elite video game player. Shakespeare Would Like Leet, Scholar Says

If you are an elite video game player these days, the very best of the best, you could win millions of dollars at a single tournament.

For years, China felt awkward about dominating the globe in e-sports

But it’s getting over that.

TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM|由 MICHAEL REILLY 上傳

PAGE ONE










What Did U $@y?
Online Language
Finds Its Voice


'Leetspeak' Is Hot Button

With Gamers, Scholars;

One Campus Isn't 'LOL'

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
August 23, 2007; Page A1

TEh INTeRn3T i5 THr3@+EN1N9 t0 Ch@n93 thE W4Y wE $p34k.

(Translation: The Internet is threatening to change the way we speak.)

For years, heavy users of Internet games and chat groups have conversed in their own written language, often indecipherable to outsiders. Now, some of those online words are gaining currency in popular culture -- even in spoken form.

Online gamers use "pwn" to describe annihilating an opponent, or owning them. The word came from misspelling "own" by gamers typing quickly and striking the letter P instead of the neighboring letter O. Other words substitute symbols or numbers for similar-looking letters, such as the number 3 for the letter E. The language is sometimes called elite speak, or leetspeak, written as l33t 5p34k.

WHAT WOULD THE BARD SAY?

Gail Kern Paster, the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, considers what Shakespeare -- known for his mastery of the English language -- would think of leetspeak. With two versions of her comments, one in English and one in leetspeak.

There is no standardized code. The letter A, for example, can have several replacements, including 4, /\, @ , /-\, ^, and aye.

As the Internet becomes more prevalent, leetspeak, including acronyms that used to appear only in text messages like "LOL" for laughing out loud, is finding a voice.

"I pone you, you're going down dude, lawl!" is how Johnathan Wendel says he likes to taunt opponents in person at online gaming tournaments. Pone is how he pronounces "pwn," and lawl is how "LOL" usually sounds when spoken. Mr. Wendel, 26 years old, has earned more than $500,000 in recent years by winning championships in Internet games like Quake 3 and Alien vs. Predator 2. His screen name is Fatal1ty.

During the televised World Series of Poker last year, one player, remarking on a deft move, told an opponent that he had been "poned." In an episode of the animated TV show "South Park," one of the characters shouted during an online game, "Looks like you're about to get poned, yeah!" Another character later marveled, "That was such an uber-ponage."

One problem with speaking in such code: there is little agreement on pronunciation.

Jarett Cale, the 29-year-old star of an Internet video series called "Pure Pwnage," enunciates the title "pure own-age." This is correct since "pwn" was originally a typo, he argues, and sounds "a lot cooler." But many of the show's fans, which he estimates at around three million, prefer to say pone-age, he acknowledges. Others pronounce it poon, puh-own, pun or pwone.

"I think we're probably losing the war," says Mr. Cale, whose character on the show, Jeremy, likes to wear a black T-shirt with the inscription, "I pwn n00bs." (That, for the uninitiated, means "I own newbies," or amateurs.)

Those who utter the term "teh" are also split. A common online misspelling of "the," "teh" has come to mean "very" when placed in front of an adjective -- such as "tehcool" for "very cool." Some pronounce it tuh, others tay.

The words' growing offline popularity has stoked the ire of linguists, parents and others who denounce them as part of a broader debasement of the English language.

"There used to be a time when people cared about how they spoke and wrote," laments Robert Hartwell Fiske, who has written or edited several books on proper English usage, including one on overused words titled "The Dimwit's Dictionary."

When a reader of his online journal, called the Vocabula Review, proposed "leet," as in leetspeak, for his list of best words, Mr. Fiske rejected it.

"Leet: slang for 'good' or 'great,' apparently, and 'idiotic,' certainly," he wrote on the Vocabula Web site. "Leet" is in dictionaries with other meanings, including a soft-finned fish.

Lake Superior State University, in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., this year included "pwn" on its annual list of banned words and phrases -- those it considers misused, overly used and just plain useless. Others on the list included "awesome" and "Gitmo" (shorthand for Guantanamo Bay).

Some suggest such verbal creations are nothing new and are integral to how language evolves.

