kwim, for goodness use English!

@Hatley (163781)
Garden Grove, California
May 16, 2010 10:54pm CST
Are there any people left who look at kwim and wonder what the heck that means? I have just found out it means Know what I mean'so why in the hell just write it out,Know what I mean? I know I am not with it as I do not do any texting but surely there are a few holdouts who are like me puzzled at these textese words. I hate to feel so stupid, what is your take?
14 people like this
39 responses
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
17 May 10
Wow--I just learned a new text message lingo..LOL. IMO (In my opinion) I think people should leave textese words to texting on cell phones and write proper words in a discussion forum like this. It makes one wonder if the "younger" generation writes book reports or term papers in textese language--kwim? Mmmmm if kwim means Know what I mean does that mean Idkwum equals I don't know what you mean?
2 people like this
@kalav56 (11464)
• India
17 May 10
twago.[thta was a good one pyewacket!]
1 person likes this
@kalav56 (11464)
• India
17 May 10
Serves the student right.I too cannot tolerate this if any of my students would do this.In our days, we could not use the simplest of abbreviatons [like govt for government] and if students are to use this computer short forms then they should get fail marks/grades.I would just refuse to read the answer if my student does it.
@lilybug (21107)
• United States
18 May 10
They just totally shorten that to IDK( I don't know).
1 person likes this
@GardenGerty (157027)
• United States
17 May 10
I have to think long and hard to understand some of these short hand terms, and I do not always understand them even then. I feel like they are rude for use outside of text messages. As it pertains to MyLot, people who use the text shortcuts are basically short changing themself, as we get paid for what we do, so doing less is less pay.
2 people like this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi Garden Gerty Hey thats right they are really short changing themselves here in Mylot and too I do not think the mylot admins really wants us to use text talk for making posts as it really is another language, it sure is not proper English.
1 person likes this
@MsTickle (25180)
• Australia
20 May 10
I know just what you mean my friend. I'm glad you told me what it was because I could not have figured it out. There are so many of these shortenings of words and phrases that I am usually at a loss. I think it's a sign of the times my dear and we are getting passed it.
1 person likes this
@MsTickle (25180)
• Australia
20 May 10
Thanks sweet lady...you gave me my first laugh for the morning...it's 7:00am here.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
20 May 10
hi Mstickle oh yes its like they are all running while I am trying to walk and not limp. guess I need a new dictonary one with text speak definitions in it lol rofl etc etc.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
20 May 10
dictionary not dictonary missed seeing that one.
1 person likes this
@dawnald (85129)
• Shingle Springs, California
17 May 10
I didn't kwym (know what you meant). I know a lot of these online acronyms, but not that one so much. Actually, the only ones I use pretty regularly are lol (laughing out loud) and idk (I don't know)... Last time I had to ask was when I saw pmpl (peed my pants laughing).
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
18 May 10
hi me too thats one I did not know I saw it but had not the foggiest idea of what it meant and I did try to use logic but f failed completely. the common ones I can figure out. I use lol and rofl some but kwim was a new one on me oh oh got to go.low blood sugarwow.
1 person likes this
@dawnald (85129)
• Shingle Springs, California
18 May 10
Heck I still can't remember what kwim is without looking....
1 person likes this
@much2say (53672)
• Los Angeles, California
18 May 10
pmpl? Ha ha - I've never heard that one before!! I thought it might be short for "pimple" - ha ha!!
2 people like this
@quita88 (3715)
• United States
19 May 10
I do sooooooooooo understand ! Why not just write it out? Or are you and I too old LOL I don't feel stupid at all. I feel totally competent LOL You are too LOL
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
19 May 10
Hi quita maybe the text speak world is passing us by, but Ihave had English professors tell me that they are getting papers that are written mostly in text speak, and have to hand them back, marked do this over in English if you want a grade. this says something about not using the English language and maybe forgetting how to spell correctly. So I am not stupid at all, and I can use our English language too. hurray for my side.
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
19 May 10
@quita88 (3715)
• United States
19 May 10
Then that also means hooray for my side , which is your side too :)!!!!
1 person likes this
@udayrao2 (781)
• India
17 May 10
Hi Hatley You are absolutely right; this & such words were getting more & more confusing till I read your expansion!!Thanks I do not know why today's youngsters need to change words altogether or give a different meaning or even shorten it. There are lots of words which in the 'real' English means altogether different from what is used now - if you look around the new meaning of 'cool' used for every second expression is used very broadly & generally; the word 'guy' though refers to males is now used for every one in a group even females; and what about the wrong word 'anyways' in place of the right 'anyway'!!?? There are many many more words and expressions, shortcuts etc which I cannot decipher so I either get my answers while watching new films/programmes on TV or I ask my daughter the meaning which she has ready!!! I think people in our age will soon be made top look stupid and ignorant by the next generation as you rightly say!!!
