I was talking to a friend today about the difference between standard language and internet language, and he brought up the issue of francophone chatrooms and the various acronyms they use.

Certainly a lot of people know the various English internet acronyms, like lol for laugh out loud¹, and rofl ‘rolling on the floor laughing’ and so on, but do monolingual French speakers use the same?

Well, yes, as it turns out. But they also use French acronyms, though not as commonly, and probably only by those people who identify strongly as a French speaker and therefore avoid the English terms. Apart from the expected alterations on standard French, such as K for Q, they use acronyms like:

JRF – Je ris fort – I laugh loud

MDR – Mort de rire – Laughing to death

PTDR – Pété de rire – Explode from laughing

EDR – Écroulé de rire – Collapse from laughing

I want to know if there are chatroom/internet conventions of acronyms for other languages, because it’d certainly be boring if everyone used the same, uninspired English expressions online.

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Sorry about such a trivial topic, but after the polemics of last week, which, by the way, continued at another blog, I needed a break from profundity.

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¹I suggest that this should really be lqtm ‘laughing quiety to myself’.