“WRU?”

“Wait…what does WRU mean…?”

“Uh, it means ‘where are you?’ I forgot you do not know these….”

When I was studying in the United States, this kind of conversations always appeared on my Twitter posts or Facebook messages. Abbreviations like “OIC,” “JK,” and “NP” truly give me the feeling that my American friends do not use the same English as I have learned. If you cannot understand the abbreviations I just listed, you are not alone.

I began thinking about the reasons people used these mysterious abbreviations after talking to my cousin, a pretty American-born Chinese girl.

“LOL. Did you seriously ask them what ‘WRU’ means?”

LOL, at least from my perspective, indicates a prevalent computer game called League of Legend, so I said: “Yes I did, and I will never do it again. Uh… do you play LOL?”

She looked at me in surprise for a second and grinned: “‘LOL’ represents ‘laugh out loud!’ What are you thinking about?”

Several days later, I concluded that these abbreviations were created for efficiency. When people are communicating through cell phones, typing words consumes time; in order to prevent the slipping of the precious time, abbreviations emerge. Although they confused me for a long time, once I got used to using “LOL” and many other abbreviations in communication, I couldn’t stop it.

Later I came back to China, and again the idea of “we are not speaking the same kind of Chinese” emerged in my head. This feeling makes me more nervous than ever— Chinese is my mother language and now I cannot understand it!

One day one of my best friends ran to me and shouted: “Wo kao za le! Wo (I) yao (want) gou (dog) dai (chain)!” and I knew that her words did not make any sense both logically and grammatically. If I translated this sentence literally in English, she was saying that she failed the test and she wanted dog chain (She did not use article “yi tiao,” which is the same as “a” in English, in her sentence, so it is grammatically incorrect in Chinese).

Why did she run towards me and say she wants dog chain?

She explained to me that the word “gou dai” does not mean “dog chain” but simply “go die,” which refers to a depressed feeling that makes she hope to go to die. Since the Chinese words for dog chain is “gou dai,” and the pronunciation is similar to “go die” in English, people use “gou dai” all the time on the internet during those days for its humor and critical meaning (which is criticizing speaking English with an accent). She suggested that I do research on these internet languages and use them frequently as, according to her, this is the trend of modern Chinese.

I hesitated, although in the United States I accepted those Internet abbreviations almost immediately. English Internet language is created for its efficiency, but what is Chinese Internet language created for? For efficiency? Absolutely not. I can express my idea using fewer characters. The first glimpse of Chinese Internet language is full of disorder because it combines characters regardless of the formal grammar. To some extent, it distorts the original meaning of words and especially the elegance hidden inside the arrangement of Chinese characters.

I refused to accept this language, since, at that moment, I thought it destroys Chinese.

Yet one event that happened on me shifted my attitude towards these words totally.

One day I saw one of my friends sitting alone on the bench with her head buried in her arms. Wondering about the situation, I walked towards her and asked with deep concern:
“Ni hai hao me?” (It means “are you OK?” in English).

She looked up at me with tears on her face, and her voice choked with emotion: “wo xin sai.”

Her words held me in a trance. The character “wo” means “I,” which totally makes sense; but the word “xin sai,” commonly, is regarded as a disease called myocardial infarction. I was sure that my friend did not cry because she had myocardial infarction—if that was really the case, she could not talk with me at that time. Then I realized that this “xin sai” is another prevalent word in the big family of Chinese Internet language.
My friend sighed with her hand covered her breast, where the pulsating heart lies. Suddenly, I was illuminated by her action. I conjectured boldly: “xin sai” does not represent the fatal disease but a feeling of unhappiness, depression and gloom. “Xin” is the character for heart in Chinese, and “sai” refers to obstruction! I had to admit that this word is quite smart, as it refers that one’s heart senses like it was blocked up, which is the exact feeling a person will get when experiencing depression. Such a vivid and precise word demonstrates the degree of unhappiness far better than a dull word “nan guo (sad).” It struck a chord in my heart, and I felt the sorrow hidden under my friend’s skin. Later I typed “?? (xin sai)” in the search engine, and found the meaning of it is exactly the same as my guess. It was first used by a novelist who writes fiction on the Internet, and became widespread because of its lively feeling.

For the first time, I figured out a word from the Internet without any help; for the first time, my friend’s words resonated with me; for the first time, I understood the reason people use Chinese Internet language. Chinese internet language is neither abbreviating sentences nor destroying Chinese; it adapts to strategies, such as homophones and puns, to establish a humorous, vivid but reasonable expression.

Now I enjoy using it.

Deeply thinking about the merits of Internet language, I find out that language is more than a simple medium to communicate. It is complex, and the same idea can be expressed in totally different ways so that one of them will make you laugh and one of them will make you cry. A wise person can compile characters in a way that criticizes you without a single bad word or in a way that brings up images in front of your eyes. Chinese Internet language somehow enriches our changeless means of expression, and enhances the art of a language. It is just like cryptogram; after knowing the code, you can open the door of a whole new world. Your life will be much more colorful than ever.