1 person likes this
@kalav56 (11464)
• India
17 May 10
udayrao! We all belong to a generation where we adhere to standard English and I am also quite strict about it. THis usage of "anyways" , "guys" have all been imported to India from the US if I am not mistaken.THese are terminology used by the students there and I saw this being used by my sisterinlaw who is abroad and also in my son's premium business management institute.It something else handed down from the west.
1 person likes this
@kalav56 (11464)
• India
17 May 10
But, frankly, I neither feel nor am made to feel stupid because if we ask our children they will tell us.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi udayrao2 using anyways always gets to me, and being called you guys when I am with a bunch of women seems really weird too.oh yes my son would have told me that one in a flash kwim, why mom thats a question do you know what I mean, I can hear him now. but its my perfectionist attitude that gets me freaked out when I cannot decipher a short cut as I feel gee I really should know this one. I have got lol and rofl down so why was I stuck on kwim? silly I know.
1 person likes this
@ElicBxn (63194)
• United States
19 May 10
I find them annoying. I will do a few - WTG for "way to go" AND, if I'm actually using the text function on my phone, I will SOMETIMES use "2", "U", "&", "R", but I'm not good at it...
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
19 May 10
hi ElicBxn I do too as why not just use plain English in a mylot discussion then all will be clear to all of us. I use lol and rofl some but not make my discussions all text speak, really I am not that into it as I do not even own a cell phone. but on our discussions I think we should use ordinary English so all can understand.
2 people like this
@ElicBxn (63194)
• United States
20 May 10
if I get a friend request and they have posted all in txt spk, I turn them down
@CatsandDogs (13963)
• United States
19 May 10
Hi Hatley! Boy! Do I ever know what you mean!! My brother emailed me "fyi" a few years back and I was lost to what it meant. I didn't ask him for a few days hoping I could figure it out and I just couldn't so I asked. Then "btw" came to be and again, couldn't figure it out either and had to ask. My dad always says, no question is stupid unless you know the answer. He's right, you know?
1 person likes this
@CatsandDogs (13963)
• United States
20 May 10
Yes, you're right fyi means for your information (which to me sounds snotty or rude but people use it nonetheless) and btw means by the way. At any time you feel stumped on another abbreviation ASK! LOL Don't be afraid or feel stupid because you shouldn't. The only way to find out is to ask. Hugs!!
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
19 May 10
hi CatsandDogs Lets see I think fyi for your information, just guessing here, and that btw has been getting to me, does is stand for between or a whole phrase. any way why cannot we just stick to English in our discussions and use the emoticons instead of text speak? thats neat, of course no question is stupid unless you know the answer.Your dad is a smart dad. lol
1 person likes this
@littleowl (7157)
18 May 10
Hi Hatley, I do tend to shorten words in a text but have never heard of kwim, that is a stupid phrase if it was sent to me I would be forever wondering what it meant...texts only have a certain amount of characters you can put in them except for the really modern ones, but 'kwim'? Uh my impression of the person that sent it to me is either they spelt it wrong or didn't know how to spell the word they meant-like you write things in English or at least that you can understand what the person means sending the text to the reciever...LoLo
@littleowl (7157)
20 May 10
Hi Hatley, no I didn't know what it meant-lol excuse the pun thanks for telling me-it is an abbreviation that is unbeknown to me, but is really a stupid way of putting 'know what I mean' it doesn't take a minute to actually type it let alone put it in a text properly-am glad you told the person to write it out in English.. LoLo
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
19 May 10
hi little owl know what it means? it means Kknow What I Mmean? kwim. simple when you think about it but why do that it only takes afew moments to type know what I mean? there less than a minute. this was in a discussion that I replied to here on mylot.it is a text speak word abbreviated for the phrase do you know what I mean? and I said no I do not know what you mean, type it out in English.he he he he.
1 person likes this
@jdyrj777 (6530)
• United States
17 May 10
Im pretty used to texting. Sometimes when im writting here i almost forget and start using text lingo. I use the same text lingo for chatting too. Real english here. I get confused sometimes when people are texting and they incert one letter for a word. So i actually have to take longer to figure out what the one letter means. Sometimes i dont figure it out but i get the idea from the rest of the sentence.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi jdyrj777 I have never texted so have never learned the language at all but have picked up stuff here on mylot but kwim was a new one on me. So I shall just stick to English as that is the language we are supposed to post with here on mylot.
