How to decipher leetspeak.

Are you tired of having your forums trolled, your blog posts assaulted by 1337 h4xx0rz? Do you have no idea what's going when you are confronted by the sentence "u r teh n00Bz lolololol"? This how-to will give you an idea what this raving madness is all about.

This confusing language has been masterfully crafted by a crack group of genius computer programmers, geeks and online gaming crybabies. They've created a language that's even more difficult to read than it is to type, and this article is here to help you figure it out.

Most importantly, you need to understand basic leetspeak, the foundation for other, more complex forms of 1337speak(of which there are many). 1=L, 3=E, 4=A, 7=T, and 0=O. This is the very basic level of leetspeak that you need to understand. With this you can decode low level leetspeak, the type typically used by online gaming crybabies and people who have nothing constructive to offer to society. This number system is why leetspeak is sometimes spelled 1337sp34k, or just 1337speak. An important thing to remember is that people who use 1337speak have no grammatical skills whatsoever. Here is an example of a typical sentence written in 1337speak. "u r a t0t4l n00b n0 ski11z ur just a h4kk3r." Decoded, the sentence is "You are a total noob no skills you're just a hacker." Or in normal English, "You are an inexperienced gamer with no skill. You are cheating in some way." You will most likely recieve this message after soundly defeating someone in an online video game.

So, now you should be able to understand basic 1337speak. Simple, isn't it? An important note; the phrase "h4kk3r" is an insult. The phrase "1337 h4xx0r" is a compliment. There are many more subtleties of this nature within 1337speak, but these are learned through experience.