One of the best moments at Computers in Libraries 2005 for me was when I was completely stumped by a question from the audience during our IM presentation. I was talking about the shortened version of English that can make up the majority of an IM conversation. I had the image of a (staged) conversation with Jenny displayed, chock full of abbreviations. Someone in the audience asked what a particular group of letters meant (aaf) and I hadn’t the faintest clue.
Not wanting my point (that communication via IM is very viable) to be washed away, I mentioned to the audience that even though we didn’t know what the letters exactly meant, we still could understand through the context of the message, what Jenny was trying to say.
Anywho, experts agree that `Netspeak’ [is] doing more good than harm to English language and there might not be as many misspellings and abbreviations as we think.
Comments
aaf = as a friend
As in “I only like him aaf”
Except that the letters in the slide were actually “aam,” which continues to defy my efforts at decryption.
is it aam = as a matter (of fact)? Found it here: http://www.lingo2word.com/lists/acronym_listA.html. AMF is my current fave.
If it helps, I was there, and I thought you handled that moment very well… even if no one had a clue what the abbreviation meant. ;)