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My little sister gets home from school and I ask her how her day was. She responds by saying "IDK." Okay, well at least I know what that one means. She puts her backpack down and takes out her homework. Again, she speaks in letter form, "OMG!" At this point she has my attention. Not once has she used and actual word or spoken a sentence.

When talking about her friends, it's not her friends but BFFs. With that one she at least has to make the ssss sound at the end. Almost like saying a word. Confronting her with my current thoughts on her newfound language, I'm told, "OMG, LOL!"

Now, I've seen new cell phone commercials with kids speaking like this, but I honestly thought it was a joke. Another means for advertising. Even as an adult, on-line and cell phone owning and can text with the best of them, I know some of the slang. However, I would never even dream of using it in a real converstaion. It was meant as a means for faster communication in chat, mobile text, and email.

Okay, I'll admit it. I have used it in a conversation, but I promise it was to prove my point further. I thought maybe if they heard it out loud themselves from a person who uses real words, they would see how stupid they sounded. It didn't work.

Concerned with what seemed to be my sister's dumbing down, I jumped on the computer and searched her new found jargon to see just how far it all goes. I was amazed at what I found. Parents and teachers alike should do the same. There is a site called noslang where they have an Internet slang translator and dictionary. Provided there is a top 25 list of slang terms parents should know. For those of you that subscribe to blogs and journals that are full of the Internet jargon, but would still like to read it, you can use their translator that will translate the entire page for you.Who ever would have thought that the English language would be torn apart so badly that we would have to depend on a website to translate?

In addition to the LOLs, BFFs and PIRs, another "language" is developing from that. Words are now made up of mostly numbers. Primarily used by on-line gamers, it's seeping into the text world as well.

To test my younger sister, I ask her to try to go 30 minutes with out using text slang and she actually struggles with it. She is in the habit of that being part of her regular vocabulary on a regular basis. Teenagers aside, adults make me cringe the most when I hear come out of their mouths. Men and women alike. At times I wonder if they even really know what they are saying to one another.

Learn more about this author, Hellen Wyeth.
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