This is all very confusing for a person who is trying to understand the language of Shakespeare for all it's richness.

No malice intended.

It is confusing to a lot of people but the abbreviations stem from the use of on-line chat rooms and mobile phones.

When in a chat room full of people you often want to get an answer out quickly so use abbreviations and that soon spread to e-mail, forums and also to mobile phones ( where you are limited to the amount of words you can text) so people get used to it when on a computer.

Abbreviations and emoticons are like any other part of a language and can be easily learned.

Add to that the fact there are so many differences in the way people speak and think in 'English'. The Y.... oops! I mean the Americans (who cannot spell too well - as in armor [armour] humor [humour] etc LOL, and the conv.... oops! I mean our Australian cousins all speak the language differently as do people from different parts of each country. So you will never be able to unify the language.

So I can see where you are coming from and for one I could never see any malice in your words.

No offence to those nice Americans and the pommie bashing cousins on the bottom of planet earth (hope your magnetic boots never fail and that you never fall off)

Onzestan,

An odd request... usually those of my friends who are comfortably multilingual keep trying to expand their knowledge, not make requests for others to box themselves in to what they already understand... in any case, I think you will find people happy to explain to you what they mean, especially if you mention that you are not a native speaker- but the board cannot change its language for the sake of non-natives.

Dear Ijustwannateach,

If this is what you “wanna” teach, I don’t want to learn it.

You start of with insulting me by saying that I’m not trying to expand my knowledge.

I have spent years in evening school studying foreign languages while others

of my age group were doing more fun things. I learned to appreciate that the use of these languages broadened my horizon enormously, and this is a good thing.

Languages do evolve and I try to keep up to date with these changes, and believe me it’s not always that easy.

If you choose to believe that the widespread use of textish enriches the language you were born into, then go ahead, I believe however that English deserves better.

I respect that most British are proud of their heritage, and so they should, but many seem to forget that their language is part of that heritage, and if you don’t believe me then you should pay more attention to many of the posts and the language they use on this forum.

Please also note that I do not use the terms “native” and “non-native” speaker because I find them derogatory in connection with language use.

And finally I did not ask you to change the language of the forum, only to show some respect to non-English speakers, and also to a lot of older English speaking persons that do not use SMS or chat-room language in their daily life

Finally I hope that not all the super moderators on ThaiVisa are so easily offended by constructive criticism as you seem to be.

Remember respect has to be given before receiving.

Respectfully,

Onzestan

p.s. I do not resent emoticons because I believe them to be universal.

Virtually all your characterizations of my behavior are mistaken, but to go into details would be a waste of my time- as, I think, is this thread. Thread closed.