International Style

International Style
=====================

Although the Jargon File remains primarily a lexicon of hacker usage
in American English, we have made some effort to get input from
abroad.  Though the hacker-speak of other languages often uses
translations of jargon from English (often as transmitted to them by
earlier Jargon File versions!), the local variations are interesting,
and knowledge of them may be of some use to travelling hackers.

There are some references herein to `Commonwealth hackish'.  These are
intended to describe some variations in hacker usage as reported in
the English spoken in Great Britain and the Commonwealth (Canada,
Australia, India, etc. -- though Canada is heavily influenced by
American usage).  There is also an entry on {{Commonwealth Hackish}}
reporting some general phonetic and vocabulary differences from
U.S. hackish.

Hackers in Western Europe and (especially) Scandinavia report that
they often use a mixture of English and their native languages for
technical conversation.  Occasionally they develop idioms in their
English usage that are influenced by their native-language styles.
Some of these are reported here.

On the other hand, English often gives rise to grammatical and
vocabulary mutations in the native language.  For example, Italian
hackers often use the nonexistent verbs `scrollare' (to scroll) and
`deletare' (to delete} rather than native Italian `scorerre' and
`cancellare'.  Similarly, the English verb `to hack' has been seen
conjugated in Swedish.  European hackers report that this happens
partly because the English terms make finer distinctions than are
available in their native vocabularies, and partly because deliberate
language-crossing makes for amusing wordplay.

A few notes on hackish usages in Russian have been added where they
are parallel with English idioms and thus comprehensible to
English-speakers.

From the late 1980s onward, a flourishing culture of local,
MS-DOS-based bulletin boards has been developing separately from
Internet hackerdom.  The BBS culture has, as its seamy underside, a
stratum of `pirate boards' inhabited by {cracker}s, phone phreaks, and
{warez d00dz}.  These people (mostly teenagers running PC-clones from
their bedrooms) have developed their own characteristic jargon,
heavily influenced by skateboard lingo and underground-rock slang.

Though crackers often call themselves `hackers', they aren't (they
typically have neither significant programming ability, nor Internet
exposure, nor experience with multi-user systems).  Their vocabulary
has little overlap with hackerdom's.  Nevertheless, this lexicon
covers much of it so the reader will be able to understand what goes
by on bulletin-board systems.

Here is a brief guide to cracker and {warez d00dz} usage:

   * Misspell frequently.  The substitutions

               phone => fone
               freak => phreak

     are obligatory.
   * Always substitute `z's for `s's.  (i.e. "codes" -> "codez").
   * Type random emphasis characters after a post line (i.e. "Hey
     Dudes!#!$#$!#!$").
   * Use the emphatic `k' prefix ("k-kool", "k-rad", "k-awesome")
     frequently.
   * Abbreviate compulsively ("I got lotsa warez w/ docs").
   * Substitute `0' for `o' ("r0dent", "l0zer").
   * TYPE ALL IN CAPS LOCK, SO IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE YELLING ALL THE
     TIME.

These traits are similar to those of {BIFF}, who originated as a
parody of naive BBS users.  For further discussion of the pirate-board
subculture, see {lamer}, {elite}, {leech}, {poser}, {cracker}, and
especially {warez d00dz}.