When and how did kitten get to be "kitteh"?

It started with Caturday and grew into LOLCats, like on I can haz cheezburger. wiki

I first saw it on Cute Overload.

@janbb As another old fart I would have guessed it to be a play on a regional or cultural accent that got adopted and spread because it seemed cute. Cute was once a short for oh acute.

When I hear slang I don’t understand,I just hit them with a pie.It’s so satisfying ;)

And cute becomes kittenish and then grating after enough time. I’m with lucille^3.

I’m with @gemiwing.

You lost me with that one. We must be off the main track up here in the sticks.

@Adirondackwannabe: Which “sticks” are you talking about? You live near me, I think?

@gailcalled Yeah, we’re not far apart. I just kid janbb because she’s a jersey girl and we’re upstate NY’ers.

@Adirondackwannabe: Did you get that astonishing storm twice yesterday and last night, and do you have a perfect afternoon now?

Ah – just admit it, Jersey girls are da best!

@gailcalled It went just to our south, missing us by a few miles. The lightning was unbelievable! The sky lit up like crazy.
@janbb I’ll admit that only on the pain off death! Ha. (Okay, pretty swell)

@Adirondackwannabe You are such a pushover!

@janbb only for a jersey girl:)

:-)

Almost sounds like something that might have sprouted from South Park.

Kitteh evolved (or devolved, depending upon your point of view) from lolspeak as it’s own genre into lolcat.

I can has cheeseburger has a section outlining the grammar “rules” for lolcat.

If you really want to keep up on all the latest, the following sites are helpful.

www.speaklolspeak.com

….....................................

www.speaklolcat.com

…...........................................

And if you become really fluent (or just want a really good laugh) head on over to:

www.lolcatbible.com

Yes, that’s right. A translation of the Bible into lolcat. The pictures are a riot. The eternal struggle between good (ceiling cat) and evil (cellar cat).

Truly epic~~ And “Caturday is coming”

:D

I love LOL cats!

@Buttonstc You are such a useful person to have around!

Wow! What a compliment @janbb! Send him a card (uh…him?) that says “You are my friend. I love you because you are useful to have around!!” Um, don’t send that to your husband though….

And of course, “Theres an App for that”. Several, as a matter of fact.

Lolcats free

Daily lolcats

Lolcats maker

And others too numerous to list.

A word to the wise however. The initial cleverness and cuteness of the pictures and captions may eventually be replaced by sensory overload.

After enough of this I decided it reminded me way too much of work, what with all of the frequent corrections necessary in reading the literary efforts of the third graders whom I taught. My initial delight was soon replaced by a splitting headache.

And this crap is written by supposed adults.

Just take it in small doses. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. For those of us who actually enjoy the English language in uncorrupted form, reading some of the execrable mangling of proper spelling can be acutely painful.

A good editor or proofreader could conceivably have a coronary if overexposed :)

In case of panic, an emergency antidote can be found at

www.verbivore.com

The websites editor is a member of Mensa (and it shows). He himself didn’t supply that info. I saw it in a documentary. Interesting guy. He’s like the Edwin Newman for the digital age. Keeping us on out toes.

@Dutchess

Actually I’m a she :)

@jan

Thank you. I just have a lively curiosity and when I first encountered the lolcat Bible, I just had to check it out. I found if fascinating that people would evidently devote enormous amounts of time to this.

I was totally mystified and spent several days looking into the whole LOL phenomenon. But I reached overload pretty fast and can now only take it in small doses :)

@Buttonstc ah!!! I’ll remember that! Sorry~

Well first I’m pretty sure “kitteh” is supposed to be “kitty,” not “kitten.”
And second I’ve seen it since at least 2004… way before lolcats came (2007ish)

It’s just a cute way to talk, like “i luffles mah kitteh!!! <3”

It’s origin has nothing to do with lolcats, even if lolcat pictures do use the word. =/
There are lots of examples of words spelled/pronounced different just to sound cute/fluffy/whatever, like luff(love) and fluffeh, poofeh, (anything else ending in y).

Never heard of that variation.

Strictly speaking you’re correct about it not originating from lolcats. It’s origins were lolspeak which was little known when it first started.

But along with “teh” and “pwned”, “kitteh” definitely made it’s first written appearance informally as part of lolspeak way way before 2004.

And then lolspeak begat it’s own branch which became lolcats.

