I just want to communicate to you that it's Saturday and time to take another marble out of the jar.

As we all know, communicating is a two-way street. One has to "transmit" and the other person must "receive"... both on the same wave length. Your message has to be geared to your target audience. If you speak a foreign language the other person doesn't understand, you will be hopelessly lost in getting them to comprehend what you are trying to convey.

In today's computer world, one almost has to learn a new language in order to communicate effectively. You not only have to master the technical language associated with operating a computer, but one is, also, subjected to a barrage of what you might call "computer cuties"... a shrewd selection of such things as "emoticons" or "e-mail acronyms".  

Emoticons are a very clever use of standard punctuation marks to express a human emotion. They are a kind of "shorthand" that Internet users have developed so they can express certain thoughts and emotions without wasting valuable time typing them out. For example when you wish to say, "I am happy", you just type :-)  When you are sad, it's :-(

Another form of encryption used in today's modern world of e-mail communication is the use of acronyms. I expect that many of you use these shortcuts in your messages. You know what I am talking about.... acronyms such as:
FYI        For Your Information
LOL        Laughing Out Loud
BTW       By The Way
TTYL      Talk To You Later

Learning some of these "emoticons" and "acronyms" so I could be "hip" with today's computer users got me to thinking about what we kids used in our day.... it was called "Pig Latin". I was never very proficient speaking or understanding "Pig Latin", but some kids I knew were "experts" in it.

Pig Latin was a twist of English for those of us who wanted to be silly, or for kids who didn't want their parents to know what they were talking about. Here is the way I learned it from my friends: For words, which begin with a single consonant, take the consonant off the front of the word and add it to the end of the word. Then add ay after the consonant. Here are some examples:
cat = atcay
dog = ogday
simply = implysay
noise = oisnay  

Some folks say incorporating Pig Latin into our educational system could be very beneficial. They say that Pig Latin is one of the easiest foreign languages to learn, and English is closer to its Pig Latin roots than to its roots in classical Latin. In addition, they muse, the uses of Pig Latin encryption for email security have barely been explored; the potential benefits are incalculable.

While I am not sure Pig Latin or these other new language forms will ever take over Internet e-mail completely, rest assured as long as man feels the need to either "encrypt" or "shorten" the written word, we will need to learn some of them in order to communicate effectively with our friends.

Have a GREAT day, friend!

FYI, U R 2 good 2B 4 got 10

TTYL

Don

:-)