Zlango
I just read this article about a new language for SMS communication. It seems that I’m already a quite good speaker of zlango (may be not a good thing).
The purpose of zlango is communication through text and more precisely, it uses icons to convey meaning. But if you speak zlango, it is a very simplified version of the real language. When I speak with Miou, we mix Japanese and French and my French looks more and more like zlango. It is oversimplified. On the contrary, I’m usually making efforts to speak correct Japanese. I think it is because I’m not affraid to lose my ability to speak correct French (by correct I mean to be able to speak a language that can convey complex and subtle meaning) while I know that if I stick to a zlangoish version of Japanese I’ll never be able to express myself in this language.
Does the creator of zlango just discovered Japanese, and for that matter Chinese ? Of course, it is far more easy to understand the zlango icons than a chinese ideogram. But the purpose of Japanese and Chinese languages is wider than zlango. So I’m curious to see if such a simplified language can find users in Japan as Japanese are heavy users of text messages on mobile phones. When typing Japanese, you rarely have to type the entire word but rather select it from a list of choices. For conveying emotions, they use frequently either icons (sometimes animated) or combination of punctuation signs for amazing results. May be zlango can help you in typing less characters but you have to learn new icons and loose some richness. And do Westerners can process icons quicker than text ? I doubt it. Zlango will be quicker to write but all the processing effort/deciphering will be up to the reader. If the reader has to make more cognitive effort to read a message, he/she will probably give up quickly. On the contrary, Japanese (and Chinese) are used to read ideograms that somehow look more like icons than text. But they already have their own language. So, who will use zlango ?
July 3rd, 2006 at 6:35 am
[...] Sure, you see an eye, or a clock, or a fly. But it’s the same thing with hieroglyphics, kanji, or emoticons: each squiggle’s got a dozen connotations that depend on the context, the location in a phrase or sentence or story. It’s not just about toggling the “translate” button to help you decipher it and see awkward the words stand side by side; it’s also about listening to your interpretation of how the message has been put together. [...]