If you follow their spelling “rules” (which they have created) kitteh follows a similar pattern to “teh” (an almost universal typo of “the”) which morphed into the acceptance of teh as part of their own language meme, limited, at first, just to those in the know but eventually making it’s way into the mainstream.

This type of stuff along with L77tspeak (leetspeak) was a type of shorthand or code for the early tech savvy denizens of the Internet. You can still see it in screennames even nowadays. If someone asked about any of these terms, that was their way of identifying the noobs, sometimes not with kind intentions.

Nowadays, with the widespread use of computers and Q&A sites, pretty much anyone with an Internet connection can figure it out.

Even 4chan has garnered articles in the MSM so not much is secret anymore. Even txtspeak is creeping into everything ~

So, ironically, the best response is to revert to standard grammar and spelling usage which so many young people (the schools being as lax as they generally are) can not remember how to properly decode. And the beat goes on…...

:D

@Buttonstc

You spelled “1337 speak” wrong. =9

Also I don’t think the term lolspeak was even coined until after lolcats was.
I always just call it internet speak. (you can call it whatever you want to though.)

Also, the reason I said “at least 2004” was because I wasn’t even on the internet very much before that. (I was 12. And yes that means I used words like kitteh a lot XD) So I’m not surprised if cutesy words were used before then, but I wasn’t sure. I know 1337 speak was used for a long time before that though.

Nope, it’s still kitten, I checked.

@snowcloud

You’re correct about the number goof up. My bad. Just stupid carelessness.

As to what spawned what and what it was called, these things are hard to pin down precisely.

But lolcats clearly started on 4chan long before it became its own site(s). And both L33tspeak and lolspeak were in constant usage there regardless of whether that was their official designation or not.

It’s fun to try to track some of this to see how it evolved.

I know that prior to I can has cheezburger, I personally never saw kitty spelled with eh at the end of it so I’ve always associated it with that.

I’m curious if any other folks have seen it spelled that way prior to the wide popularity of lolcats either on their own sites or on 4chan.

I live in a French place so I’ve never heard that, I just figured it was some other online thing.

:3 kitteh.
:3X kitteh with a bowtie.
*:3 kitteh with a bow.
meowmeow

@chels

Cute. I like that.

:D

<———I nub my :3

Actually, I think its a version of “kitty” rather than “kitten.”

@Buttonstc Oh my goodness, I had never heard of the lolcat bible, so of course I had to go check it out. It’s hilarious! Especially the book of numbers, where in the place of all the “begets” it says “Ruben had liek a lot of kittenz”. I’m cracking up!!

I know. I love it. I first saw it several years ago and most of it focused on Genesis and Revelation, Armageddon and such.

The pics are a laugh riot. I guess I’ll have to pay another visit and check out some of the newer additions.

@Buttonstc After reading @WillWorkForChocolate‘s post on the LOL Cats Bible, I went and looked. One look at Genesis and that was just one of the funniest things I’ve ever started to read! Book marked! Thanks!!

LOL!! An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has lightz in the skiez for splittin day An no day.15 It happen, lights everwear, like christmass, srsly. Like Christmas??!!!

I swear I’ll stop after this one, but it’s a good thing nothing ate Moses when his mom put him in the river because “An teh crocodielz an teh lolrusz did not eated him. Wich wuz good cuz if dey did tehr wudnt b no mor storyz an htis wud b rly short bibul.
My stomach hurts!!! srsly!!

You can’t say I didn’t warn you. That stuff is addictive. Srsly.

:D

@Buttonstc Yes it iz very gud. And ceiling cat did not eated it. Kthxbai.

(I am so sorry I asked this question. Some things it’s better not to know. :-))

Pharo is liek rly laem 4 tellz us puts babyz in teh river an not sais u no can has bukkitz, lol st00pid

You guys aren’t going to believe this. My 23 year old son and 25 year old daughter had never heard of LOL catz!!!!!!!!!! (Where did I go wrong?? I introduced them to Monty Python, but really fell down on the LOL catz, didn’t I!) I introduced my son to them today. He cracked up!

@janbb

Well, you can’t say I didn’t post full warning disclaimers :)

You shouldn’t have brought this up again, @Buttonstc!

An da Ceiling Cat wuz leik “Sarh Palin sz she iz lol kitteh wun of udz an she wuz all liek ‘i duz nut refdiatz dat’ so she iz wun of uz. Agreez?”

THAT’S hard to do!