When a homophobe can't write in plain English...

[tilia_tomentosa]

... his/her message isn't understood.

See what a message appeared on the gay forum that I moderate. I'm pretty certain it's a "hate the sin, love the sinner" sermon against homosexuality, but oh, the spelling of it! One of our forum members did try to "translate" it, but nobody is 100% sure what this person is saying. Not a good way to preach. LOL

Comments

[uneasytruce]

My reading is this:

- Very young person (under 20)
- Combination of major typographical errors and new 'text-style' English
- Believes Christian people should not criticize homosexuals. Homosexuals, like prostitutes, are only further stigmatized when criticized. Saying negative things to the gays will only drive them from the church, as the prostitute was driven back to her brothel through absence of acceptance.

There is an admonishment from a biblical passage; I believe the author means 'remove the log from your own eye, before pointing out the splinter in another person's eye.'

The only thing that does not jibe with the entire post, is the final sentence, where the young person believes that only these proper, tolerant actions will ultimately defeat homosexuality.

A pity. He got almost everything right, despite the butchery of language (or perhaps an embryonic creation of a new language) only to miss the point entirely.

[tilia_tomentosa]

Ths is what I got on the forum itself:

"That kind of English is called Ebonics, spoken typically by inner city black kids. However it typically isn't that hard to make sense of, and these days a lot of suburban white people try to speak like that because they think it makes them seem cool and hip. My guess is that this is not an inner city black person, but someone trying to pretend to be and going too far to the point of being almost unintelligible."

[uneasytruce]

I got that, too. But the differences between the following two possibilities are absolutely tiny:

1. VERY inner city teenager, or
2. WANNABE very inner city teenager.

I had to travel to the whitest part of Montana--where no Asian or Black or Hispanic person had ever been--to witness White teenagers using urban slang in running speech ("tru dat!") without a hint of irony.

In writing, though, there is no difference between a young Black girl in Compton, California and a young White man in Butte, Montana. Both communicate primarily with their peers by using the keypad of a cellular telephone. And some sort of new language which I hope you and I will never master.

You have the idea, though! Well done.

[tilia_tomentosa]

I had an American forum member tell me that, or I would never have guessed what it was. My first guess was "too much text speak". We do get practically unintelligible messages in text speak all the time, but they typically tend to be shorter.

Thank God text messaging isn't that cheap and therefore popular here, although the abomination of writing Bulgarian in a crazy text/chat spelling in the Roman alphabet (including numbers for some letters) still goes on now that practically everything supports the CyrilLic. I guess it's kinda cool with young people who are too lazy to press whatever keys switch the alphabets on their computer keyboards. The most ironic part is that they remember were a certain key of a Bulgarian Cyrillic layout is only to use its Roman counterpart. It's even in people's names on FB. Imagine spelling /ja/ as "q"!

[darkangel_wings]

It seems to mostly be the text-speak style of spelling. Basically, most of it is phonetic rather than correct, some things are contracted for no adequate reason, usually by leaving vowels out in order to shorten words, there are all sorts of random phrases (like "kkk") thrown in, which is just kind of like saying "um" to tie thoughts together, but is supposed to be a contraction of "okay" or "OK". (Though "KKK" is an unfortunate thing to write out, at least in America...) I see status updates written this way on FB a lot.

It's often young people who write that way, but I've seen a lot of 30 and 40-somethings do it, too.

I could translate the whole thing for you if you wanted, though I doubt you need it. :P

[tilia_tomentosa]

Ths is what I got on the forum itself:

"That kind of English is called Ebonics, spoken typically by inner city black kids. However it typically isn't that hard to make sense of, and these days a lot of suburban white people try to speak like that because they think it makes them seem cool and hip. My guess is that this is not an inner city black person, but someone trying to pretend to be and going too far to the point of being almost unintelligible."

Hmmm... whatever it is, when native speakers try to spell English phonetically, it's only more difficult for me to understan because when I read, I think in the written images of the Englsih words and not in their mental pronunciation.

Which means that I tend to forget how to actually speak English when I only read and write in it for a long time.

[darkangel_wings]

Ebonics tends to be something a little bit different. A few of the shortened words and/or the spellings thereof might have originated that way, but a lot of it is just chopping out the vowels in order to type words faster, or spelling them phonetically because there's no spellcheck in texting, not so much based around geography or race. A lot of the white kids who use that kind of speech either verbally or in writing don't use it out of the desire to be "tougher" (though some might) but just because they think it's faster/"everyone does it." I can only speak for a relatively small subset of people, though, and certainly don't know everyone, and therefore don't know why any individual might choose to type that way. But I will agree that it's nearly unintelligible, and it drives me nuts to see anything written out that way, lol

[failuresofine]

That just about made my eyes bleed. Honestly I couldn't even finish it, it's so garbled and nonsensical

[tilia_tomentosa]

Oh, it happens to British teens too (the text speak, not the Christian part).

[quirkstreet]

I can't find a creative way to misspell "tl;dr". ;-)