“R U cycle? Book! Fancy an adds down the sub? There's a gr8 new carnage.”
This SMS is part of the new language developed by teenagers on their cellphones.
You probably already know how it works, but for those of you who don’t – here’s the lowdown: The key words of a message is replaced with the first alternative that comes up on a cellphone using predictive text - changing "cool" into "book", "awake" into "cycle", "beer" into "adds", "pub" into "sub" and "barmaid" into "carnage".
Some of the textonyms show witty links between the word that was originally intended and what the predictive text produce - "eat" becomes "fat" and "kiss" becomes "lips", "home" is "good" and the vodka brand "Smirnoff" becomes "poison" (Listen to you phone!)
This new language is taking the teenage lingo world by storm – causing ol’ Shakespeare to probably turn in his grave!
- Read the full article
- Predictive text sure makes life a lot easier. Learn how it all started...
- How does my cell phone actually work?


