Portuguese Shorthand
Despite my tendency to be a little grumpy at times, I have somehow managed to make some friends and acquaintances during my time in Brazil. This means that around 50% of the text on my Facebook time-line is in Portuguese.
This has proved to be rather a good learning aid. If I want to know why Maurício’s status update got 18 likes, I’m going to have to work out what he actually said! But deciphering text posted on Facebook, Twitter, emails and text messages is not just a matter of looking up words in a dictionary.
Portuguese Text Speak
Text Speak has been around for longer than you might think. Winston Churchill received a letter containing an “OMG” way back in 1917!
But this character- and time-saving communication form really proliferated with the introduction of text messaging and the internet. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the common English examples such as lol, rofl, etc (that last one is Latin!), but how well do you know Portuguese shorthand?
Below is a list of the abbreviations I’ve come across – have I missed any out?
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