F I sNt dis msg 2 u wud u NdRstnd it?

The best way to understand online chat and SMS lingo is to simply try it. Even those people who aren't acquainted with text messaging may still find themselves sending or receiving derivatives of this SMS chat lingo as they continue to communicate through typewritten form.

When reading or writing SMS, you may see that numbers replace words (i.e. "4" is used instead of the word "for"), or vowels are omitted in easily recognizable words (i.e. "txt msg"). Furthermore capitals are used to replace the letter name, whereas lower case letters are used to pronounce the soft sound of the consonants (i.e. the word "XLNt" is "exc-ell-en-t").

SMS isn't restricted to English. For example, in Mandarin Chinese, numbers that sound similar to words are used instead of the words themselves (example: "5 2 1" in Chinese "wu er yi," sounds like "wo ai ni" or "I love you"; similarly "4 7 8" or "si chi ba" phonetically matches the epithet "drop dead").

Examples of everyday words translated to lingo include:

Date -- d8
Easy -- EZ
Before -- B4
Excellent -- XLNt
Laugh out Loud -- LOL
In my honest opinion -- IMHO
Love -- luv
Cat -- c@

In fact, online chat and SMS text lingo has developed so quickly, parents may find themselves wondering what their children are writing. For example, some chat room and SMS lingo acronyms demonstrate a child's desire to keep messages from their parents.

Examples include:

POS - parent over shoulder
CTN - can't talk now
TOS - teacher over the shoulder
NIFOC - nude in front of the computer
TDTM - talk dirty to me

Remember online chat and SMS lingo can also be used to cheat, bully, harass, or even threaten. Good Internet safety includes being observant of children's behavior and developing an understanding of their method of communication.

Several websites and Internet resources have been created that will help demystify chat room and SMS lingo - a quick online search will yield several results. Website portals such as "transL8it!" (translate-it) found at transl8it.com are designed to help make the adoption of this lingo much easier. You can compose a sentence in everyday English and transl8it.com will construct the SMS lingo translation for you. Alternately, if you have received a SMS message you can't understand, simply use the transl8it! website to unscramble the message back to English.