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi it was a puzzle to me but now I got the definition it does make sense but still prefer the English words.
@jdyrj777 (6530)
• United States
17 May 10
kwim is new for me too.
1 person likes this
@Bebs08 (10681)
• United States
30 May 10
hahaha kwim? it's the first time I heard this.. know what I mean? well, some people are making their own language specially when they are always texting. I just wonder why they are not following the English rules. For their good reasons maybe they want to minimize the space or they want to be original in creating acronyms. It is funny but interesting.
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
30 May 10
you know I kept seeing kwim and wondering what that meant so finally looked it up and okay know what I mean. Yes I wondered why they were not following the rule use only English in posting and hence why this one term?
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
30 May 10
hi Bebs08 I sometimes get the impression that they do not the rules but feel rules are for breaking which does not bide well as mylot does not like their rules broken so they will delete. hah
@Bebs08 (10681)
• United States
30 May 10
they are just inconsiderate and want to be unique in some ways.
1 person likes this
@celticeagle (157593)
• Boise, Idaho
17 May 10
?? ME!! I don't remember ever seeing that before. I don't really care. If they want us to understand them they will write their offerings on here in a way that we can understand. OR, I just delete and move on. And I don't sweat the small stuff. Oh, and if you happen to find out what the 'kwim' means it would be nice if you passed it on.
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi celticeagel it means k for know w for what I for I and M for mean, so know what I mean,grrrrrrr. I have seen it twice but had to go to a textspeak dictionary to find out it means know what I mean.yes users'really should not text speak here as mylot admins says use English and text speak is not what I call English. I thought I had told everyone what it meant in my discussion? I will have to reread my discussion to find out.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
19 May 10
celticeagle hi again. I m not sure if admins says not text speak or not, as they just said to use English only but seems to me as there are some maybe more than we realize that do not text and like me will not understand some of the text speak abbreviations at all.
1 person likes this
@celticeagle (157593)
• Boise, Idaho
17 May 10
Well, thank you for letting me know. I guess if I had thought about it I could have gone to one of those dictionaries myself. Derrr! I think it is sort of rude to use text speak on here. Admin. really says that? Not to use it on here that is.
1 person likes this
• Pamplona, Spain
19 May 10
Hiya Hatley, Have come across a few of those and I end up finding out what they mean too. I can translate my Son´s text messages quite well now. Some do escape me as they are forever inventing something different. Have just found a place it´s called internetslang all one word and the dot and the com. You will find most of those abbreviations there I think. I have also bookmarked it too to take the guesswork out of it as I am trying to learn all those cool text abbreviations they are making up all the time.
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
20 May 10
hi lovingangelsinstead21 I also found a text talk dictionary and kwim was simple, know what I mean. I hear that phrase almost everyday from someone. but I wish we would not use a lot of them in mylot discussions a its no fun to have to look them all up when time is limited.hugs back at you.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
20 May 10
hi lovinangelsinstead21 I am so lucky I have may computer all to myself' which is good.I have a dictionary on my tool bar then I use most times. did not this time and wondered why I did not but the word is a pharse so you know what I an?
• Pamplona, Spain
20 May 10
Hiya Hatley, Okay Hatley I will look that one up too and while I am at it I will find myself a Dictionary an ordinary one to look up comparisons in English and Spanish. I did have one here but it has somehow vanished (grin). It was really handy to have as I could just look up to see if I was using the correct verb or adjective. Time is limited for me too Hatley as I have looks of she´s on there again if I start writing on here I have to wait till they have all occupied themselves with other things.
1 person likes this
@ybong007 (6643)
• Philippines
17 May 10
The Philippines is considered the texting capital of the world, i don't know if that's true but i think the texting phenomenon is catching up with you . Here our youngsters even come up with their own SMS language which is even harder to decipher. One of the reasons why i dislike sending messages is becuase of the replies with all those weird sounding replie that make my head ache just to decipher what it means.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi ybon007 yes its really going wild here in the US one of the teachers on mylot sent a paper back to the student with the words translate this text talk into English if you wish me to grade it. Yes I am the same wasy I get those messages that I have to puzzle out then look in a texting dictionary to find the darned meanings. Texting is fine in its place but not here in our discussions.
