MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

Internet slang is creeping into common usage in a generational word war, Zhang Lei reports.

A few years ago, Ruo (Teng Yang-Tian-Xia), a retired esports player of the real-time action strategy video game League of Legends, blurted out "Uzi, YYDS", when watching Uzi (Jian Zihao), another Chinese professional LOL player, on a live broadcast.

YYDS, the pinyin abbreviation of the four Chinese character expression, literally meaning "eternal god", illustrates one's feeling for something or someone godlike, awesome and exceptional. An equivalent abbreviation in English would be GOAT－greatest of all time－to describe the person who has performed better than anyone else ever, especially in games.

The abbreviated slang reached its peak of popularity at last year's Tokyo Summer Olympics. Whenever a Chinese player won gold at the Games, the video was awash with YYDS bullet comments, a popular feature on online video sites in China, which allows real-time comments from viewers to fly across the screen.