The other day I saw a Coles ad in the Courier Mail promoting a weekly special on V energy drink cans. The headline of the ad read “V good price”. Although it’s clearly a play on words for obvious reasons, it got me thinking about the way we converse in everyday language, in particular Generation Y.
Through mobile phones, chat forums, and text messaging, a new language has spawned, made up of abbreviations, acronyms, alpha-numeric words and emoticons.
Whilst some may believe it’s the end of spelling and grammar for the English language, I believe it’s an inevitable part of the evolutionary process, and that it will only continue to evolve over time.
Due to space constraints of mobile phone text messaging, it has become socially acceptable by people of all generations to abbreviate words when communicating this way.
However what I find most interesting is how this language has now become widely used by our Gen Y’ers in face-to-face communications. For example “probably” translates to “probs”, “totally” translates to “totes”, and “definitely” translates to “def”.
This type language may be considered as dialect or slang, adding to the negative traits of this ‘me’ focused Generation, however it is quickly becoming a part of our everyday communication.
So for those of you wondering what on earth us Gen Y’ers are talking about, below is a list of abbreviated words and acronyms quickly becoming used in our day-to-day communications.
- Ave (average)
- Deets (details)
- Def (definitely)
- Delish (delicious)
- Devoed (devastated)
- Diff (different)
- Fab (fabulous)
- Fave (favourite)
- Fo’sho or Fo’shiz (for sure)
- Gorge (gorgeous)
- Haps (happening)
- Mo (moment)
- Norm (normal)
- Obvs (obviously)
- Peeps (people)
- Pos (positive or possibly)
- Pregs (pregnant)
- Presh (precious)
- Probs (probably)
- Sesh (session)
- Sors (sorry)
- Spesh (special)
- Totes (totally)
- Ug (ugly)
- Uje (usually)
- V (very)
- Vom (vomit)
- Whatev (whatever)
Acronyms:
- BRB (be right back)
- LOL (laugh out loud)
- ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing)
- OMG (oh my god)
- WTF (I’ll leave that one up to you to decipher)
So if ‘Google’ has become a recognised word of the Oxford English dictionary, could that mean this butchered version of the English language will also become accepted in years to come?
And what could that mean for the future of brand communications? Will we start to see more of this abbreviated language incorporated into our advertising?
Jenna Happy is an Account Coordinator at BCM Brisbane
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Good article, Jenna! Guess it started with mobile providers using lots of txt spk abbreviations in advertising and there are more and more examples of it coming from mainstream advertisers as they try to connect with the cool kids…
Is it cool when advertisers use this new language though? It’s almost as soon as it hits mainstream, it’s already oh-so passé and there’s a newer, cooler kid on the block!