Older people have their own ‘lingo’

While youngsters may communicate with each other using their own language, it seems older British folk are just as ‘cool’ with their own ‘generational lingo’.

In a bid to show it is not just the younger generations that are up-to-date with the latest technologies, texting abbreviations or acronyms, recently launched by Wigan’s branch of AGE UK, the country’s largest charity for older people, are proving useful in communication strategies among seniors.

You may or may not be familiar with some of the latest acronyms used by youth today such as ‘BFF’, which translates to ‘best friends forever’; but in elderly texting in Britain this reportedly means ‘best friend fell’.

Other text alternatives are ‘TTYL’, which ordinarily means ‘talk to you later’, but for older generations this would translate as ‘talk to you louder’.

Some of the other abbreviations which have been cleverly developed by Wigan includes: ‘LMDO’ – laughing my dentures out, ‘GHA’ – got heartburn again and ‘FWIW’ – forgot where I was.

Wigan’s John McArdle says while the “light-hearted” abbreviations help seniors to easily communicate with each other and their loved ones, he ultimately wants people to “sit up and listen”.

“We wanted the message to be funny… but there is a serious message behind it that we wanted the list of text talk to deliver,” Mr McArdle claims.

“IT in general is largely considered to be a young person’s [domain], but we wanted people to know that older generations can keep up with them and let them know that there are a group of older people out there who use all kinds of technology every day,” he says.

According to Mr McArdle, who was interviewed by British media, the text abbreviations are there to “engage people on a human level”.

It is a strategy which Mr McArdle and his colleagues hope will show older generations that technology is not “scary” by introducing an element of humour.

 “An important line of enquiry for the emergency services these days is look in your mobile in an emergency to find an ICE contact which is someone to contact ‘in case of emergency,’ so coming to grips with technology could actually have huge benefits,” he claims.

The abbreviations were recently introduced at a seminar held by Wigan’s branch of AGE UK.