Language Barrier

I'm Facebook friends with a few of the moms from Frankie's UK school, and have learned an interesting thing lately. The people I'm friends with in England have  a completely weird, almost unrecognizable, shorthand they use when writing on their computer. It's gotten to the point that when I log into Faecbook,  I can barely understand what any of them are saying. It's *way* harder than deciphering the Cumbrian accent. It's almost a completely separate bizarro-world language.

For example, here's a Facebook status update posted from one of my Maryport friends today:

"had a belter nite last nite god crack with some good friends, took all my decs down and found a home for most of Mads n Mischas toys now to play with barbie and waybaloo!"

Ok... I think she's saying that she had a good night with friends, took down her Christmas decorations, and found a place for her kids' new Christmas toys. But, what a weird way to phrase it!

And check this bizarre expression out. I can't even guess what this means:

"i wish this cold would dee yan!"

This is like a word puzzle, too:

"queen vic has had its first get out of my pub phrase cat fight and first snog all in one night!"


Or, here's this cryptic written exchange between two friends:

Mum A: "Your car getn markd by sum1s bin haha. U said guess x x"


Mum B: "hahahah you probably won't be wrong summet else is bound to happen everthing ok up your end??"


Mum A: "Ova then my bins n rubish being over my frunt garden b4 i ad to go n pik it al up n move them round backs, ova then that touch wood yeah lol. x x"

And it's not like all this text is just from one odd duck that happens to have a weird linguistic quirk. It seems like everyone from Maryport that I'm in touch with writes this way when they're online. I got a few Christmas cards in the mail, and all of the writing was perfectly normal. But, add the computer into the equation, and everything goes all wonky.

It's fascinating, really. I can't quite figure it out. And even if you asked me to try to imitate it in my own writing, I don't think I could.

I don't know if it's an English thing, a Cumbrian thing, or a young thing (I am, after all, the oldest of the school moms). Either way, I'm fascinated and perplexed.