Miguxês (pronounced as /pt/ or pronounced as /pt/), also known in Portugal as pita talk or pita script (pronounced pronounced as /pt/), is an Internet slang of the Portuguese language that was popular in the 2000's and early 2010's among Brazilian teenagers on the Internet and other electronic media, such as messages written on cell phones.
Its name derives from Portuguese: miguxo, a corruption from Portuguese: amiguxo, turn a term used for Portuguese: amiguinho, or "buddy" in Portuguese. This sociolect of Vernacular Brazilian Portuguese brought possible simplifications in the grammatical structures, since the vehicles in which Portuguese: miguxês was used were nearly universally colloquial, often space-delimited (such as SMS messages, instant messengers or social networks). It also tended to have "simpler" orthography in comparison to standard Portuguese orthography, which led to the most strong criticism to it (Portuguese: 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-called leetspeak, Portuguese: miguxês, Portuguese: tiopês and Portuguese: internetês — Brazilian Portuguese for netspeak, 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, Portuguese: 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, Portuguese: miguxês was an item of group identification. So it was not unusual for someone which opposes such subcultures to also develop a distaste for Portuguese: miguxês. Brazilian 'anti-emo' groups usually satirized 'emo' teenagers with use of Portuguese: miguxês.
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 of Portuguese: miguxês may vary individually, and also in each region and in different urban 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, the Portuguese: tiopês (from Portuguese: tiop, which is a corruption of Portuguese Portuguese: tipo, or equivalent to English "like, totally", in Portuguese: tiopês), which mainly uses ingroup memes as well purposeful ridiculous-sounding misspellings to add humor or irony to the message and bring group identification, much like teh of English-derived leetspeak.[2] As it is common for the Portuguese: miguxês, there are detractors of Portuguese: tiopês, 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 and indie kids). Portuguese: Tiopês is also much less common in the Portuguese-speaking Internet community, and is said to be a phenomenon limited to Brazil.