I have an Armchair University degree in English linguistics, and I was thinking about the “l33t5p33k” we see on the Net these days, as well as the Princification of the language, the replacement of “you” with “u” and “to” with “2,” etc. Is this just bad English, or is this the next step? Will the English language in 100 years look like the rantings of a 15-year-old hacker as we see it now, and will numbers become letters (1 = I, 2 = to, 3 = E, 4 = for, 5 = S, etc)? –Montfort, via the Straight Dope Message Board
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Let’s put this in perspective, Montfort. Your columnist grew up in the 60s, which as everyone knows was the coolest era in the history of existence. The collective output of the leading lights of that time–your Stones, your Zep, etc–obliterated everything that had gone before. Sure, your Andy Williams types were still putting out records, and I guess somebody must have bought them (presumably the same people who are presently packing the theaters in Branson, Missouri). But everybody with a clue knew: Those guys were old. They were out of it. They were lame.
Now comes 133t5p33k, proof that the flames of intergenerational antagonism burn as brightly as ever. Used mainly by teenage chat-room geeks, gamers, and wannabe h4x0r5 (hackers), 133t5p33k replaces standard letterforms with others looking vaguely similar, e.g., 1 for L, 3 for E, 5 for S, and so on (see www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet for a rundown). Thus 133t5p33k transliterates to “leetspeek.” The uninitiated will now ask: What’s a leet? It’s short for elite, j00 14m3r (j = Y, 4 = A). No one is sure where the name came from, but the meaning is clear enough: Only the elite (i.e., your friends, who are definitely not over 40) are supposed to understand it. Leet involves multiple layers of coding, the better to trip up the unhip. Thus “you are” becomes u r, “the” is purposely misspelled t3h (leetists have adopted common typos as a point of pride), K3W1357 means kewlest/coolest, w4r3z (wares) is slang for pirated software, and so on. On the scale of linguistic complexity, basic leet is about on a par with pig Latin, and with five minutes’ practice just about anyone can crank out elegant prose such as: y c@N’+ p30p13 R3kO9nIZ3 +eh 834UTy uv 1337??? (Apologies to acconav of the Straight Dope Message Board, from whom I lifted this example.) Recognizing this, some 1337!575 are promoting “advanced” leetspeek, which they believe takes things to a new level. Sample: 4|)V4||C3D l3e+$peA|
