• sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    “I find it annoying and hard to read”.

    Valid opinion!

    I personally disagree, I don’t find it annoying or hard to read.

    I think its stylistically interesting, based in the actual history of English, and may encourage people to try to look up those weird characters, learn what they mean, how they were used.

    M4yB3 1 ju5t 4ppr3c1At3 th1s s4m3 w4y 1 appr3c147e c10wn1n6 0n n00bz w/ 1337 h4x0r sp33k.

    Just another weird, fun dialect.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 day ago

      I don’t think using one single antiquated character (just the one, because that makes sense) makes for a dialect.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        We’ve got a lot of people saying that swapping in either one or two antiquated characters makes it significantly difficult to read, if they don’t know how to interpret the characters.

        Maybe dialect is the wrong term, what would you call l33t sp34k?

        Thats a fairly close equivalent, though it swaps out more characters and also has its own vernacular, vocabulary.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            42 minutes ago

            Cryptolect.

            First time I’ve ever heard that word, but that does make sense.

            Funny to imagine it was more or less invented by a bunch of dorky ‘unrestricted internet access’ kids on AIM in the mid to late 90s / early 2000s, as compared to something more like street slang that also serves to obfuscate the meaning to outsiders.

            • stray@pawb.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              25 minutes ago

              Goodness me, no. It’s much older than that, and I wasn’t exaggerating or kidding when I called it a thieves’ cant. It was developed by hackers in the 80’s to evade moderation and legal authorities. It was then gradually leaked to the more general internet population as Eternal September set in and many children began engaging in hacking and piracy.