“OMG, when did we start talking like txt msgs?”
Wild guess: when we started texting.
Laziness is at the root of all changes in language.
Ysrdy
EIEIO...
I wonder if text message “language” would have been so prevelant if smart phones or texting phones with keyboards (virtual or otherwise) became popular before (or is it b4?) text messaging did.
I have to think the difficulty of typing messages on a phone keypad (which requires 1 to 3 keystokes per letter) was a big contributor to the creation of and popularity text message abbreviations.