For example, in English, you might type something like:
r u going out 2nite?
Instead of:
Are you going out tonight?
How does that sort of thing work when texting in a logographic language? Is it just emoji city, or can they mix and match characters to make things more compact?
And similarly, is there a formal journalistic shorthand system that gets used when jotting down comments in real-time, e.g. in China, Korea or Japan?
Thank you kindly!
I know for sure Korean does this, though technically their writing system is a syllabary. Symbols representing vowel and consonants are arranged into blocks that represent a syllable.
For example ㅈㅅ is short for 죄송합니다 meaning “I’m sorry”. Talk about efficient shorthand! The first consonants of each syllable block are used to makeup the shorthand, the ending 합니다 is a polite conjugation which is ignored in shorthand. You can look up “korean texting slang” for more. It’s apparently used a lot. The shorthand some might already be familiar with is ㅋㅋ which is “lol”.
Gamers may be familiar with “kkkkkk” because that’s what you’d type on a keyboard to get ㅋㅋㅋㅋ :D
Edit: Gawwwd don’t listen to me today. This isn’t exactly correct. And I struggle to explain transliteration. Basically, the character ㅋ corresponds to “k”. I need sleep.
So THAT’S where that comes from!!!