A friend of mine said something about me being 1337 and I was confused by his usage. My first thought was he calling me old, or some kind of centuries beings. So I simply asked him what that means and he forwarded me this interesting wiki article on 1337 – leet. After reading it, then only I know he was complimenting me(I think). What an idiot I am.
The article was a good read and I learnt lots of new terms from it so here I am sharing with you. May be you already know about it but for those who don’t know can take note of it.

Leet (or 1337, l33t, l33+, etc, derived from the word “Elite”) is a linguistic phenomenon associated with the underground culture centered on telecommunications, manifested primarily on the Internet, and is especially prevalent in gaming (as in video games) communities.

The name Leet itself is derived from the word elite (also 31337). Elite has been used in the past to designate a group of users as belonging to a higher social echelon than other users. Originally, elite had been reduced to one syllable, leet.

Because of this derivation from the word elite, calling someone or something leet may be considered a compliment, although it is also used in an ironic derogatory manner

There are lots of symbolic meaning involve in each numbers and characters that you can use them to form totally new culture/language. Most of those fancy words are used on chats to shorten the words to achieve faster message delivery. For example, the very basic or well known usage of chat short-hands are g8, l8ter, brb, gtg, ltns, etc (ok, that’s all I know. :d)

Leet finds its base in written communication over electronic media. Most simply, it has evolved as a way of forming exclusive cliques in on-line communities, notably Bulletin Board Systems and online multiplayer games

…using Leet in discussion has become a bit of a novelty or joke. Users have begun using Leet to indicate that they are part of the Leet-using counterculture, or to mock the existence thereof.

It’s very interesting that the whole 26 English characters can be formed by different types of Leet phrases. I read on and on about the usage of “x0r” and “z0r”, having a grammar etc. Then I got to this section, kekeke, I was so surprised to find that it actually came from some expression language, and not a made up girlish laugh. I was also surprised to find out that there are lots of funny words to express laughter in different culture. Think about you typing your laugh as “hahaha”, you go, “jajaja” “hoh-hoh-hoh”, “fufufu”, “hu hu hu”. LOL Oh Gosh, when some of my friends type “kekeke” as their laugh, I was thinking they must be crazy. It’s quite alrite to hear “kekeke” from a girl but when I hear “kekeke” from a guy, I just want to give him one big slap; I just can’t stand that kind of laugh from a guy. LOL

The expression “kekeke” is widely believed to have come from Koreans. In the Korean language, people expressed laughter in writing by repeating the letter “ㅋ” (Korean letter for the hard k [as opposed to the g or soft k, "ㄱ"], called 키읔 or “kieuk”) many times over. Since early versions of StarCraft did not allow players to write in Hangul (the name of the Korean writing system), Koreans would romanize their language. Hence, kekeke was born. The phrase is an onomatopoetic Korean phrase similar to the English “hahaha”, Spanish “jajaja,” French “hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh,” or Japanese “fufufu”

Some English speakers use “kekeke” as a form of laughing, similar to giggling although it is still primarily used by Korean speakers.

Kekeke is also used as an evil laugh and is used by players using devious tactics and/or playing evil characters.

Check out these examples of leet in action:

7h1$ 1$ 4n 3x4mp£3 0ƒ £337 47 17$ ƒ1n3$7. 1 w1££ 74|{3 7h1$ 0pp3r7µn17¥ 70 r3m1nÐ ¥0µ 7h47 ¥0µ $h0µ£Ð 4£w4¥$ 937 ¥0µr |{1Ð$ p37 $p4¥3Ð 0r n3µ7r3Ð. N3v3r £34v3 h0m3 w17h0µ7 4 70w3£. 4nÐ n0 m4773r wh47 7h3¥ $4¥, 7h3r3 1$ n0 ([]\/\/ |_3\/3|_.

(This is an example of leet at its finest. I will take this opportunity to remind you that you should always get your kids pet spayed or neutered. Never leave home without a towel. And no matter what they say, there is no cow level.)

! _/(_)$7 134|?/\/3|) vv#47 1337 /\/\34/\/5.

(I just learned what leet means.)

So yah, have a read through this article and I’m sure you’ll find it quite facinating.
Thanks Forlani for the tip and the link: Leet

Technorati Tags: 1337, Leet, Elite, languages

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