Slang, to me, it simply intriguing. If you listen to any conversation I have with some of my really close friends, you'd be disgusted by the amount of abbrevs (an abbreviation for the words abbreviation, it's like Inception for words) we use. Most of these spawn from inside jokes, and we rarely use them seriously. One of my friends and I actually keep a list of stupid slang words we hear that we want to try to use more often, just because they sound funny. This is some of the "words" we had:
Totes
Maybs
Probs
Fo shiz
Bomb diggs
Cool beans
Awk sauce
Btdubs
True dat
Errbody
Laters
Super-mega-foxy-awesome-hot
Supes
Presh
Bombdotcom
Rofl waffle
Yuppers
Maybs
Probs
Fo shiz
Bomb diggs
Cool beans
Awk sauce
Btdubs
True dat
Errbody
Laters
Super-mega-foxy-awesome-hot
Supes
Presh
Bombdotcom
Rofl waffle
Yuppers
Swoon sauce
Dece
Supes awk
Awktopus
Yayzies
Dece
Supes awk
Awktopus
Yayzies
I'm sure if you heard me say any of these words, any respect had for me would go out out the window. And that's kind of the point. When I'm talking with my friends, we say stupid stuff like that for the purpose of making each other laugh, because that's what we do when we're together. I understand that there's a time and place for these expressions, though, and that's why you'll never hear me say something like bombdotcom in class. I would try to look into the origins of these words, but I'm not going to for two reasons. One, most of them are fairly obscure and ridiculous, even for slang words, and two, I'm 99% sure they all came from some video or meme somewhere on the internet.
I asked a few of my friends (not just the ones I use these ridiculous sayings with) what colloquial words they used and what they thought of slang in general. All of them said that slang doesn't really bother them, and they use it a fair amount. Some specific words they use are totes, gonna, wanna, deuces (hahahahahaha) and wtf. I am guilty of using all of these, so......
Moving right along to the second bullet point of this X2, there have been plenty of instances when I have said something and immediately recognized its stupidity and told the person I was talking to to never let me use that again. I mean, if you said anything from the list above, wouldn't you have the same reaction?
One if the expressions I use the heck out of is "totes". I really don't have an explanation as to why I use it so much, I just do.
Words that are overused just become space-fillers to me. Like my overuse of totes has led it to become meaningless to me. For example, if someone says something in a conversation and I don't really know how to respond, sometimes (if I know them well enough that I find it ok to sound absolutely uneducated in front of them) I'll just say, "Totes McGoats." And I have absolutely no clue as to why I keep using it. I really don't.
On to the final bullet point. I already kind of said this earlier, but all of the teenagers I asked really didn't mind slang as long as it wasn't offensive to anyone. I didn't ask my parents in an attempt to avoid the half-hour lecture I would've promptly been given.
I guess I don't really know what I'd tell people to allay their fears about their slang use. I mean other that telling them that if you actually have a fear of your "naughty habit of using slang", you need help.
I know this whole post probably makes it seem like all I do is talk like a twitter-obsessed, uneducated teen girl. I promise you this is not the case. Psh, I don't even have a twitter. But seriously, when I use stupid expressions like that with my friends, it's in a mocking manner. We do have semi-intelligent conversations from time to time as well. SEMI-intelligent.
p.s. When I attempted to spell-check this (ohemgee, spellcheck?! yea, I know it's not going to solve all my problems, but it will catch things like the fact that I spelled "expressions" wrong...embarassing...) the amount of yellow highlighter nearly gave me a heartattack until I remembered half the words in this were not actual words.
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