Miguxês

''Miguxês'' ( or ), also known in Portugal as ''pita talk'' or ''pita script'' (pronounced ), is an Internet slang of the Portuguese language that was popular in the 2000s and early 2010s among Brazilian teenagers on the Internet and other electronic media, such as messages written on cell phones.

Brief history

Its name derives from , a corruption from , turn a term used for , or "buddy" in Portuguese. This sociolect of Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese brought possible simplifications in the grammatical structures, since the vehicles in which was used were nearly universally colloquial, often space-delimited (such as SMS messages, instant messengers or social networks). It also tended to have "simpler" orthography in comparison to standard Portuguese orthography, which led to the most strong criticism to it ( without its common alternative spellings was associated with the just normal Internet and/or youth slang).

There are identitarian and orthographic differences between the so-called leetspeak, , and — Brazilian Portuguese for netspeak, which is by far the one that most closely resembles standard Portuguese —, all common sociolects that were found in the Portuguese-speaking digital network community, the three latter ones created in it.

Basically, the use of each category depended on the individual choice and the environment in which people were interacting. While in the Internet, in a general manner, there is a handful of a different phenomenon in which users communicate with abbreviations to simplify writing, carried with it an effective intention, that is, to express an infantile language in a conversation between friends, or even satirize this style of communication. In certain subcultures in Brazil, especially in the case of what is called ' emo' there, was an item of group identification. So it was not unusual for someone which opposes such subcultures to also develop a distaste for . Brazilian ' anti-emo' groups usually satirized 'emo' teenagers with use of .

Together with the cited urban tribes, they started to fall out of the mainstream in the early 2010s, so that they have much lower popularity with the following teen generation that did not see its spreading as a frequent Internet meme.

Spelling

Although orthography rules of may vary individually, and also in each region and in different urban tribes since it is plain broken Portuguese, there are certain characteristics often commonly found as:

* Replacement of ''s'' and ''c'' for ''x'', simulating the palatalization of native Portuguese-speaking children's speech through their language acquisition: ''você'' (Second person singular), (Second person plural) > ''vuxeh'', ''vuxeix'';
* Omission or replacement of diacritics, notably by replacing an acute accent over a vowel with the letter ''h'' after the vowel as in ''é'' ("is") > ''eh'' (to distinguish it from the word ''e'' meaning "and") or ''será'' ("will be") > ''serah''. Or replacing the tilde with ''n''/''m'' to indicate nasalization: ''não'' ("no") > ''nawn''/''naum''
* Replacement of ''i'' by ''ee'', influenced by English orthography: (female kitten, also a slang for pretty girl) > ''gateenha'';
* Replacement of ''o'' and ''e'' by ''u'' and ''i'' respectively, specially in non-tonic syllables: (I want) > ''keru''.
* Replacing the digraph ''qu'' and the letter ''c'' as ''k'' both for brevity and as a form of sensational spelling, and deleting the ''u'' of these environments: (who), (wrote) > ''kem'', ''ixkrevew''

Tiopês

Brazilian indie and scene kids used a related Internet sociolect, the (from , which is a corruption of Portuguese , or equivalent to English "like, totally", in ), which mainly uses ingroup memes as well purposeful ridiculous-sounding misspellings to add humor or irony to the message and bring group identification, much like teh of English-derived leetspeak.The origin of "tiopês" – memepedia – youPIX, people + pixels
As it is common for the , there are detractors of , although much less numbered and for different reasons (usually, people which are detractors at the same time of different youth subcultures deemed alienated, including 'emo' teenagers, scene kids and indie kids). is also much less common in the Portuguese-speaking Internet community, and is said to be a phenomenon limited to Brazil.

Example

;
:
;Rough colloquial Portuguese translation of the piece:
:
; English, literal translation of the Portuguese piece:
: You guys, I ave to tell that Iabsolutely love/adore Uncyclopedia, hahahaha, their ortuguesearticle on us indie kids is awesome, but I have something to say o you not every parody site is cool, some of them promote controversial things such as number ofprejudices, and I am reticent of llthis kind of thing, a good example would be a so-called Encyclopedia Dramatica that in spite of its name, would not be worth of a drama because of its end.

See also

* SMS language
* Cyberculture
* Internet meme

References

''(in Brazilian Portuguese)''

*

*
"O jeito certo de falar errado na internet", ''The right way to misspell on the internet'' - O Estado de S. Paulo, 21/4/2008

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miguxes
Internet slang
Computer-mediated communication
Internet memes
Cant languages