To stand out of all other internet users people belonging to the world of hackers and gamers have their very own language, the so-called leetspeak. Single words, parts of sentences or even whole sentences are build out of letters and numbers thus legible by well trained experts only.
Leetspeak and Linux users
Linux users regarded themselves as experts in the field of computers and operating systems and want to be distinguished from normal Microsoft operating system users in the past. Consequently, programs and digital documents have been developed in “leet” or “1337” to prevent them from being read by other computers. E-Mails written in numbers and letters of leetspeak can not be detected by a spam filter since the processing units are not used to this language. You might have noticed leetspeak in junk mails that avoid using signal words like “Viagra” and make use of \/|ágrà instead. The original Linux leetspeak or leetspeek was written in numbers and lower-case characters. A slightly adapted language is Oðblgshezi.
Oðblgshezi is developed through creating words from letters on a calculator. Examples are EIGHT or GOOGLE. The secret is to turn the calculator upside down and write the words backwards using the ten numbers 0 to 9.
Spelling rules in “leet” are quite different to what you know
Verbs and nouns created in leetspeak are modified and follow their own rules. The singular form is characterized by the suffix “or”. The plural form adds an “z” to create the suffix “orz”. Thus it sounds more harsh than a plural “s”. The “ruler of a kingdom” becomes “the rulor” or “rulors” in leetspeak. Additionally, modern leetspeak uses lower-case and upper-case letters in the middle of a word. This modification is by far not matching the original leetspeak.
This table shows the first twelve letters of the alphabet in different variants of leet:
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4 | 8 | ( | |) | 3 | |= | 6 | |-| | ! | _| | X | 1 |
Computer-hackers and their high degree of uniqueness
The leetspeak is often used in a very pretentious way of articulation. Especially the hacker community degrades the “newbies” (“n00b”) by naming them “14m32” (lamer) or “nap” (not a professional). On the contrary, hacker experts refer to themselves as “2u132″ for “ruler” or “0wn32″ for “owner”. In online games you will find a mixture of leetspeak and special words that are only used in the terminology the game. Some games provide a chat room for all gamers where lively discussions take place. To emphasize the importance of a move or a comment they add “!!11oneeleven”.
Pracitical application
“leet” in chat rooms
Even in chat rooms you may find words or whole phrases in a modified leetspeak. However, this leetspeak can’t be compered to the original very pretentious way of articulation. Nowadays the mixture of numbers and letters serves only for abbreviations. It is only to communicate in a very fast and short way – but again to be special and distinguished by others. You might now “Hy @ all”, “cu”, or “n8ti”. These short forms can be found in social networks as well. Facebook even has it’s own leetspeak generator. If you ask people around you they will confirm that leetspeak looks more interesting than writing the normal way.
Leetspeak for passwords
Another practical application is generating passwords. If you replace some letters in an existing word by numbers, it will be easier to remember letter-number-combinations. Additionally, it is much harder for other people and malware to guess your password. To create such a leetspeak password you don’t need to know any rules. The main point is that you can remember this word for a long time.
Leetspeak generator
Some time ago our german website www.wort-suchen.de provided a leetspeak generator. Know we are thinking about launching this feature on www.word-grabber.com as well. Tell us your opinion by commenting this article.