How To Read and Write 1337

If you didn’t feel old before with all the Wii, PSP, SMS stuff that is going on with your children, you’re going to feel even more geriatric when I introduce you to 1337. What is 1337, you may ask? 1337 is short for 31337 which means, Leet or elite. It is an exclusionary language suited for just the initiated where the letters are substituted to numbers or symbols or even a combination. It might be confusing at first but with a little practice you can transform from an old fuddy duddy to cool and hip in the strip (this is my pathetic attempt to sound cool, I think I just proved how much of a geek I really am). Here are just some tips to become fluent in 1337 $p3@|< (leet speak for the uninitiated)...

1. To be elite is to be open.  You need an open mind to learn 1337 speak. Like any language, there will be major differences from the language you know. This is an informal language with no set parameters of use. 1337 speak was developed by the youth to show a different way of expressing their thoughts. Non-comformity was the norm and making stuff up was common. This means you have the ability to throw away the rule book and 1.\\pr°\/1$3 (improvise).
2. Learn your shapes. In 1337, letters are looked at as shapes. For example the letter “A” looks like a triangle so you can substitute that with other triangles like 4 or /\ or even this symbol ^. Visualize what the symbol looks like and find a letter that matches it.
3. Learn phonetics.  In some cases 1337 speakers sometimes use phonetics to replace letters in the alphabet. For example, they would replace “x” with “cks” or replace “f” with “ph”. It isn’t that hard to adapt this because we use it all the time in the phrase “I luv u”.
4. Get ready for acronyms galore. With the difficult nature of 1337 speak they try to cut sentences short by using acronyms. Common acronyms you would find would be LOL which means ” laugh out loud” or BRB which means “be right back” and IMHO or “in my honest opinion”.
5. Learn to spell… incorrectly. You can throw your spell check out the window. 1337 speakers usually intentionally misspell words like “kewl” for “cool” or “ownt” for “owned” or even “teh” for “the”.  Sometimes they would even omit words to be able to write faster.
6. Throw your grammar book out the window.  1337 speakers don’t really care about grammar. In some cases they would 0rz to the end of a noun to make it plural. For example “rocks” would look like “r0xx0rz”. Rules like subject-verb agreements or tenses would not even be followed.
7. Randomize when you CaPiTaLiZe. The look of 1337 speak has a lot to do with the random capitalization of a word. For example, “ExAMpLE” would look like 1337 speak even when there were no symbols used.

These are just a few simple tips to learn 1337 speak but like any new skill acquired it can only be truly learned through practice. Read 1337 speak regularly and write 1337 any chance you can get. It may be hard at first but isn’t anything worth trying supposed to be hard? “&0 @#3aD aNd 7rY 7o r3@d 7#1$ f0R pR@(71$” - and if you understood that, you’re well on your way to be an expert 1337 speaker!