The language of the Interwebs

The task of making a dictionary for any language is a daunting one. Natural languages, like English, change over time, so any dictionary must be updated constantly to keep pace with the new words and usages.

For the interwebs, there is no dictionary, and likely never will be one. Each major forum has its own dialect of interwebs speak, completely indecipherable to outsiders. For instance, my girlfriend loves the site cuteoverload, which uses a variation of lolspeak with words like "prosh" for precious and "nosicles" for animal noses. The baby-speak style of that dialect fits well with the overall purpose of the site, which is to be nauseatingly cute.

Though I speak many variations of classic interwebs speak, my main dialect is tvtropes. A fascinating site that will have you opening more tabs than can fit on a browser window. It is in the reviews, forums and wiki-like edits of that site I learned what brain bleach, nightmare fuel and an ear worm were.

The language there is a good example of the constant morphing that goes on. For instance: one trope is called the crowning moment of awesome, meaning a really cool action or scene for a character or show in general. That mutated into the tropes "crowning music of awesome," for really good music, "crowning moment of funny," for funny scenes, and for the opposite, "dethroning moment of suck." Of course, if the scene involves coronation, it becomes an "awesome moment of crowning," an example of the fickle, whimsical nature of interwebs linguistic morphology.

Game communities, like the overbearing, unstoppably popular MMORPG, WoW, are infamous for their indecipherable jargon, usually centering around cryptic acronyms. Though I'm no WoW'er myself, I have tried to max my HP so I could tank for someone with high DPS while LFG for a raid. (Real WoW players will be embarrassed at my lame attempt to emulate them; it's been years since I've played).

I frequent the forums of the board game, Arkham Horror, which has its own unique dialect. The AOOs of IH are considered nigh unbeatable. Such communication shortcuts can be beneficial for long time users, but are often frustrating to those new to the community. Often, a newb will have to lurk for some time before they can even begin to speak the lingo.

Perhaps the most commonly known interwebs language is lolspeak. It is most popularly embodied in its incarnations of lolcats, which have crawled from the darkest recesses of the interwebs and into public life. It features terrible grammar, frequent misspellings and constant allusions to lolcat memes like ceiling cat or "in ur ___, ___-ing ur ___."

It's a fool's errand to try to document any sort of history of interwebs culture, but the main theory, at least the one proposed by the creator of the infamous icanhascheezburger, in this techspeak interview, is that lolspeak originated from infamous message boards like somethingawful and fark.

There, a little digging on the message boards finds that the most common theory states it likely descended from 1337 speak. 1337 speak was developed by interwebs users trying to evade filters which ran very simple detection code for words. This is the language we get such old-school gems as "haxx0rz" "teh suxx0rz" and the ever-popular "n00b".

Though the spelling of 1337 speak differs greatly from spelling of lolcats, the overall intentionally awful grammar is roughly the same, so the theory seems sound. The language has taken off in popularity, to ridiculous proportions. For instance, the Constitution of the United States is now being translated into lolspeak, apparently by people with far too much time on their hands, and, well... there is this: a bible written in lolspeak. Does it speak ill of me that I kind of want that? Or, more simply put, I can haz lolspeak bible?

A small excerpt from that site:
John 3:16: "So liek teh Ceiling Kitteh lieks teh ppl lots and he sez 'Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleeves him u wont evr diez no moar, kthxbai!'"

Truly, these are the signs of the end times.

The only way to learn the language of a specific site is through practice and patience. Oh, wait, no you don't, I forgot; we have the interwebs. If you don't know it you can just google it. Instant gratification. The only danger is letting your newly acquired grammar bleed into real life; nobody knows what I'm talking about when I say "Man, I've got an ear worm that won't quit." Instead of a song stuck in my head, they likely think I have some disgusting infection.

In the real world, language is still by comparison to the word of the interwebs. Part of the fun, the community comes from a shared (or not so shared) esoteric language of memes, phrases and nonsense words. If you know any witty or interesting interwebs language, point it out in the comments section, with a brief definition and any background you can muster. Maybe it is impossible to have a complete dictionary, but let's have a highlight section here.

Diving Deeper:

On lolspeak:
http://speaklolspeak.com/ - Includes a great translator.

The Basics:
http://www.todaysparent.com/article.jsp?content=5214

Lolcat Refernces:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat - A history of lolcats. Dates back to the early 1800's!
http://materyalistceseyler.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/funny-pictures-ceiling-cat-creates-man1.jpg
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/im-in-ur-office-earnin-ur-salry.jpg


Tvtrope Lingo:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarWorm
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NightmareFuel
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrainBleach

WoW Lingo:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=75427760&sid=1 - A ton of it.

On 1337 speak:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

Infamous Forums:
http://www.somethingawful.com/
http://www.fark.com/