In my first blogging experience which was with a small blog called Mo’time, I suffered an embarrassing faux pas. I say small for although the site had some 10,000 registered members, the active core was probably smaller than the number participating in the A to Z this year. Mercifully, somebody pointed out that I seemed to be misusing the abbreviation LOL which I had grown up thinking of as meaning Lots of Love and consequently, on many sad posts, I had apparently been Laughing Out Loud… I sometimes have to check with my grandchildren on the latest abbreviations in order to avoid future social accidents IMHO (In my humble opinion), this demonstrates the problem with texts, which are in any case a condensed form of communication compared an email or letter and it has been found that people are very erratic in interpreting the emotional tone of texts – perhaps because of their brevity. Apparently, this is what emoticons were invented to solve LOL replaced with a manic face, cocked to one side and spurting floods of laughter tears from both eyes. I am told by people whose young children grew up in the age of emoticons, that their offspring can have an entire conversation using only emoticons – perhaps this should be added to the Wikipedia list of Cant language that have become a feature of Blog this year!
Time for a few more Cockney rhyming slang examples Lady Godiva – Fiver (a five pound note) although the cognoscenti probably abbreviate it further – “That’ll be a Lady mate!” You see! Those pesky abbreviations again. Yesterday we had brown bread for “dead” but a Loaf of Bread means your head – as in “Come on Son – use your loaf!” (Just think about it Son!)
Other L’s from Cockney rhyming slang include “Light and Dark” – Park, “Lion’s Lair” the armchair where the head of the house might take a nap of a Sunday afternoon and woe betide anyone who wakes him up… “Loop the Loop” – soup.
We have five examples of “L” Cant languages from the excellent Wikipedia article on the subject