Please type in English!

[Plecolover12]

Even though I am in the U.S. it is very important to speak English. Otherwise people would not read it. You can learn from other people and write it down.

[Butterfly]

Originally Posted by Plecolover12

Even though I am in the U.S. it is very important to speak English. Otherwise people would not read it. You can learn from other people and write it down.

I believe the original post was referring to using text speak and letters to mean words. We have many members whose mother language is not English and we can work with that but deliberately writing so it's hard to understand usually results in the threads not getting much traffic or responses.
Carol

[sirdarksol]

Well said, Butterfly. We have some people who have learned English as a second or third language, and, looking at them now, I can barely recall their first weeks here, when their posts were written in odd (though readable) grammar. We've worked hard to include them and read their posts, and, in turn, they worked hard to continue learning.
On the other hand, people who type in posts like
u r abt2 go ott, ql @ my betta
are undecipherable and can get annoying, particularly to those of us who do not spend any significant portion of our days texting.

[Alessa]

Originally Posted by sirdarksol

Well said, Butterfly. We have some people who have learned English as a second or third language, and, looking at them now, I can barely recall their first weeks here, when their posts were written in odd (though readable) grammar. We've worked hard to include them and read their posts, and, in turn, they worked hard to continue learning.
On the other hand, people who type in posts like
u r abt2 go ott, ql @ my betta
are undecipherable and can get annoying, particularly to those of us who do not spend any significant portion of our days texting.

That is so true. Me, English is my third language and as I have been in college for quite a while (in high school you dont really learn anything about the proper grammar and speech...) I have been lucky enough to learn it and absorb it as my "main" language...

even though I am "young" I really dont enjoy texting, or sending emails or posting in text language, I find it annoying.

I believe that is one of the reasons why FL is such a great site... aside from being friendly, it is also deciphrable!

[Lucy]

Originally Posted by sirdarksol

u r abt2 go ott, ql @ my betta

Wut?

[KyWildFish]

Memes are annoying too. ROFLcopter and LOLer skates....sigh.

[Butterfly]

Quote:
Originally Posted by sirdarksol
u r abt2 go ott, ql @ my betta

You are about to go out, go look at my betta ??
Carol

[sirdarksol]

"You are about to go over the top, quit laughing at my betta."

[CHoffman]

I would have never guessed that one..

[Plecolover12]

Originally Posted by Butterfly

I believe the original post was referring to using text speak and letters to mean words. We have many members whose mother language is not English and we can work with that but deliberately writing so it's hard to understand usually results in the threads not getting much traffic or responses.
Carol

Oh! I thought you meant speaking English but saying mean words and stuff, well, I have a personal expierience that you know about. Thank goodness that was over. Bye!

-Plecolover12

[sirdarksol]

I had to be looking at a text-/chat-speak dictionary (aimed at the 'rents, and it's got all of the "parents are watching" warnings that kids might use. Really neat site. Any parents who haven't thought of this and want to know what their kids are texting/chatting about, just search "textspeak," it will turn up a plethora of sites) to write that out.

[sirdarksol]

Bump.

[BEARjuice]

whats the difference with people using lets say "lol" or "btw" on this forum then people using "LFS" or "CUC". People who don't know what they mean have to go out of their way to find out, same as the people who read "text" and don't get it. We shouldn't have two standards or should we?

[sirdarksol]

LFS, MTS, HOB, etc... are bits of aquarium lingo. Every culture and subculture has some lingo. If you're in the aquarist's hobby, it would behoove you to learn the lingo, even if you don't use it. Folks at fish stores will actually use the term HOB, for example.

On this forum, the textspeak lingo has three things going against it:
First, as a forum, rather than a group of people texting to each other, there's no guarantee that everyone involved even has a text-capable cell phone, let alone does enough texting to have picked up the lingo.
Second, and possibly more importantly, textspeak is so far removed from the English language as to be nearly incomprehensible to someone not in the texting subculture. It's like the difference between French and French-based creole. The creole is based on French, but that doesn't mean that a French speaker can understand the creole.

As has been said periodically through this thread, it's not that things like lol are bad. It's when every other word is represented by a single letter or number. If it's small, isolated bits, most readers can pick up on it by context, or simply by asking. If it's a whole message, however, a lot of people simply can't understand it and don't want to bother.

[Mike]

The main issue was that people were typing entirely in text speak. An abbreviation thrown in every once in awhile isn't the same thing as using "text speak" in an entire post.

I'm looking for something like a plugin or similar for the forum that will recognize fish related abbreviations (like "cuc - clean up crew" or "lfs - local fish store") and make hover links over them with an explanation of what it means. No luck yet though. I'll keep looking for one though.

Mike

[CHoffman]

That would be great. When I first started it took me awhile to learn the fish lingo, that would helpful for anyone new or even semi-new to the forum.

[sirdarksol]

Originally Posted by Mike

I'm looking for something like a plugin or similar for the forum that will recognize fish related abbreviations (like "cuc - clean up crew" or "lfs - local fish store") and make hover links over them with an explanation of what it means. No luck yet though. I'll keep looking for one though.

Mike

Out of curiosity, have you looked for a more generic, customizable one? Some of our lingo is specific to Fishlore anyway, I think.

[Red1313]

...or even to certain users. Some short hand or text speak ect. We should still try to avoid making a whole post about it but there are some that everyone or certian people use alot. Though that might be tricky to manage...