Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.
Yes that was implied.
You also have people that think it’s “yeah?”
Really, just don’t use it for “yeah”.
If a shortcut creates ambiguity, then the only way to avoid that ambiguity is to avoid the shortcut.
You can try to define it a certain way, but it won’t work if it depends on people seeing your definition because most people won’t see it. And even if they did see it, they’d need to agree with it.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of interpreting single letters as the name of the letter instead of the sound, unless it’s an initial. I don’t feel strongly enough to complain about it if I see someone use “u” instead of “you”, but your post made me realize I don’t even think of “why” when I see y, I just think “yes”, though context probably affects that.
I guess the ambiguity comes from non native English speakers using it.
It was used for “why” in the 90s and early 2000s.