dont understand this!

[romance]

can someone please tell me why people in costa rica and other spanish speaking countries use the letter "q" randomly in a sentence? for ex: :"q maldito bastardo no se burle" (sorry for the use of language there just copied and pasted something randomly). if someone could explain to me why people pput the "q" it'd be nice! thank you!

[diegonel]

Romance,

I am not sure of the case you quote. But in my country , mainly on the msn, some people tend to write "q" intead of "que" that means what (wh word) or that (defining or non defining clasuse) so as to shorten the word. But in this phrase, i think it is not so, since "que (q) maldito bastardo no se burle" doesn't make sense, unless there is comma "que (q) maldito bastardo, no se burle!"
Probably this Costa Ricans stuff.
regards
diego

[gise1984]

It's just a way to abbreviate the word. It's like Diego said, instead of writing the entire word, que, we just use "q"... It's like when you say things like "btw" or "brb" and things like that... And in this case it's just that, the sentence is just missing a comma, it should be "q (que) maldito bastardo, no se burle"

[Sepahunt22]

I have also seen it abbreviated by using the letter K instead of Q, such as in "K pasa?" or "k estás haciendo"? or "Por K"?

This is quite common, I have found, in chat rooms like Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger, and also in cell phone texts.

[gentle]

Another distortion from the new texting trends to reshape grammar! :-)

[KarenE]

Remember that Spanish is a phonetic language so it lends itself very well to texting and abbreviations of this nature in general.

I remember common usage years ago: K7 (cassette)

In texting the use of the k is common because it means you can omit the 'u' in 'qu' so it's quicker:

k kieres = que quieres

etc