Gail Kern Paster, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., has reason to believe that a certain English poet and playwright would cheer the latest linguistic leap. Just as the rise of the printed word and the theater spurred many new expressions during Shakespeare's time, the computer revolution, she notes, has necessitated its own vocabulary -- like "logging in" and "Web site."

"The issue of correctness didn't bother him," says Ms. Paster. "He loved to play with language." As for leet, "He would say, 'Bring it on,' absolutely."

The word "OK," one of the most widely used words in many languages, first appeared in a Boston newspaper in 1839 as an abbreviation for "oll korrect," according to Allan Metcalf, a professor of English at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill. Other abbreviations, such as O.F.M. for our first men, referring -- sometimes sarcastically -- to a community's leading citizens, also became briefly popular in Boston newspapers at the time, says Mr. Metcalf.

The Internet is not the first technological advancement to change the way language is used. The telegraph required people to communicate "with lots of dots and dashes and abbreviations," says Mr. Metcalf. "Since it charged by the word, you compressed your message as much as possible -- grammar be damned."

Some of those words, like SOS, the popular call for help, have survived from their telegraph-era origins.

Leetspeak first became popular in the 1980s among hackers and those adept enough to gain access to an early form of online chat forums called bulletin boards. These "elite" users developed leetspeak, occasionally to conceal their hacking plans or elude text filters. (It still has that use for some: "pr0n" is leetspeak for pornography.)

But leetspeak's growing appeal, and use among the un-cool, could undermine it. "Now moms are saying, 'LOL,' so that takes away from it," says Mr. Cale of the Internet show "Pure Pwnage."

A couple of years ago, Katherine Blashki, a professor of new media studies, didn't understand some of the words used by her students at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. Her subsequent, semester-long research on the subject found their use of leetspeak stemmed partly from wanting to find faster ways to express themselves online. As with other forms of jargon, it also enhanced a sense of belonging to a community, she says.

"It's ultimately about creating a secret language that can differentiate them from others, like parents," says Ms. Blashki. "That's part of being a teenager."

She presented her work at a conference in Spain and has since written nearly a dozen research papers on the topic. She admits she hasn't received much grant funding for her work. "My peers were aghast," she says.

Despite their facility with the new language, some leet fans insist that good grammar is still important.

Mr. Wendel, the online gamer, says he makes a point of using proper capitalization and punctuation in his online missives during competition. "It's always a last resort," says Mr. Wendel. "If you lose you can say, 'At least I can spell.'"

Write to Christopher Rhoads at christopher.rhoads@wsj.com

Shakespeare Would Like Leet, Scholar Says
$H4Ke5P3@Re W0ulD L1k3 L33t, $cH0L4r $@y5

Below are side-by-side comparisons of an interview with a Shakespeare scholar about the online slang sometimes called "elite speak," or leetspeak, often written as l33t5p34k, with one side in English and one in leetspeek. (See related article.)

By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS Though Gail Kern Paster, the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, has some misgivings about the rise of Internet slang such as leetspeak, she thinks Shakespeare would applaud it. As a professor of Shakespeare at George Washington University for 27 years before taking her current job in 2002, she says she was "a stickler" for proper English. During a recent trip to New York, Ms. Paster saw a message on a large banner with an incorrect apostrophe that "bothered me terribly," she says. Nevertheless, she thinks Shakespeare would approve of leetspeak. "He would say, 'Bring it on, absolutely,'" she says. The reason is that Shakespeare introduced countless new words and expressions into the English language through his plays, she says. "The issue of correctness didn't bother him," she says. "He loved to play with language." A difference between Shakespeare's time in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and today is that rules on grammar, spelling and syntax had not yet been codified. Through the rise of newspapers and other periodicals, printed English was only just becoming mainstream during that period. As a result, there were fewer obstacles to making up words and expressions, she says. A similarity between now and then, however, is that cultural developments and technological advances created a need for new words. The computer revolution required vocabulary, such as "logging in," and "Web site." The rise of theater and the printed word during Shakespeare's lifetime likewise pushed the English language in new directions, she says. Nevertheless, some forms of leetspeak may just be laziness, which is not acceptable, warns Ms. Paster. "There is a distinction between creating new words and a collapse of standards," she says.

