Acronyms part Deux.

[FATBOYPEE]

Allright, forgive the ignorance yet again:

I'm not irritated by being left behind with these little things:


"; )"

etc etc..

I know they are supposedto represent smileys, but wots wot and how big's the list ?? Any why-oh-why do people put them in plain-text mails ???

FBP

[Jim Brown]

Originally posted by FATBOYPEE
Any why-oh-why do people put them in plain-text mails ???

FBP

Well if you insult someone and you don't put the appropriate smiley in, he's allowed to come round and duff you up. It's like saying "With all due respect...." which let's you slag the other guy off without fear of retribution. "With all due respect, that's a load of bo**ocks" or "With all due respect, your wife is a real slut".

Let's you get away with murder.

[beachbum]

Oh yeah Jim and like you'd know!

[beachbum]

Ooops ---->

[Jim Brown]

Ja well, it's worked so far!

[Mark Sreeves]

sorry, but they're not acronyms.

Acronyms are abbreviations which form a pronounceable word.

[Jim Brown]

You're right of course, but to Victor Borge they ARE pronounceable. Did you ever hear his sketch in which each punctuation mark had a sound? I can't exactly do them here, but a '.' was 'pppptht' or something.

[FATBOYPEE]

sorry, but they're not acronyms.

true, in essence, but they're a kind of new language ?

Bit like the old txt msgng these days, few words to say alot.... these little cheery Bsdtds say alot by conveying a message, perhaps not strictly an acronym but just as irritating if you don't know what fk : ()!!!<><>>< is supposed to graphically mean !

FBP

[zmerlinz]

i think that you will find that they are called 'Emoticons' short for emotional icons or something like that, and they are used to express what you are saying in a sentance, because sometime it is hard to show sarcasm or hummour alone in text, so that is what these little fellers are for

i think that David Attenbourgh probably found them in some remote island, along with the 'oohmegoolie' tribe, and the 'wherethefukarewe' tribe. these last two tribes got there names from what they used to shout to each other when they were running around through the long grasses

[beachbum]

Originally posted by Jim Brown
You're right of course, but to Victor Borge they ARE pronounceable. Did you ever hear his sketch in which each punctuation mark had a sound? I can't exactly do them here, but a '.' was 'pppptht' or something.

Jim, u are going waaaaaaaaaaaaay down in my estimations if you think that victor borge was funny. He was cringe material and embarrassing to watch. If he actually did something funny he would run the joke into the ground.... arrrghhh and since when have scandinavians had a sense of humour?

[Jim Brown]

Actually Borge's Punctuation Speak or whatever he called it, was the only sketch of his I think I heard, and I thought it quite good. The first time anyway.

No wait, there was another one... Inflation Speak where he added one to all the numbers: "Anyone for elevenis" and "You look beautiful threenight". I enjoyed that too.

But I'm sure those are the only ones I heard.

And you're right about Scandanavians not having a sense of humour: look at Mika Hakkinen for instance. He's about as funny as Michael Schumacher.

And here's your starter for 10 points, Who was the last Australian F1 World Champion. Your supplementary question is Who was the one before that. And who was the last Kiwi ditto.

And talking of Scandanavians, where's the MV Tampa got to: has it landed anywhere yet?

[CiberTHuG]

Originally posted by FATBOYPEE
true, in essence, but they're a kind of new language ?

No.

Bit like the old txt msgng these days, few words to say alot.... these little cheery Bsdtds say alot by conveying a message, perhaps not strictly an acronym but just as irritating if you don't know what fk : ()!!!<><>>< is supposed to graphically mean !

nuthin makes me madder than when some1 types with a complete dissrespect for grammar and puncuation. if ne1 finds this kewl than he obviously needs a severe thrashing about the head + shoulders with a broke bottle. do u find this kewl.

The sad thing here is, I can't quite reduce the language to the level of idiocy achieved today. I think it is safe to say that IRC and the ilk have helped to set back education in America by 100 years.

[parksie]

I rarely use many abbreviations when sending text messages. My phone has T9 which makes real words a lot easier and faster to type (for example "you" takes less keypresses than "u", but I can do "yu" easily).

And the whole l33t thing pisses me off

[InvisibleDuncan]

[OffTopic]
CiberTHuG: You think you lot have it bad - at least they're murdering your own language. Here, we're murdering yours and adopting it as our own. We're starting to get a generation who think that "Colour" should be spelled "Color" and that there's a substance called "Aluminum". And a billion has been reduced to 1,000th of its original size.

Education today, eh?
[/OffTopic]


And just *** is that l33t stuff anyway?

[parksie]

l33t - leet - elite

[InvisibleDuncan]

That's just plain silly.

