Alternative Acronyms for Trinis
Posted by StepUp on Tue, Jul 14th 2009, 21:41
Soooo I was doing my customary celeb Twitter page trolling the other day and came across Lil Bow Wow's page. Oh, I'm sorry...is he just Bow Wow now? Whatever...
Anyway I noticed on his page that he was typing the letters "gnr" in most of his tweets.
Example post from Bow Wow himself:
(Oh just for personal interest, Bow Wow definitely lists his location as "In Ya Girl"! Classy...)
Anyway, at first I thought it was an error in spelling, or a strangely common typo ("sigh....all that money an they can't send the boy to school? Damn shame...") until I realized that he was using this phrase so commonly throughout his tweets (i swear like 85%) that this must certainly be intentional!
Being an avid researcher I had to know what 'gnr' meant! I wasn't impressed to learn. Please check it out on UrbanDictionary.com.
Yes so apparently, as a black person I am no longer to use the acronym LOL as it doesn't adequately express my reaction to humour. Well sorry to break it to you Bow Bow babes but as I don't generally call myself an N, I can't really get down with your choice either.
Anyway if online jargon separatism is a trend I think we Trinidadians, (being so ahead of the curve with other negative trends such as swine flu cases and Caribbean murder rates) should jump on this bandwagon NOW! Think of how many acronyms we could come up with which are more appropriate to our culture and our experience!
For example, let's start with the same LOL. Is a simple audible laugh enough to address the HILARITY that some members of the Trindiadian online community induce? I think not. And WHO duz really be Rolling On The Floor Laughing Their Ass Off? Yeah sorry, that's not going to cut it either. How many times have you, however, laughed so hard that you threaten to lose control over your bodily functions?
Therefore, we at StepUp propose:
APM - Ah peein mihself!
as an acronym totally and completely interchangeable with LOL.
e.g. I can't believe he really thinks its ok to sport a fisherman's vest with leggings! APM!
Try it...useful ent?
We decided to examine some other commonly used terms, such as the expression of dissapointment, smh (shaking my head). But really, is a simple head shake enough to communicate your disenchantment at the level of crime in our country, the state of our political system, or just your level of unimpressed-ness at that person's stale txt msg forward? No, it's not.
As a replacement here we propose:
RLS - Real Long/ Loud Stewps
In addition, Blackberry users can pair this message with a recorded voice note of an actual stewps to adequately convey to the offender that this type of ballsasserie will not be tolerated at this hour of the morning/night!
e.g. Imagine this man now tryin to convince me that fisherman's vests and leggings is the nex hot trend for men! RLS!
We come to one of the more popular of online acronyms: OMG, the term so massively popular with the American public that young girls have taken to pronouncing the letters when appalled, "Oh EMM GEEE!" (beecause who has time to actually say words any more?) Again, OMG (and it's sacrilegous brother OMFG) are not adequate for the Trini. We need something versatile, yet so exaggerated that our recipient understands precisely our level of shock and chagrin at whatever events are taking place. One of my personal fave alternatives is "Jeezanages" but this does not satisfy the need for versatility, as it is mainly used to express disappointment. It is also problematic logistically. Is Jeezanages 1 word or 3? hmmm
However something like,
OGO - Oh Gad OYE!!!!
can be used to express when one is either elated or aghast, not to mention the other kaleidoscope of emotions it can articulate (e.g. OGO ah tired!!)
e.g. OGO! I now find the HOTTEST fisherman's vest to go with mih leggings! HOTT!
Of course these suggestions are just a jumping off point. Leave comments with your suggestions and we can compile a huge list and perhaps make one of those cool email forwards like "Yuh know you're a Trini if"....ok maybe I'm getting carried away.
Anyway do enjoy, and I shall have another post for you TPG (tomorrow please God)!
(Special thank you to @TeeKay10 for this post!)
OH! In doing this research I came across Cursebird a website which provides a real time feed of people swearing on Twitter. You can also search for names and see where they rank in cussing across all Twitter users. Apparently the ONE TIME I have cussed in my Twitter posts ranks me 1,459,770th worldwide, in the "primary school teacher" category lol!!
http://stepuptrinistyle.onsugar.com/3485018
