Re: abbreviations in a foreign language (in my case French), I was watching a friend of our daughter's chatting in French on our PC. She spent a lot of time explaining all the short-hand to me. Maybe it does come from S(hort) M(essage) S(ervice) usage.
I joined a chat on a local Flemish radio Web-site for a minute once - I didn't understand a thing, altho I can talk Flemish all day with humans!

So, abbreviations & language usage seem to be cultural things.

Richard