It’s great to see the kids back to school and college with a small amount of normality slowly returning. But I have to say “what is it with kids’ vocabulary, dialect or ‘lingo’ these days.” I find it a little confusing.
At the best of times I’m not that great at spelling or grammar - strange considering my Mum and Dad could both be considered as Grammarians or at least literature enthusiasts. As for me, do you remember back in the late 1970s when they invented the Speak & Spell gadget with that synthesised voice, asking you to “now spell ....”? That’s about my level. By the way, I can hear an old school friend of mine now saying that to himself... Back to the kids, I sometimes feel I need an updated version of this gadget or a special dictionary or translator app to help me understand the way kids talk these days. It’s totally beyond me.
When our kids were very young, the confusion was different than today. For instance, I loved the times the kids mixed up words. I’m sure we all have our own experiences of this and some simply make me chuckle when I think back. When my daughter was very young she would make some really funny combinations like nins and piddles for pins and needles or lip bum for lip balm.
I especially like this jumbling of words with music tracks. When they hear a song on the radio (back in those days) or more likely via a streaming service for kids today. I think they just basically say - “I’ll make this up as I go”. Why not, good plan if you ask me. On one occasion, we heard our son singing “eighteen sheep”! We couldn’t quite catch the tune and tried to listen for other clues but it was impossible. Then one day, a Maroon 5 song called ‘She will be loved’ came on the radio and there it was again, as he sang along - "eighteen sheep". Got it... There, at the start of the verse:
“Beauty queen of only eighteen
She had some trouble with herself”
Bless him, he hadn’t quite heard the “eighteen and she” properly and made his own decision that it was eighteen sheep!!!!!!
Nowadays, as teenagers, things are confusing but in very different ways. For a start, why does sick (sorry it might be sic) have so many meanings. When asked, why does everything have to be dope, lit or Gucci! On most occasions, I think it’s a different way of saying the same thing but it makes my head hurt. Some simply sound like a noise being made - "yeet" for instance. Hopefully you can see my confusion ‘Fam’... Sorry slipped into teenage mode!!
I’ve only just come to terms with text language. The first time I used OMG on a text, I felt ‘cool’. Sadly, my daughter said to me that this was no longer cool, especially at my age - great, thanks for that!! I’ve even started to ‘not’ use punctuation on text too - “Err Dad, you know you don’t need to use proper writing on a text”. Or “what did I do wrong, why did you use a full stop” were common responses, again totally confusing me! I imagine many of you are now thinking “text, who uses texting these days”. Ok, I’m sorry, now you are going to throw all this other stuff at me like WhatApp, Messenger, Snapchat and all these other social media things that have passed me by I’m afraid. I know of them and use Messenger sporadically and sometimes WhatsApp at work but I feel safe with text.
Well, that is apart from Emojis... These are not easy for me either! Although it can mean I text less words, which is good. However, they again confuse me and the images are so small I can often select the wrong one and have crying face instead of laughing face or worst still if you use the wrong type of wink, smile or combination. Apparently, there are also rules about them, you can’t use the simple smiley face emoji either, this is too ‘passive aggressive’.... As for the combinations, best not to go there...
There's then the 'build an emoji' apps that create some kind of avatar type image of yourself...no thanks, far too complicated for me! Don’t start me on gifs either, those little animated images, they bamboozle me. Bizarre images of a gesture, dance or action on a continuous loop - just staring at me... very odd!
However, I am about to contradict myself massively here because I have to say emojis and gifs have saved me quite a bit in recent times. I guess the use of these is better than my language evolution would have been without them, especially during lockdown. This evolution has seen my vocabulary contain many more expletives than usual. Emojis and gifs are perfect to replace the less pleasant word or phrase!! I’d like to simply blame lockdown for this increase in picture swearing - It will be forever known as Lockdown Language or Covid Cursing. I’m definitely not the only one experiencing this affliction. Hopefully the aftershock of this will be minimal and no long term ‘Dad grumpiness’ (I think that’s a thing) to extend too far once we clear lockdown and beat back the stresses of the pandemic. The kids even bought me an emoji swear-jar. Sadly, we lost track... so this was abandoned!!!
As we all look forward to exiting lockdown and reaching some kind of normality over the coming summer, I’m confident my normal vocabulary will return. I’m sure my emoji and gif understanding will then start to reduce or something new will be developed to confuse me once again.
Take care everyone when the restrictions get lifted. Here’s to better times with better use of the Queen’s English rather than emoji swearing!!!
🎬🏥
Sorry, my attempt at 'take care'...
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