8y CHR1$T0PH3R RH04D5 THOu9H g@iL k3Rn P4$T3r, +H3 D1REC+OR 0PH +H3 fOl9Er $H4Ke5P3@Re LiBR4Ry 1n w4$H1n9t0N, h@$ 50mE M1591v1N95 48oU+ Th3 ri53 Of 1ntErN3+ 5L4n9 $UcH @$ Le3T5Pe4k, 5HE +h1nk5 5H4K3$p3@RE wOulD 4ppl@UD I+. 45 4 ProPh3$$or OPH $HaK35pE@r3 @+ ge0Rg3 WA5h1N9tON UNIveR5I+y FOR 27 Y34R5 8EPhOre T4k1ng H3R CURrEn+ jo8 1n 2002, SH3 $4y$ SH3 W45 "@ 5tICKl3R" PHOr PrOP3R eNgl15h. Dur1ng 4 R3cEN+ +rip +O new Y0rK, M5. P@$+3R s@W 4 MES5493 On @ L@r9e B4nn3R w1th 4N INCORr3c+ 4PO$trOpHe +h4T "bO+Her3d mE TeRr18lY," 5h3 $@yS. n3v3R+hEL3$5, 5He tHiNk5 $h4k3Sp34r3 WOuLD APpr0VE of lE3t5P3@K. "H3 WOUlD 54Y, 'BRIn9 i+ ON, 4b50luT3LY,'" she Say$. +h3 R34s0n I$ Th4t $H4Ke$pe4r3 INTRODuC3D CoUN+LES5 nEW WOrd5 4nD exPre$$iON$ iN+O +H3 3Ngl15H l4n9U49e +hr0u9h h1s pL4YS, $he $4Y5. "+He i$5Ue 0F coRreCtne55 d1dn'+ 8oth3r HIm," Sh3 54y$. "HE lOVed +0 pl@Y wi+h L@n9u49e." 4 dIFPhereNCE 83+w33n 5H4k35P34re'5 T1Me 1n t3h LAt3 16Th 4Nd E4rLy 17th c3nTUr135 @nD t0d4Y 1$ +H4+ RULe$ 0n 9r4mm4R, $pell1NG 4ND SYnT4X HAD N0+ YEt 833N c0dIF1ed. +hr0u9h +hE r1S3 0PH nEW$p4pER5 @nd 0+HeR PEr1OD1C4L$, pR1NT3D 3NgLi5H w@5 0nLY ju5+ 83C0min9 Ma1N5Tr3@m DUr1ng +H4t PEr10D. 45 a r3$uLt, TH3r3 W3R3 f3W3r 085TaCLE5 +o m4k1nG uP woRD5 4nd 3XPR3$51ON5, $hE 5@Y5. 4 sIMIl@riTY 83Tw3EN n0w 4nd +H3n, HoWEVER, 15 THAt cUl+ur4l DeveLopmEntS @nD +3CHNOLOg1C4L 4Dv4ncE$ CR34TeD @ n3eD ph0r New wOrD5. tH3 CompUt3r ReV0LuTi0n reKW1ReD VOC@Bul4rY, $uCh a5 "L09giNg 1N," AND "w38 5iT3." +Eh R1s3 OPH +H34t3r 4Nd +3H PRIN+3D w0rd dUR1N9 5H@Ke5P3@r3’5 L1phEt1M3 likeWiS3 PU$HeD +He eNgl15H l4N9U49E in n3w d1reCtiON$, 5h3 5@Y5. NeVeRThele$$, $Ome f0rm$ OF l33t5P34k m4y ju$T b3 L4ZiNE$5, WHicH 15 nO+ @cc3pt48L3, w@rn5 M5. p@5T3r. "THerE 15 4 d15T1nc+1oN 83+weEN CR34+1nG neW woRD5 4ND 4 C0Ll4p53 oPh $+4Nd@rD$," 5H3 $@Y5.

Write to Christopher Rhoads at christopher.rhoads@wsj.com