Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 66

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INTERNET CHATTING IN THE FAROE ISLANDS
nels are from all villages and islands in the
Faroe Islands even the most remote and iso-
lated village communities, and therefore
chatters can get in touch with people from
all regions. Chatters in the Faroe Islands
have very different motives and aims, but
most of them are under 30, the majority are
aged 16-24.
Birgitte Holm Sørensen, a Danish youth
researcher, has defíned chat as synchronous
communication taking place on the intemet;
chat is also, she says, typically many-to-
many communication, even if chat also goes
on in closed “rooms” with one-to-one com-
munication or few-to-few communication
(Sørensen, 2001: 11). Faroese chat culture
is widespread with hundreds of children and
youths chatting every evening or several
times a week.. To turn your computer on and
enter a chat channel is, says Sørensen (ibid),
“like entering a room where many talking
people are placed, and where many conver-
sations are crossing each other and at play.”
There are many codes in the chat culture and
a youth introducing himself/herself for the
first time in a chat room can hardly hide that
she/he is a novice.
Text
There are many common abbreviations in
local and global variations used in order to
save space and time in chat communication.
Besides, chatters can shorten all long and
complex words in their own fashion; gen-
erally, chatters just drop the endings of
words if they expect that the counterpart will
catch the meaning; or they choose to write
words in phonetic script - as they are pro-
nounced. Many of the youngest chatters,
aged 10-12, do obviously not spell correctly.
Weak writing proficiency may disclose a
young chatter pretending to be older than
he really is. The youngest chatters therefore
try to write correctly in order to hide their
age.
A common abbreviation in Faroese chat
is e.g. “klax” which means “Klaksvik” (a
town). When a chatter tells that he is from
lclax, everybody knows what he means. Sim-
ilarabbreviations areused about othertowns
and villages. Those wanting to appear as
skilled and experienced chatters by using
long English abbreviations have lists with
so-called chat language at their disposition
on Faroese chat channel homepages. These
abbreviations are, however, with a few ex-
ceptions, so advanced that they seem com-
ical and are almost never used. IMNSHO is
for instance “In My Not So Humble Opin-
ion” while ROFL is the abbreviation for
“Rolling On Floor Laughing”. There are also
many sign compositions supposed to ex-
press bodily expressions, movements and
things. The most famous are the countless
versions of smileys used to visualise the
communication. Many English sentences
and expressions, not least the vulgar ones,
from fílms and music are used in Faroese
chat. New slang is continuously developing,
which every teenager on the intemet has to
be familiar with to be up-to-date in the chat
culture. However, I have to emphasize, there
are big differences in the language accord-
ing to the age group or chat channel in ques-
tion. Some of the new chat channels were
established by grown-ups annoyed by chil-
dren contacting them to chat about skate-
boarding, Eminem or next weekend’s local