Teen language challenges adults
Receiving the message "E xjn pkep' ngkj nka. Mon ckj so much", Ms. Anh was confused and didn't understand anything, then she found out that the employee asked for leave.
The store was busy, so Ms. Anh often went to the kitchen to help make bread. Once, when the cashier told her to prepare "a slightly spicy egg bread", she was surprised and didn't know what to do. When asked, "suong suong" means a light makeup style in Korea, but is used by young people in many situations. Here, "suong suong spicy egg bread" means less spicy egg bread.
After many months of interacting with students born in 1998-2000, Ms. Anh realized that young people are using a strange language, called teencode. After many times of being confused and not understanding anything, and being reminded by the staff but still not being able to stop, she tried to learn it herself. Now she understands and knows how to use this different language.
When wanting to inform the store staff "I'm busy today, you guys work by yourself. I'll come check tomorrow", Ms. Anh wrote: "Hum nay ckj pan^n, cb tu lv nk3. M4j ckj wa check". "At first, I didn't like teencode, after the staff showed me a few quick abbreviations, I found it convenient and time-saving", Ms. Anh shared.
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| Teen language challenges adults |
Not only does it ensure confidentiality, teencode also helps Nguyen Minh (a third-year student of the Faculty of Chinese Pedagogy, University of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi) avoid having to write vulgar words when texting with friends. "My friends sometimes swear, I find those vulgar words less awkward when written in teencode," Minh said.
Teencode was spread by the late 8x, early 9x generations on Zingme, Yahoo, Blog360. This trend originated from the famous comic series Detective Conan, when the author changed KID (the name of the story character) to 1412 (14 = KI, 12 = D). In the years 2007-2012, this form of language developed strongly, with all kinds of variations of letters to make it as confusing as possible. There is even a tool to convert Vietnamese letters to teencode for young people to use.
The principle of writing teencode is to use letters or numbers to replace words/phrases such as "ph = f", "ng = g/q", "o = 0", "e = 3", "vk/ck = wife/husband", "s2 = heart", "bt òy = know"... For example, the sentence "C đlgt? Cko mjk lw nk4 s2", translates to "What are you doing? Let me get to know you (heart symbol).
Nowadays, young people use more abbreviations, combining the first letters of phrases, for example: "chs = don't understand why", "klq = unrelated", "gato = jealous"... Or abbreviate English phrases like "btw = by the way/by the way", "lol = laugh out loud/laugh out loud"...
Teens also like to use slang words, like "gau" (lover), "thả thính" (the act of a person intentionally seducing one or more people), "bánh bèo" (a weak young lady)... Many teens use English slang words like "no table", "like is afternoon", "thứ high/thứ bar" (Monday, Tuesday)...
"Adults often criticize teen language as difficult to understand and complicated, but my friends all write like that, if I don't use it I will feel lost," Minh said. However, after going to university and interacting with many adults, Minh realized that teen code would be a barrier when communicating with other generations. Therefore, I only use it when talking to friends and make sure my sentences are clear and coherent when talking to older people.
"I think using teencode is not wrong because it shows the creativity of each generation, but we should not abuse this language and destroy the purity of Vietnamese," the female student concluded.
