Okay,
1337 is a good subject to talk about.
The first thing I would like to clear up is that
chatspeak and 1337 are NOT the same thing. Some lazy morons
merge 1337 and chatspeak together, soon creating the popular belief that 1337 and chatspeak are the same thing.
Okay, so what /is/ 1337 in the first place? 1337 means Elite. The point of 1337 is to replace all the letters with symbols, and is quite fun to play with. 1337 was first created by some people would wanted to talk in a forum without any
outsiders barging in. Some outsiders may have figured out the language and started using it as well. Eventually, 1337 became famous all over the internet. The original use of 1337 is hardly practiced any more, but it survives because many of peope use it for fun.
It takes a long time to translate between regular English and 1337 even if you know all 26 1337 secrets, unless you're very skilled at it.
Here are the 26 1337 secrets.
A = 4
B = |3
C = (
D = |)
E = 3
F = |=
G = 6
H = |-|
I = |
J = 9
K = |<
L = 1
M = |v|
N = |/| (It is backwards because the frontslash under the
backspace key is famous for not showing up on many websites.)
O = 0 (zero)
P = |*
Q = 0,
R = |2
S = 5
T = 7
U = |_|
V = |/
W = |/|/
X = >< (Is normal in words like |-|4x0|2)
Y = `/
Z = 2
S0m3 p30ple 4r3
700 l4zy 70 wri73 7hin65 in fu11 1337, r3su17ing in a 53n73nc3 1ik3 7hi5.
If you wrote this sentence in
1337 speak, it would look like this:
||= `/0|_| |/|/|
2073 7|5 53|/|
73|/|(3 ||/| 1337, |7 |/|/0|_|1|) 100|< 1||
