Leet Speak

"Leet speak" is getting some attention these days as Internet usage creeps into print and ordinary conversation. What started out as typos or a fun code among in-the-know geeks has acquired other, sometimes distinct uses.

The term "leet" comes from "elite" and originally was used to refer to more experienced, savvy computer users, who use truncated spellings, substitute numbers for letters or other slang that can leave non-regular users in the dust, not knowing what is going on.

But if you spend any time scrolling through blogs or online discussion sites, you'll probably run across "teh" pretty quickly. It's not just a typo in most cases. It is used to emphasize or set off something in the sentence where, if "the" were used, wouldn't have the same impact. And it suggests that there may some quick evolution of language or at least dialect going on, though how far and to what extent is unclear.

Two of the more common uses are "teh suck" and "teh gay". Over at Netscape's movie ratings page, you'll find
Teh Suck and The Cool. And at Urban Dictionary, an author suggests "teh" adds emphasis and is used similarly to the Spanish "el."

The usage intensifies the word, as in "I am teh awesome," or can turn any word into a noun. After Bill Maher outed Ken Mehlman the lefty blogs were filled with "Ken Mehlman teh gay" references, though the blogs had, for years, identified him as such.

A Nexis search of newspapers yielded no uses of "teh" except: a.typos b. an Asian name, but keep an eye out. It will start surfacing in some of tech stories or in columns by younger, trying-to-be-hip writers.

Some others to watch out for:
n00b for newbie, a person new to something
Pr0n for pornography
Pwn, referring to "owned" as in a player dominating another

You can also have a little fun searching for hacker speak

For fun, try the Leet translator:

for example:
What the heck is this?
becomes
Wh47 7h3 h3(|{ 1$ 7h1$?

Some of it seems unnecessarily complicated and far more work than the endless "OMG" that seems to fill teen instant messages these days.

Or, there's this translator

There's also this amazingly superficial TV report on the dangers of teens' computer slang.

And Wikipedia has a good article, with many links, though editing of the article has been disabled, presumably because of hacker attacks.