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Miguxês (Portuguese pronunciation:[miɡuˈʃes] or[miɣuˈʃeʃ]), also known inPortugal aspita talk orpita script (pronounced[ˈpitɐ]), is anInternet slang of thePortuguese language that was popular in the 2000s and early 2010s amongBrazilian teenagers on theInternet and other electronic media, such as messages written oncell phones.
Its name derives frommiguxo, a corruption fromamiguxo, turn a term used foramiguinho, or "buddy" in Portuguese. Thissociolect of VernacularBrazilian Portuguese brought possible simplifications in the grammatical structures, since the vehicles in whichmiguxês was used were nearly universally colloquial, often space-delimited (such asSMS messages,instant messengers orsocial networks). It also tended to have "simpler" orthography in comparison to standard Portuguese orthography, which led to the most strong criticism to it (miguxês without its common alternative spellings was associated with the just normal Internet and/or youth slang).[1]
There are identitarian and orthographic differences between the so-calledleetspeak,miguxês,tiopês andinternetês — Brazilian Portuguese fornetspeak, 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,miguxês 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,miguxês was an item of group identification. So it was not unusual for someone which opposes such subcultures to also develop a distaste formiguxês. Brazilian 'anti-emo' groups usually satirized 'emo' teenagers with use ofmiguxês.
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.
Although orthography rules ofmiguxês may vary individually, and also in each region and in differenturban tribes since it is plain broken Portuguese, there are certain characteristics often commonly found as:
Brazilian indie and scene kids used a related Internet sociolect, thetiopês (fromtiop, which is a corruption of Portuguesetipo, or equivalent to English "like, totally", intiopês), which mainly usesingroupmemes as well purposeful ridiculous-soundingmisspellings to add humor or irony to the message and bring group identification, much liketeh of English-derived leetspeak.[2] As it is common for themiguxês, there are detractors oftiopês, 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 andindie kids).Tiopês is also much less common in the Portuguese-speaking Internet community, and is said to be a phenomenon limited to Brazil.