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RE: Randumbness: Some Things you See are just so WEIRD they are Plain Funny!
When I lived in Indonesia, I was taught formal language, which included proper grammar, good sentence structure, etc.
When I spoke with people in everyday settings and communicated via text, informal language was the norm.
Imagine trying to copy a teenager's text into Google Translate. The results would not be great. It does seem that someone was picking words from a dictionary without understanding the context of how those words are properly used.
Context is key for good communication!
Good point @sumatranate; you were an ESL teacher, I presume? Or were you there for a different purpose?
When I lived in the south of Spain as a teenager and was learning the local dialect, there were definitely some regional idioms that were not part of "Castilian Spanish."
I worked with a social foundation that focused on conversational English. I studied the national language (Indonesian) formally, but in the province where I lived, there were 8-10 dialects.
Technology has advanced tremedously in regards to translations but I still recommend that if you plan on communicting in a langauge you work towards learning that language.
Learning the local language has always made sense to me. We traveled extensively when I was a kid, and my dad always made a point of making sure we had basic vocabulary... from French to Swahili...