T9: the Widowoaler

[undyingking]

Following a link from languagelog, I learned some things about predictive text.

Did you know that the commonest predictive text system is called T9? I didn't. But I do now.

I'm pretty far from being plugged into the hep youthful argot of the streets, but even I've heard people referring to something as "book" to mean "cool". And of course everyone knows that "Smirnoff" is really "Poisoned". But I hadn't come across "chubi" to mean "bitch" -- I guess my friends are too well-spoken to need that.

And I had never noticed that "Ask the cool barmaid for nine pints of beer" could mean "Ask the book carnage for mind shots of adds". Had you?

Apparently in Swedish, if you try to type gästlista (guest list), T9 will instead recommend hästkista (horse-coffin). You may wonder why horse-coffin is even in the phone's vocabulary.

What I want to know though is: on my old phone, the first suggestion for 99 was "xx", quite useful when signing off a text. On my current phone though it comes up with "wy" first. Wy on earth would anyone choose that ahead of kiss-kiss? I can only think of "wyvern".

Edited to add: and here's a blog for people who want to get words added to the dictionary. "Corned beef (it has beef, but not corned)".

Comments

Doris

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

A word I often type is 'empire', the predictive text for the first 5 letters is 'doris'.

Re: Doris

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

If I was to ask why you frequently have to type 'empire', would that give away too many of your plans for world domination?

Re: Doris

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

As in 'how fares the empire?'

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Grr... T9. My last phone didn't allow stuff to be added to the dictionary ;-(
My current (unsupported unbundled) phone didn't ship with the T9 dictionary, so I had to download and install it from a german FTP site.
Also, try typing 'seeya' - it comes out as 'reexa'. WHY?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It's not just you!

First part of "reexamine".

[pmcray.livejournal.com]

A particular irk I find is that "cup" comes before "bus". How often is one likely to want to enter "cup"?

The "wy" rather than "xx" is very tedious. I assume that most of the absurdities are less absurd if one is texting in Finnlish or Swedlish.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

As a wise woman once said, a man still texting 'cup' after the age of 30 has failed at life.

[almostalady.livejournal.com]

My phone tries to start every message with the word "wine". Which is a bit of a pest because about six times out of ten I actually want that to be the second or third word instead.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Zhod xgmf wine?