John wrote on his Chinese weblog about a conversation we had the other day over SMS on our cellphones. It went like this:

John: Are you coming back for lunch today? (in Chinese)

Micah: 耶斯 (pronounced "ye si")

John: 古瑞特！ (pronounced "gu rui te")

"Ye si" was supposed to sounds something like "Yes", and "gu rui te" sounds something like "Great". To tell the truth, messaging in "Chinese" like this is not entirely an original idea. A few months ago co-worker Lisa messaged me something like "Good morning" written phonetically in Chinese characters. And I'm not surprised that the people who commented on John's entry mentioned that they used to do this in junior high. In high school I used to write "English" messages phonetically in katakana characters when I was learning the Japanese alphabets.