Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 24, 1995 TAG: 9508250118
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
If he says "p-h-a-t," thank him.
He's just told you he thinks you're cool. Of course, you won't FEEL very cool when it dawns on you that you have no idea what young people are saying today.
Evidently, teen-agers have some trouble keeping up with the latest trends, too.
Nadine Welch, 14, a student at Patrick Henry High School, said the words her friends use seem to change every year. But Joan Carson, a socio-linguist at the University of Georgia, said that what's in and what's out actually changes faster than that and the news media probably are responsible.
"We hear it on MTV," Welch agreed.
Carson prefers to think of teen-age slang as a variation of standard English. Every group, from journalists to school teachers, has its own language, a special vocabulary that sets it apart, she said.
Teen-agers use slang to "try to develop a sense of themselves," she said. It's a way of establishing that they're not children even though they're not adults.
Mignon Chubb-Hale, a teacher at Lucy Addison Magnet Middle School, said she often has to stop students and ask them what they're saying.
"Usually they'll tell me," she said. The slang her students use has changed often in the 28 years she's been teaching, she added.
"My students are always eager to educate me," said Robert Brill, who has spent 40 years in the classroom and teaches English at Northside High School.
Students seem to be using more profanity than ever, he said, but it's so pervasive in our society that many of them "don't think they said anything wrong."
Despite the increase in cursing, Brill said he doesn't think his students are any "worse" than they were years ago.
Chubb-Hale said she thinks young people use slang "so we won't know what they're saying," but Cassandra Carter, 14, a student at Addison, said they do it because "it's in style."
Anyone who mistakenly uses a word that is "out" is quickly - and thoroughly - corrected, she said.
Brill teaches only advanced English courses. Interestingly, although his students come from a variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and can often be heard using slang in the hallways between classes, it "disappears when they walk into the classroom," he said. "They fit in with what's expected of them."
Although teen-agers talk a lot about wanting to be "different," Brill has observed that they don't want to be different from each other. They simply love to shock their elders and don't want to be like them.
For Jeremy Baldwin, 15, a Governor's School student based at William Fleming, whether or not he uses slang "depends on who I'm with. I use it to communicate better, to get the message across."
Teen-age slang changes from region to region, and even from school to school in some large cities, Carson said.
Jeanette Golden, 12, who was visiting Roanoke from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., this summer, said her friends use phrases such as "you'd better regulate" - meaning "stop it" - that she hasn't heard here.
Much of the slang that is commonly used in mainstream English, such as "cool," the now-defunct "groovy," and the relatively new "dissing," originally were used exclusively by black Americans, Carson said, but other groups decided they were useful.
No one knows which words will cross over, she said. "There's no way to predict it." But the new words "fill a gap in our lexicon."
Until "dissing" came along, there really was no word in the language with the same meaning.
Black American culture has been a rich source of many new words. A strong oral tradition has developed because for centuries, teaching slaves to read and write was illegal. Rap music and the ritualized insults known as "doing the dozens" also are outgrowths of this, Carson said.
But, because slang is really an oral language, it's anybody's guess how we agree upon how a word, such as "phat," should be spelled. It's "completely arbitrary," Carson said, and yet, somehow, it works out. For instance, when the word "gnarly" first became popular, she said, each of her three sons spelled it differently at first, but now they all spell it the same way.
Young people from minority groups tend to use more slang than other kids do, Carson said, because they are not only identifying themselves as teen-agers, but also as nonwhites.
Welch said black students at her school do seem to have a wider vocabulary of slang than the white students.
Carter said that white teen-agers sometimes try to adopt words used by black kids. "It doesn't bother me, but sometimes they say it wrong," she laughed.
HOW TO TALK COOL IN SCHOOL
Here's a quick guide to what your kids are saying:
Banking - A group of people beating up on one person.
Phat - Cool
Butta - See "phat"
Hype - See "phat"
Gee up - Fashionably dressed
Gear - Phat clothing, such as Nike shirts and caps
Kicks - Shoes
Stop stressing/Stop bugging - You're getting on my nerves
Talk to the hand - What you're saying is boring, and I don't want to hear it.
Preppy - Stuck up and conceited
Hottie - A good-looking guy
Hottie and a half - A very good-looking guy
He all there/he fine - See "hottie"
Rocks - Something that rocks is cool
Hook me up - Please introduce me to that person
All that - Snobby, as in "she's all that"
All that and (a food item) - Very snobby
``Yo!Gee!'' - Hey there, good buddy
Cool - Cool
Geek - Geek
Nerd - Nerd
Some things never change.
Thanks to Latisha Williams, Jeanette Golden, Cassandra Carter, Laytoya Jones, Nadine Welch and Jeremy Baldwin for the translations.
by CNB