“Lolcateze: U Lernz it Or U Eatz Mai Dust Sucka” — en that The language of the future? What is it and where does it come from? You have just seen an example of what has come to be called lolcateco. Lolcatese had its origins in the primitive bulletin board systems that predate the Internet. Named for the acronym LOL, “laughing out loud,” Lolcatese is beginning to evolve into a self-contained language, complete with grammatical and spelling conventions, and even pronunciation suggestions, even though Lolcatese is primarily a written language. The grammar police do not take Lolcateco seriously as a language; such is the fate of the pidgins, the patois, and the creoles in general. But they may have to, and with the Internet, it may be sooner than any of us imagine!

Grammar students may notice that in Lolcateco:

• items are gone
• the words “to” and “for” are replaced by digits,
• the pronoun case is usually dropped: “she” becomes “she”, for example
• deliberate misspellings, stemming from common typos, such as “the” for “the” are de rigueur
• verb conjugation (as if English verbs weren’t simple enough already) is simplified,
• the verbs of being disappear and are simply implied and understood as in Russian or Ebony.
• spellings based on pronunciation without typos are common, such as “iz” for “is”
• Snowclone expressions predominate, based on the language of gamers or other popular culture.

Lolcatese is easier to learn than English. It seems to be evolving as the Internet’s lingua franca for social communication. The young will bring it forth with them as they age in the mainstream of society. It will first infiltrate international trade, music and sports, then gradually the rest of society(ies) will catch up. In just one more generation, young people will be born who write Lolcatese before English. For these people, it will be their mother tongue when it comes to written languages, and they will enhance their expressive power as they graduate from being a written pidgin (natively written by no one) to a written creole (a language derived from pidgin that acquires native writers over time). Will writing affect and influence your spoken language? That remains to be seen.

Prediction for the future: Your grandchildren can receive high school diplomas written in a recognized, formalized and evolved version of Lolcateco.