Heh, Cira's 12-going-on-13, so maybe she doesn't count as a "little" (she kinda waivers between wanting to be taken totally seriously and wanting to just be a kid, just like I did at her age), but she doesn't like to use Lilspeak much because it seems like 133+sp34k for kids. You know, a code that shows how little or 133+ you are, but really just makes you look kinda dumb.
And we (the system adults) have to admit that yeah, we do get suspicious of kids that use Lilspeak, because of the oddball misspellings combined with that advanced grammar thing you pointed out. Also, those of us that have been about equal age with the body as it grew (like, say, me, and Setsu later on) didn't write that way at all, because we always wrote in emulation of our favorite book authors. Cira's a book-addict too, so maybe it's a thing that kids don't find as important if they prefer television or video games.
I also want to point out that way back in the early days of the internet, like 1995, spelling was a lot better in general than it was now. I remember being on IRC channels using RPI campus dial-up at 12, and everybody used complete sentences, punctuation, etc., sparsely sprinkled with the classic acronyms (LOL, ROFL, and IMHO, mostly). I remember one person would even use periods in the acronyms, "L.O.L." instead of "LOL" for instance. Chats were also slower, more like the speed of IM conversations are today, but with several people talking instead of two. It kind of stayed that way for a while, until there were suddenly a WHOLE LOT more people. I think it's 'cause they started getting access from places other than colleges (AOL, Prodigy, etc.). Or maybe it was when Mosaic started getting packaged with services. I dunno.
Uh, anyway, I think I meandered a bit there, but my point was going to be that maybe it's just a Modern Internet thing. Did littles talk in Lilspeak way back when in Usenet lists, in emails, in IRC channels? How did they sound/type back when mIRC was prettier than Lynx? Before AOL's big service premiere ad campaign? Maybe it's a social thing, like you were getting into there-- a dialect that kids take on in order to fit in, a pigdin resulting from so many people coming together and trying to speak in a common language, even if they have to invent it themselves.
Heck, that's no different from English, really. God only knows how "stupid" primary English speakers must've looked to Norman nobility. Smart people spoke French and wrote in Latin. Duuuuh. And English was written purely phonetically for centuries until someone cobbled together the first dictionary-- that's why scholars have been able to figure out what Elizabethan English sounded like from Shakespeare's plays (which have phonetic spelling), and others have figured out what 1600s London dialect Samuel Pepys spoke based on his diary.
...good grief, I'm rehashing Duckie's lectures now. HELP I'M BECOMING A WATERFOWL
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And we (the system adults) have to admit that yeah, we do get suspicious of kids that use Lilspeak, because of the oddball misspellings combined with that advanced grammar thing you pointed out. Also, those of us that have been about equal age with the body as it grew (like, say, me, and Setsu later on) didn't write that way at all, because we always wrote in emulation of our favorite book authors. Cira's a book-addict too, so maybe it's a thing that kids don't find as important if they prefer television or video games.
I also want to point out that way back in the early days of the internet, like 1995, spelling was a lot better in general than it was now. I remember being on IRC channels using RPI campus dial-up at 12, and everybody used complete sentences, punctuation, etc., sparsely sprinkled with the classic acronyms (LOL, ROFL, and IMHO, mostly). I remember one person would even use periods in the acronyms, "L.O.L." instead of "LOL" for instance. Chats were also slower, more like the speed of IM conversations are today, but with several people talking instead of two. It kind of stayed that way for a while, until there were suddenly a WHOLE LOT more people. I think it's 'cause they started getting access from places other than colleges (AOL, Prodigy, etc.). Or maybe it was when Mosaic started getting packaged with services. I dunno.
Uh, anyway, I think I meandered a bit there, but my point was going to be that maybe it's just a Modern Internet thing. Did littles talk in Lilspeak way back when in Usenet lists, in emails, in IRC channels? How did they sound/type back when mIRC was prettier than Lynx? Before AOL's big service premiere ad campaign? Maybe it's a social thing, like you were getting into there-- a dialect that kids take on in order to fit in, a pigdin resulting from so many people coming together and trying to speak in a common language, even if they have to invent it themselves.
Heck, that's no different from English, really. God only knows how "stupid" primary English speakers must've looked to Norman nobility. Smart people spoke French and wrote in Latin. Duuuuh. And English was written purely phonetically for centuries until someone cobbled together the first dictionary-- that's why scholars have been able to figure out what Elizabethan English sounded like from Shakespeare's plays (which have phonetic spelling), and others have figured out what 1600s London dialect Samuel Pepys spoke based on his diary.
...good grief, I'm rehashing Duckie's lectures now. HELP I'M BECOMING A WATERFOWL