An initial 4A?

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Friday, June 28, 2002 12:24 pm -0400 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> One interesting difference is in the alphanumeric mixing of today--
>
> CUL8R
> F2T?  'free to talk'
> B4N
> 2MORO
> W84ME 'wait for me'
> NE1
> 3SUM
> J4F 'just for fun'


I have the impression that some of this mixing started with the trend for
personalised license plates, esp. use of '8' as a syllable in those.

The txt stuff is rife over here, and a number of students in our historical
linguistics/history of English courses have done projects on it, although I
don't know that any have made connections between txting and pre-20th
century forms.

Lynne



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320