Not necessarily an acronym, but here’s a fun one for Japanese: Laughing in Japanese is warau, which gets shortened when typing to just w. If you want to laugh a lot, you would type wwww. That ends up looking like a field of grass, so that in turn gets shortened into 草 (kusa, or grass). Basically, 草 is the Japanese equivalent of lol
Also, in Chinese, thank you is often abbreviated as 3q, because when you say it out loud, it sounds like “thank you” (san kyu)
In Thai, the number ‘5’ is pronounced like “haa”, so Thai people write 555 to signify laughter, similar to ‘lol’.
I learned pretty quickly to avoid Mario Maker levels with “wwww” in the title.
So would saying “touch grass” in Japanese be almost the same as saying “go to a comedy show?” :p
Hundreds of elden ring messages that just say “grass” or “time for grass” in random locations suddenly make sense now
In Spanish there’s some things like “xq” instead of “por qué/porque” but it was only used in SMS messaging to use less characters. If someone talks to me like that I won’t reply, it just doesn’t have the same vibes as in English.
…which makes me kind of a hypocrite for using “obv” for obviously (obviamente).
“xq xq xq xq n m kiere” is 90’s msn vibe.
A few more in case anyone is interested:
- Tkm Te quiero mucho, I love you
- Ntp No te preocupes, don’t worry
- Tlj Te lo juro, I swear (to you)
- Cdt Cuídate, take care (of yourself)
- Tki Tengo que irme, I gotta go
Spanish bases its texting slang around phonetics, instead of the English way of the first letter of the word
Alv (a la verga).
Npi (ni puta idea)/ no fucking clue
In Sesotho, “how are you?” is “ho joang?” which gets shortened to “hj”
French :
ftg : ferme ta gueule (shut it) ntm : nique ta mere (fuck your mom) slt : Salut (hello) cv : ça va ? (How are you?) ptn : putain (fuck) srx : sérieux (really?) jpp : j’en peux plus (I’m fed up)
I love that you started with the insults mdr
A regular French thing I guess
“Mdr” is a good one as well, good catch :) MDR = mort de rire = laughing to death
Don’t forget rsvp!
RSVP is more prevalent in the US (and the english speaking countries) than in France ;)
Assuming you mean texting style acronyms, yeah, we have them in German and I’d assume in other languages too.
Alongside the stuff borrowed from English 1:1, there’s stuff like bb for “Bis bald” (See you soon) or hdl for “hab dich lieb” (Love you)
I’d assume other languages do the same out of efficiency or laziness.
IMO in German = mMn (meiner Meinung nach)
But for the most part we use the English ones
zB = zum Beispiel = for example
usw = und so weiter = and so forth
etc = etcetera = and so forth
we love shortings too
Et cetera is latin and “etc” is commonly used in English and quite a few other languages as well.
hdgdl
smh = iwie (irgendwie)
How r u = wg (wie geht’s)
somebody = jmd (jemand)
Shut up = hdf (Halt die Fresse)
probs = wsl (wahrscheinlich)
idk = kp (kein Plan)
kp could also be “kein Problem” (no problem) which is why I personally prefer idk / np over kp / kp
smh means shaking my head though
Lol, I always used it for “somehow” :')
I’m using none of these. But what i use almost all the time : possibly = evtl (eventuell) maybe = vllt (vielleicht) kindest regards = LG (Liebe Grüße) e.g. /for example = zB (z.B.: / zum Beispiel) (i omit the dots and colons)
ex-USSR early rusophonic internet had a lot of original and transliterated ones but I rarely see them nowadays, and most are community-specific. Some didn’t carry over, some replaced by chat stickers, and the writing\reading of longer posts itself seems like a niche now when there are audio and video messages at hand. Add there that the web space I talk about is now also fragmented and occupied by bots\dummies due to the war and many sites for international communication on russian lost a big part of frequent posters\mods and later effectively musk’ed themselves.
Those I’ve heard the last:
imo > кмк > как мне кажется > what I suspect is bf > мч > молодой человек > young partner wtf > чзх > что за хуйня > what's a dickshit idk > хз > хуй (его) знает > dick knows (that)
A lot of newer words I googled after hearing it from kids came from TikTok and they are mostly translations of trends carried in by local influencers.
I’ve been saying it for years, what is a dickshit?
In Russian? There are like five basic words you make your obscene lexics from (like ‘fuck’ in English), and хуй (khooy) is one of them, meaning dick, and хуйня (khooy-nya) is a thing related to a dick in a bad way, like a borked project or a complicated situation, while not having a direct translation on it’s own. Something like, ehm, a dick-thing? as it’s a noun, just like хуета (khu-e-tah), meaning the same. There are also an adverb хуёво (khoo-yovo) meaning something isn’t going great, and забил хуй (zah-beel khooy) when you discarded your dick in that situation and don’t give a fuck about what’s going on.
Many of them you can hear on the recordings from the ongoing war.
I’m not sure I’ve understood you correctly, so you can specify what you want to know.
I’m Portuguese we don’t use many acronyms, but we have shorter versions of words with the vowels removed or things like that. When people tried to use acronyms we ended up with “fds” which some people read as weekend, others read as “fuck it”. The only other acronyms I can think of right now are all for offenses such as fdp (son of a bitch) and cdf (“ass of iron”, very old term for calling someone a nerd).
One of my favorites is in Japanese. Laughing is “w” or “www” or something. The word is “warau”. So then the ws, they look like grass, so people use the grass emoji, so then people write “kusa”.
The number 5 is pronounced “ha” in Thai. So Thai people laugh 555 or 55555 if it was very funny.
And in Brazil its kkkkkkkkkkk 🤣
Yes. Here are some common ones in my native language, danish:
- pga: på grund af (because of)
- dvs: det vil sige (used for adding additional explaination)
- ift: i forhold til (in relation to)
I’m certain there are also some more modern slang abbreviations in use, but these change relatively frequently, like they do in English.
Those are official abbreviations that can be found in a dictionary.
The ones OP posted aren’t all official. TBH and SMH are official. IMO is internet slang.
There’s not a lot of consensus on internet slang abbreviations in Danish. It was more common back in the texting days, when all girls would end their messages with an S for “smiling”, SS for “smiling sweetly”, or KKK for “hugs hugs and kisses”.
Someone once made an index: https://www.telemarkedet.dk/sms-ordbog-sms-sprogets-forkortelser
I speak Dutch, reading Danish is a trip. Dat wil zeggen -> det vil sige. And yes we use dwz.
We use plenty of abbreviations like that too. Like aub for alstublieft. Meaning please, or more literally if you would be so inclined.
Back in the 90s when I lived in Amsterdam, I also saw svp (which is actually French) used often instead of aub. I never understood why though.
Also, ff wachten for example. ff is short for effe, or rather “even”. Just wanted to throw that one into the mix.
Edit: alstublieft is also a short version of “als het uw blieft”
Yeah it’s odd. Nobody says S’il vous plaît but we do say svp out loud.