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?
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