What is Teen Speak?

Teen speak is the unique verbal vocabulary of teenagers arising from the current popular teen culture. Although groups of people with key commonalities interacting together naturally evolve their own distinct language variants, the teenage demographic particularly takes to innovating and assimilating new words. This is because they are young, malleable, and in the process of forging their identities.

According to Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist who teaches at UC-Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems, new English expressions over the past 80 years, have usually begun as speech, largely attributable to broadcast media, which then influences writing ⁽¹⁾.

But what we have seen in the last decade is how communications technology use has become a major force shaping teen talk. The slang of texting, instant messaging (or IMing), social networking and gaming have infiltrated teen speak throughout the world.

In his 2002 study Lingo Online: The Language of the Keyboard Generation, Neil Randall, a professor of English at the University of Waterloo in Canada, found that 86% of respondents ages 20 or younger knew what “LOL” meant, while only 60% of the 20-34 age group and 28 percent of 35 and above did -- the younger generation was clearly driving adoption ⁽²⁾.

‘Tis Not Geek Talk

It is worth noting that although teen speak today stems from the technology field, teen speak is not necessarily geek talk. Geek talk is the extensive use of technological jargon such as, “I’ve got a NeXT Cube with a NextDimension board. I’ve also got a Turbo (33Mhz 68040) slab.”

Teen speak is more like, “how to retweet then reply uhh ? :X lol .imma imba n00b :3”. The tone is very informal, sentences are peppered with acronyms, abbreviations, phonetic spellings and other shortcuts; and some terms are derived from popular games.

For newbies and, well, n00bs, “lol” means laughing out loud; “imma” means I am a; “imba” means imbalanced, used mostly in games meaning something is too good and makes the game unfair; and “n00b” means someone who knows little.

Teen Speak in Singapore

There have been several articles from other countries on how online chatter has leapt into verbal communication and academic writings. For example, instead of saying sorry, the teen might say “Ess ar why” for “SRY”. But it is not clear how prevalent that is in Singapore today.

The issue on teen speak in Singapore was explored in an article published in the Straits Times on 2 June 2009 titled Do you know what we mean? A 46-year old mother with two teenage children was reported to have found her children’s lingo with words such as “emo”, “noob” and “enthu” irritating ⁽³⁾.

But the article opined that there was no need for alarm. Known as ‘clipping’ in the field of linguistics, this practice is not aberrant, but actually quite normal, with children generally knowing where to draw the line.

A quick check with parents and teachers echoed the sentiment that children generally know where to draw the line. While it is no-holds-barred with friends, teenagers do not usually use much online lingo in their verbal conversations with adults.

Felix TXMG Zen

Felix, father of a teenage son, Zen, first witnessed this tIN TXMGC (a term Felix coined for “teen text message communications”) when he saw Zen chatting online with his friends. And so Felix started to learn what terms such as “OMG” (ohmygosh) mean from his son.

To him, teen speak is just a language that reflects the teens’ mentality and perceptions, changing as they grow and are exposed to different environments.

Parents need to understand their children’s mentality to communicate meaningfully with them. He added that parents have to take the initiative to bridge any differences and make a conscious effort to consistently engage their children. This calls for an attitude of humility and openness.

Local Resources on Cyber Wellness

Assistant Manager of TOUCH Cyber Wellness ⁽⁴⁾, Mr Ray Chua, who is involved in running cyber wellness education, also believes that parents need a deeper understanding of the online world and the lingo used by the teens to better connect and communicate with them.

In TOUCH’s workshops to give parents hands-on experience with online applications and games popular with youths, parents are taught the meaning of teen speak such as “Leet” (from the word ‘Elite’ to mean very cool) or “Pwned” (From the word ‘Owned’ used in gaming to mean subdued or dominated) .

Why Teens Teen Speak

So what are the motivations for such teen speak? First, teens want to assert their group identity and differentiate themselves from older people.

Second, such truncations help them communicate faster; a student cited in Do you know what we mean? postulated that gaming led to such talk because “you die less if you get your meaning or instructions across faster” in real-time online games such as World of Warcraft and Maple Story ⁽³⁾.

Third, it helps to build rapport among the teens and can make one look cool as phrases or words that catch on have a better “feel” (i.e. more able to convey a certain mood).

Others purported that teen speak is specifically used to KPC (keep parents clueless), and this is not always because they have something to hide but because they want privacy. “P911”, meaning my parents are in the room, and “POS” or “POT”, parents over the shoulder, might lend some weight to that.

Tools and Tips for Dads

Instead of becoming alarmed or dismissing your children’s teen speak, you can seek to understand it and the mentality behind it.

For example, parents can friend their children on Facebook, subscribe to their Twitter, or even play online games with their children. There is at least one family in Singapore that goes for raids together in World of Warcraft.

Parents need not mimic their children as apparently teenagers cringe when adults teen-speak and they want to maintain their separate identity. But there is really no formula as each child and each parent is unique; except for the fundamental well-established parenting principle of making time for your children and communicating love to them.

Singapore’s well-known funny blogger Mr Brown had a brief entry on “Teenspeak for dummies” in April 2010 with a list of abbreviations ⁽⁵⁾. (OMG, idk what is GG! ). Follow the link here to see how many you know: http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2010/04/teenspeak-for-dummies-like-me.html

Teen speak continues to morph quickly, so it is not easy to pin it down; especially when teen speak can vary according to locales and even schools. There are many online tools to help parents keep up to speed with and decode teen speak, such as the following:

-       Urban dictionary- http://www.urbandictionary.com/

-       Teen Chat Acronym Decoder- http://www.teenchatdecoder.com/

-       Jargon buster from Parentline Plus - http://www.gotateenager.org.uk/

-       Net Lingo - http://www.netlingo.com/

Last year, LG launched an application DTXTR that translates over 2000 words teens tend to use when they are sending text messages to regular English and vice versa. And there are, but of course, iPhone apps for this.

Well, if there is another Teen Talk Barbie now, you would be sure to find “n00b” and “lol” in her speech instead of just phrases like "I love shopping!" and "Wanna have a pizza party?" – so 1992.