LOLspeak as a Second Language (LKSL-101) in Five Easy Steps
readStep one: Think of something to say. This is tricky for some people.
We’ll try a simple, common comment to start:
“That’s a really cute cat. And look, he has a bow on his head!”
Step two: “Engrish” it.
1) Mis-decline verbs, especially misuse the verb “to be”
2) Misuse gerunds
3) Overuse prepositional phrases
4) Blatant rearrangement of syntax
5) Incorrect plurals and past-tense verbs
6) “noun” your adjectives. (For instance, the adjective “blue” can become the noun “blueness”)
7) Improper pronouns
8 ) Drop the articles (“a”, “and”, “the”) in favor of adding “-age” to the end of a noun
9) Use “younger” words (“kitty” versus “cat”, “fuzzy” versus “furry”, etc.)
10) Use the word “with” inappropriately.
11) If you really can’t wrap your head around the concepts behind “Engrish”, try this: Go to babelfish.altavista.com, type your desired comment in, hit “english-to-Japanese”, then re-translate back to English. You have to be able to view special characters (the kanji). If you can’t get that to work, try translating to a different, european-text language, like German.
So, we get:
“That being the kitty very full of cuteness. And to be with looking! Him gots bowage on hims head!”
Step three: Misspell everything. There’s no wrong way to do this, just try not to accidentally correctly spell a completely different word (especially one that’s pronounced differently than your spelling intends). Some words (usually short words) should simply remain spelled correctly for continuity’s sake.
1) Think like a little kid / cat / dog / goldfish, and get hukd on foniks
2) I cannot stress this enough: Vowels are your friends! Do not neglect vowels!! We’re speaking LolKitteh here, not text messaging! (My advice: use alternate vowels, Y’s are particularly handy, but don’t overuse them.)
3) Extra W’s and H’s (“awl” instead of “all”)
4) Z’s instead of S’s are easy
5) Double-letters versus single letters are always fun
6) Don’t be afraid to further pluralize things, including your verbs
7) Remember that the word “THE” must always be spelled “TEH”
now, we have:
“Dat beesing teh kiti vary ful ov kutenis. An to bees lukingz! Hims gotz bowwagez on hims hed!!”
Step four: Add exclamations and extra words.
1) Use commonly accepted internet abbreviations. Misspell them if necessary. (LOL = lawlz! ROTFL = rofflz! OMG = omgwtfbbq!?! … etc … )
2) Imagine that you’re actually in a crowd of people and you want everyone to look at this particular picture. Extra exclamations are thus necessary.
3) Think Valley Girl. The words “like,” “totally,” etc can be added. Remember to misspell!
4) Some common statements have been severely abbreviated into one single multi-syllabic word. These are good to use. The best example is “Okay, thank you, good-bye!” Which has been shortened to “kthxbye” (or “kthxbai”)
And, we have:
“OMG wau!! Dat beesing a kiti vary ful ov tewtul kutenis!! Bees wif da lukingz! Omg him gotz da bowwagez on himz hed lyk WTF?!?”
Step five: Add additional information. This can be the desire to interact with the subject of the photo, personal information, empathetic or sympathetic statements, responses to other posts, etc. Again, nothing right or wrong here, just whatever comes to mind.
Finally:
“OMG wau!! Dat beesings a kiti vary ful ov tewtul kutenis!! Bees wif da lukingz!! Omg him gotz da bowwagez on himz hed lyk WTF?!? OMG I tewtul wuntz to grabz dat kiti and fuzziez himz awl ovar … him sooooooo mooshy an fullz ov win!! Don werry lil kiti, I no eetz u! I luvz kitiz! I can has bunchiz ov dem! Mah kitiz luvz bowwagez too! YETH!! GIMME!! Kthxbai!”
Remember that all of the above steps are basic guidelines for conversational lol-cat. Some regions do not always rearrange syntax. This a treasure for you. With some practice, you too can be writing (and speaking) in Conversational LolKitteh!