There's not really a need to; the phone does all the hard script work for you; all you have to do is type in the phonics that make it up. But of course, people will shorten things, just like we use u instead of you in English. It's slang. Like they'll use a romaji 'W' or the character '笑’ to mean 'わらい（笑い）’ or laugh, just like we use LOL.

How did someone from England not catch Shad0w's sarcasm? Aren't you supposed to be the masters of it? :)

No sense of sarcasm AND can't take a joke? Sure your a Brit? :p

um== is that so? I was not expecting a joke at my expense. it was more to make me look a fool.

I asked a straightforward question-- did not expect a "CLEVER" reply.

They do say that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

by the way shadow Your command of English isn't so hot either. don't you know the difference between YOUR and YOU'RE?

thanks Columbine.

thank you also Nyrororin. I think I should have said the abbreviations or shorthand used in texting. As far as modern technology is concerned I definitely feel like a new kid in kindergarten LOL No idea what IR stands for.

You don't have to take it so personally; it wasn't to make you look like a fool—it was to make Shad0w look funny (and I think it succeeded). But we were once in the same boat: When I first joined XO, I hate-hate-hated Shad0w. But he grew on me (as he predicted way back in Winter 2008).
The people who say that aren't very funny. :)
It's dangerous to criticize other people's English when you make mistakes yourself.
IR stands for "infrared" here. Japanese phones can point to each other and communicate via IR (transfer contact information à la digital business cards, etc.).

Finally, to be fair to Shad0w, I think it's OK to take the piss when a poster with nearly 2000 posts on JF does not know that Japanese people use text messages. Were you a poster with one or two posts, it might be a little less warranted. But, come on, you're part of our community now; aren't we allowed to take the piss a little?

I don't think sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. I think sitcoms are,or anything that offends people it shouldn't.

It's a phrase/comeback. Like "it doesn't take a genius" or along those lines.

I am going to disagree when the question is one of this type. If she`d been asking if Japanese people took baths, or something so incredibly obvious to be silly... Then it would have been warranted. But to me it wasn`t funny, and just got an eyeroll from me.

It`s not odd at all to wonder how Japanese input messages on their cell phones as SMS has such an incredible culture of abbreviation... And Japanese has a different more complex writing system.

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Phones in English also use predictive input, so that`s not what prompts the abbreviations.
It`s the limitations of SMS. You can only input so many characters (I believe 160 or less?) so there is a necessity for abbreviation to fit the entire message.
As Japanese phone users don`t bother with the highly limited SMS system and use straight email, there is no need to cut down the number of characters being used. As there has never really been much reason to abbreviate, there is no real phone related abbreviation going on.

Not to say that there is no abbreviation - Japanese tends to abbreviate things all the time, in both text and speech. But not in the way of making a kanji easier to write, but in making the word shorter or more fluid to say.

Internet has it`s small handful of slang. For example, the w example given above. It only works on a keyboard where you input in romaji. On a cell it is an incredible pain, so you don`t see it in phone mail much.
Another good one is orz - a little person collapsing either in despair or exasperation.
kwsk - in more detail
(ry - you know the rest
wktk - I am so looking forward to this/that

etc etc etc
But again, these are keyboard based. You will rarely see them used in messages sent from phones.