Does the style (if it is) shown in the picture below have a particular name?
“Whn U Ck Me, U WL Fnd Me Sez da Lord”
In full: When you seek me, you will find me says the Lord.
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Mari-Lou A
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4Fascinating. Where did you see this/take this picture? – Mitch Jun 21 '12 at 20:10
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4@Mitch that's a polite way to put it. – cornbread ninja 麵包忍者 Jun 21 '12 at 20:14
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2I definitely misread this as something vulgar on the front page. You know what, on reading it again, I still think it's vulgar, it just isn't obscene. – LessPop_MoreFizz Jun 21 '12 at 20:56
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1@Mitch According to Flikr it was "taken on July 9, 2006 in East End, London, England, GB." – Fuhrmanator Jun 21 '12 at 21:15
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1It’s certainly a lot shorter than the version I learned: “If with all your hearts ye truly seek me, ye shall ever surely find me, thus saith our God.” – tchrist Jun 22 '12 at 00:16
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@Fuhrmanator: OK I'm slow. with the intertubes thing...how did you find -that- info? – Mitch Jun 22 '12 at 02:44
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@Mitch Start with Google Image search (you can drag the image to the search window with a HTML5 browser such as Chrome). After the image search results, it's some old-fashioned surfing to find the source. This pic wasn't in too many places, so it was quick to find. – Fuhrmanator Jun 22 '12 at 13:56
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@Fuhrmanator: OK Goo-Fu master, what does '((H)))' and 'UGoTaBIEu' mean (both on that poster)? – Mitch Jun 22 '12 at 14:12
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@Mitch I believe either or both refer to the company's name, and that 'UGoTaBIEu' resolves to roughly you've got to be you. – cornbread ninja 麵包忍者 Jun 22 '12 at 14:26
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1@Mitch '((H)))' is Hugs and "You gotta believe" (the last letter is a v in Chicago type face. Here's another set of riddles. – Fuhrmanator Jun 22 '12 at 19:15
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@Fuhrmanator I'm not up for a riddle. :) – cornbread ninja 麵包忍者 Jun 23 '12 at 22:44
2 Answers
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This shorthand is known as textspeak.
SMS language or textese (also known as txt-speak, txtese, chatspeak, txt, txtspk, txtk, txto, texting language, txt lingo, SMSish, txtslang,or txt talk) is a term for the abbreviations and slang most commonly used due to the necessary brevity of mobile phone text messaging, in particular the widespread SMS (Short Message Service) communication protocol.
cornbread ninja 麵包忍者
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True, but that doesn't account for 'da Lord'. So some kind of AAVE as well, perhaps? – Barrie England Jun 21 '12 at 19:55
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1But da is two keystrokes for "the". Both d and a are the first letters on their respective keys. Only d would be shorter (and is used for "the" in some dialects of Txtspk). – Andrew Leach Jun 21 '12 at 20:14
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I disagree. Not that the average texter would be likely to send this exact message anyway, but if someone did, I suggest they'd never keep switching case as in the example here. Or be likely to use Ck for seek, for example. Yes, it's partly an advertiser's impression of textese. But it ain't the real thing, by a long shot. – FumbleFingers Jun 21 '12 at 21:56
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2The plain English bit at the bottom is your big clue that this is in fact what is going on. A picture of a phone keyboard with "Free messaging...Chat with God!". – T.E.D. Jun 21 '12 at 21:58
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2@FumbleFingers The capitalization is pretty normal, in my experience, even if the abbreviations aren't; seeing this stirs up memories of fighting with several phones that had T9 predictive text and would somehow get themselves back on what I can only call the Suddenly Capitalize Every Word setting or the ReMembr typos UnexpectedLY setting. – aedia λ Jun 22 '12 at 01:53
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It's a bad imitation (I'd expect "ull" for you'll. or something similar instead of "U WL") and as mentioned the capitalisation is implausible - in early texting you might do all caps, later all lower case, depending on how the phone does things by default. – Stuart F Feb 24 '22 at 11:44
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At one time, back before there was any even arguably good reason for it, this was called Princespeak.
chaos
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1I don't see anything relevant at that link. Can you explain what association Prince has with abbreviated writing? – Marthaª Jun 21 '12 at 22:45
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1@Marthaª: Search for the word princespeak in it. Prince started using that crap way back; remember "Nothing Compares 2 U"? – chaos Jun 22 '12 at 11:45
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2No, I don't. More to the point, I shouldn't have to: your answer should be self-contained. Links can support an answer, but they are not an answer on their own. – Marthaª Jun 22 '12 at 13:51
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1@chaos I don't think Prince ever recorded that, he just gave it to Sinead O'Connor. A better example might be I Would Die 4 U. – cornbread ninja 麵包忍者 Jun 22 '12 at 14:29