day and thank you once again.

In our defense, I'd like to say that we often inform each other whenever any of our favorite TV Shows are being aired. So we are fully aware that SP is South Park, FG = Family Guy, and CC = Comedy Central Channel. While we prefer brevity to wordiness, we never use cryptic leet-speak and rarely sacrifice proper grammar and spelling just for the sake of appearing "cool." Many of the above two-letter acronyms and abbreviations are in fact so widely used that it seems odd when someone says "no problem" instead of "np." And just think of the compression ratio!