Where does this get used, then? Text messages, IRC - that kind of thing?

[parksie]

It's usually with teenage ha)()(ors on IRC. Text messaging usually ends up like this (on non-predictive phones):

R U GOIN2DA PRTY2MOZ?

(Are you going to the party tomorrow?)

[CiberTHuG]

Originally posted by InvisibleDuncan
[OffTopic]
CiberTHuG: You think you lot have it bad - at least they're murdering your own language. Here, we're murdering yours and adopting it as our own. We're starting to get a generation who think that "Colour" should be spelled "Color" and that there's a substance called "Aluminum". And a billion has been reduced to 1,000th of its original size.

Education today, eh?
[/OffTopic]

*heh* Yes, we have run short on Us, and have begun the process of fixing words such as "color" and "honor". We will then begin reclaiming the Ks wasted in words such as "knight" and "knife".

We didn't invent aluminum, so that confuses me. Also, just how big was a billion (1,000,000,000)? Was it 1,000,000,000,000? We made up trillion? Wow, I did not know that.

Regretably there are some things that we have done that do bother me greatly...

• The verb "call" is not intrinsicly linked to the telephone. One may call in a physical presence.
• Xerox is not a verb.
• Fax is not a verb.
• This is Mr. Jones. This is Mrs. Jones. This is the Joneses' house. This is Mr. Jones's car. Those are the rules.

[parksie]

A billion is a million million.
And I think a trillion is a million million million, IE a million billion.

[barrk]

Originally posted by Jim Brown
You're right of course, but to Victor Borge they ARE pronounceable. Did you ever hear his sketch in which each punctuation mark had a sound? I can't exactly do them here, but a '.' was 'pppptht' or something.

That is one of the funniest things I've ever seen! It was great watching my kids see it for the first time! They were very tickled....it was as much fun watching their reactions as it was watching the skit!

[InvisibleDuncan]

Apparently, "Aluminum" was suggested by the bloke who came up with the first American dictionary - Webster, is it? He also suggested some others which didn't make it as official American spellings - thru, nite, lite and others of that ilk. I've never understood why "aluminum" was accepted, because it doesn't fit in with the spelling of the other elements.

According to our dictionaries, a billion is (as Parksie says), a million million. However, if you read our papers or listen to our politicians, they've now adopted the American version of a bllion being a thousand million. I have no idea why.

Everyone's started spelling "yoghurt" as "yogurt", too. Maybe silent letters are too difficult.

[InvisibleDuncan]

Originally posted by CiberTHuG

• The verb "call" is not intrinsicly linked to the telephone. One may call in a physical presence.
• Xerox is not a verb.
• Fax is not a verb.
• This is Mr. Jones. This is Mrs. Jones. This is the Joneses' house. This is Mr. Jones's car. Those are the rules.

I sent that last one before I'd finished. Oops.

I'm not too bothered about your fist three (although I would agree), but people who don't stick to your last point give me the hump. It should read the way it is spoken. I often see "This is Mr Jones' car", which is just wrong. (Best not to get started on the great apostophe debate, though - I think the battle on "its" vs. "it's" has been lost already.)

I'm also not too keen on the process of adding "ise" (or in your case, "ize") to the end of words to create verbs - e.g. privatise and prioritise. sometimes it makes sense, but often it's sheer laziness.

[beachbum]

Originally posted by Jim Brown
And here's your starter for 10 points, Who was the last Australian F1 World Champion. Your supplementary question is Who was the one before that. And who was the last Kiwi ditto.

And talking of Scandanavians, where's the MV Tampa got to: has it landed anywhere yet?

I dont follow car racing too much and i especially dont understand the american indy stuff or whatever it is called. Racing around in a circle.. wow thats rivetting anyhow, the only Australian names i know for car racing are Alan Jones (he is currently a tv commentator for that stuff and is now so much wiser ... you know the retired sportsman story) and of course Jack Brabham.. i think one of his sons is doing well at some level in europe.

As far as Kiwis go i didnt even think that they were allowed to drive never mind race. And i am sure also that they would much prefer to come second so that they could whinge about Australia or something

Tampa... As far as i last heard it was en route to Papua New Guinea for transfer to planes (note the symbolism of not letting them on australian soil ) but there is a high court judgement in progress that prevents any firm action taking place as yet. turns out that being on an Australian navy ship may infact constitute them being in the care of australia... Is a very difficult situation not helped by our forthcoming election and the view that indonesia is a willing participant in letting boats leave its shores while pretending to enforce surveillance. Their armed forces should be quite good at attacking unarmed civilians by now and so i dont know why they are unable to stop these boats.
Regards
Stuart