Mutt Media | Daily Bone 6.3.09 LEET-Like Spelling Bee by Mike Luckovich

Leek-like Spelling Bee by Mike Luckovich

I thought this was a cute cartoon that appeared in one of my morning papers last week by Mike Luckovich.

Normally Luckovich does politically-bent cartoons (go to the link if you’d like to see more of his work) but I thought this was one worthy of a post for Mutt Media & the Daily Bone.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll remember my post from May 7, 2009 where I gave a brief overview of LEET (1337), the shorthand “language” that our kids are adopting in their day-to-day online communications.

This shorthand is sometimes hard to decipher and my concern is that – in a sense it is slowly edging-out our English language. My kids (daughter especially, who is, incidentally, the younger of the two) has become an expert in paring down her words into these little snippets in order to get her messages (txt, email and the like) deployed more quickly. She routinely will answer “IDK” when asked a question….this is worrisome!!

Do you know what “IDK” means? If not, then just answer “IDK” (that was a hint).

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Mutt Media | Daily Bone 5.7.09 | LEET or 1337 The language your kids may be speaking – are you fluent?

The following definition was copied (with some edits by me) from http://www.wikihow.com.

LEET (1337) is a written language used in online gaming, e-mails, text messaging, and other electronic communication. The root of the term “leet” is the word “elite”–translated as 31337. 1337 was initially developed as an exclusionary language: a way to encode text so that messages could only be read by the initiated. The defining characteristic of 1337 is substitution of symbols and numbers for letters (for example, in the term “1337,” 1=L, 3=E and 7=T), but the language has also developed to include intentional misspellings, phonetic spelling, and new words.

H4XORZ | Translation: HACKERS Licence Plate

I’ve taken some time to try to become familiar with this cryptic language, but, truthfully I find that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. However, if my children were frequently using it, I would make it my business to become fluent!

From what I can tell, LEET has been around for a really long time and has been widely used in certain chat rooms and alot on various gaming sites.

Rather than try to give you a primer on the language (there are many sites that you can find with a simple Google search) I thought I’d just provide a little social commentary on this phenomenon.

Its of course, remarkable that some of our children would go to great lengths to communicate with one another cloaked in a different language but not at all surprising. Does anyone remember Pig Latin? Ubby Dubby Language? You had to be a fan of the original ZOOM back in the 70′s for that one. So my point here is that we needn’t be shocked. We have all adopted some form of LEET into our texting and emailing. The symbol online for a heart is <3, which kind of looks like a heart turned on it’s side. LOL, ROFL, BRG, G2G are all little pieces taken from the LEET handbook.

I am hopeful that your kids are not discussing anything too crazy, but you probably already know the answer to that question. If you suspect that some topics (underage drinking, drugs, sex) are being discussed that you haven’t yet covered at home, now may be a good time to start speaking their language. Barring any international espionage or other illegal activities, I say let the kids have their fun. We did! Feedback? Comments? Just click on the link below.

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Leet Translation courtesy of Albinoblacksheep.com | Mutt Media NY

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© 2009 Mutt Media NY LLC All Rights Reserved