1 person likes this
@ybong007 (6643)
• Philippines
18 May 10
You're lucky to have a texting dictionary in your place. Here, we depend on ESP to understand what the sender is saying. Thank god i dont have any text mates who is a teen ager. Most of my colleagues stopped sending me texts because i dont usually respond.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
20 May 10
hi ybong007 yes I lucked onto that by using mylot search bar, but I have yet to get a mylot award for doing so. I am not into cell phones and texting so have tried to pick up what most of the text speak things are,but I really think we should just stick to English in writing posts here of any kind.
1 person likes this
@AmbiePam (84651)
• United States
20 May 10
As soon as I saw "kwim" in your title of the post, I thought, is she posting about a person who is Asian? I really don't like text speak when someone is writing something on the internet. U or Thnx, stuff like that is something you'll never see from me. I mean if other people do it, so be it. But I just don't think it looks good.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
30 May 10
hi ambiepam one confused young foreigner asked who was this kwim and why you so angry with her? for a moment I was a completely baffled person then I saw where he thought this was an asian lady and I was angry with her. so I had to explainthat had he read the discussion it would all have been explained. why do so many people not really read discussions? You cannot always go by my titles as I t ry to draw people in with them. Yes Ithink text speak does not belong on my lot. no u for you or dis for this or dat for that,use Englishl
@ShepherdSpy (8544)
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
17 May 10
TXTSPK or "Textspeak" developed to make use of the limited space allocated for a cellphone SMS. (I'm not sure which came first,though,the Internet chat acronyms or the SMS messaging terms-the two have blended by now..) I agree that there's no need for the things on a forum like Mylot,though,where creativity and self expression is what it's about..if you have the space to write in full,why not use it?!
• Omagh, Northern Ireland
18 May 10
That's another good point on this issue..being concise in a discussion isn't necessarily a good thing on mylot-the more you have to say about something,the better!
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi ShepherdSpy Yes I can understand that you would need to abbreviate 'a lot but here on a forum with lots of space simple plain English should be good enough and besides if they use textspeak instead of ordinary written out English words they will actually make less'earnings on their textspeak.
@carmelanirel (20942)
• United States
17 May 10
When I first saw this word I thought maybe someone was trying to type the word swim, but the "k" is no where near the "s". So I have no idea..If it is a different language, that is against mylots guidelines.
• United States
17 May 10
True, because I only know the basic texting and sometimes it's hard to determine if it is a misspelling or an abbreviation.
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi carmelanirel I finally found a dictionary of text speak and'learned its means you know what I mean? okay but its not supposed to be used in making discussions on mylot, instead lets use plain old English language as thats what the admins,asked us to use for our postings.
1 person likes this
• Philippines
17 May 10
i don't know a lot of those acronyms.^_^ i've just found out about LOL, ROFL, BTW, OMG. hahahah... i'm stupid what the heck. i spell every word out. and i don't really chat. plus, i hate text messaging on the internet. even when i'm using a phone to surf i spell everything out.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi blue__thr3e those ones I do know, and I am really not up on text speak as I do no even own a cell phone. I am used to using our English language and trying to keep my self correct in its usage. lol
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
typo alert should be as I do not even own a cell phone.
@RawBill1 (8531)
• Gold Coast, Australia
17 May 10
Kwim? No, I do not know what you mean! LOL I had never heard that one until now! I think that even myself at 37 years old am too old for most of these abbreviations. It took me years to work out what LOL and LMAO were! Then I discovered ROFL and ROFLMAO!
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
17 May 10
hi Raw Bill I have just seen kwim now several times and had to lookit up in text message dictionary. I learned lol and lmao rofl and roflmao from my adult soon but no Alice you got me, PMSL ush pretty much silly language? okay I do give up.he he
@RawBill1 (8531)
• Gold Coast, Australia
17 May 10
Hmmm Alice, I have no idea what PMSL means? Please Mention Sexy Ladies???? Pre Menstrual Silly Ladies???? You could be right with your guess Hatley!
@dorannmwin (36392)
• United States
19 May 10
I can understand where these were helpful in the original generation of sending text messages (there was a time that you were charged per character that you sent and per message that you received). However, this isn't the case anymore, so I really don't know why they are still used the way that they are. This really reminded me of a commercial for a cellular phone where they got the bill and it had a huge amount of charges for text messages. They were trying to figure out who "grandma" had been texting and her response was IDK MY BFF Rose. . . Translated for those non-texters, it means I don't know, my best friend forever Rose.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
19 May 10
oh how funny thats a clever way for the cellphone people to get people to listen to their commercial. I can understand using text speak in cellphones but in our mylot discussions where there are people of all ages and from all countries too.No just plain English would be ever so much easier to understand for all concerned.