'My bluds say the skets round here are nuff deep' - the new inner city language

[editor]

Here's an interesting article from the Indie. I understand most of the quoted conversation. Just!

From the mouths of teens
A 'perfect storm' of conditions has seen teen slang from inner-city London spread across the country. But where does this new language originate from? And, if you can't stop kids from speaking it, is there any way to decipher what the words mean...

At the back of a London bus, two teenagers are engaged in animated conversation. "Safe, man," says one. "Dis my yard. It's, laahhhk, nang, innit? What endz you from? You're looking buff in them low batties."

"Check the creps," says the other. "My bluds say the skets round here are nuff deep."

"Wasteman," responds the first, with alacrity. "You just begging now." The pair exit the vehicle, to blank stares of incomprehension.

Later, this dialogue is related to Gus, a 13-year-old who attends an inner London comprehensive; he wastes no time in decoding it.

''Safe just means hi,'' he says briskly. "Your yard is like your home, where you're from. Nang just means good. Your endz is your neighbourhood. Buff is, like, attractive. Low batties are trousers that hang really low on your waist. Creps are trainers. Bluds are your mates. Skets are sort of slutty girls. Nuff means very. Deep is the same as harsh or out of order. Wasteman is what you say to someone when you're fed up with them. And begging," he concludes, with a flourish, "means chatting rubbish."

There's more: butters means ugly, hype is excitement, bare is a lot, cotching is hanging around, and allow it is a plea to leave something or someone alone. "Everyone in my school speaks like this," says Gus, a little wearily. "It's because you hear the cool kids saying these words and then you have to do it too. You've got to know them all and you've got to keep up. Nobody wants to be uncool," he adds, with a shudder. "That's, like..."

Sick?

"No, sick is good," he says patiently. "I guess it would just be, you know, deep."

Gus and his ilk have been caught up in an emerging linguistic phenomenon. Researchers have found that, while most traditional cockney speech patterns have followed traditional cockneys as they've migrated out to Essex and Kent and other points beyond the M25, teenagers in inner London, one of the world's most ethnically diverse areas, are forging a separate multi-ethnic youth-speak based on common culture rather than ethnic or social background.

Multiculturalism may have become a political hot potato for everyone from Daily Mail leader writers to Trevor Phillips, but anyone passing a metropolitan playground will realise that, linguistically at least, the melting-pot patois is already a reality from Tooting to Tower Hamlets.

"It is likely that young people have been growing up in London exposed to a mixture of second-language English and varieties of English from other parts of the world, as well as local London English, and that this new variety has emerged from that mix," says Sue Fox, a language expert from London University's Queen Mary College, who's in the middle of a three-year project called Linguistics Innovators: The Language of Adolescents in London, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Fox and her colleagues have studied the speech patterns of a sample of teenagers across the capital.

"One of our most interesting findings," she says, "was that we'd have groups of students from white Anglo-Saxon backgrounds, along with those of Arab, South American, Ghanaian and Portuguese descent, and they all spoke with the same dialect. But those who use it most strongly are those of second or third generation immigrant background, followed by white boys of London origin and then white girls of London origin."

More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/from-the-mouths-of-teens-422688.html

 

[frogwoman]

there's nothing wrong with this, and no point trying to stop it either, the language always changes.

 

[fogbat]

there's nothing wrong with this, and no point trying to stop it either, the language always changes.

As someone over 30, I fear and distrust change.

 

[frogwoman]

As someone over 30, I fear and distrust change.

Dost thou? Dost thou really?

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

As someone over 30, I fear and distrust change.

I had my first technology-induced rage the other day.

 

[Idris2002]

Dost thou? Dost thou really?

Yes we do.

 

[frogwoman]

Yes we do.

i just got that.

After my birthday this year (25) I will officially be "approaching 30"

 

[editor]

there's nothing wrong with this, and no point trying to stop it either, the language always changes.

The ability of the English language to absorb new words is one of its greatest strengths.

 

[xenon]

It's not that new. I guess it may be more developped now but kids always swapped and picked up slang from their peers or TV.

 

[Idris2002]

i just got that.

After my birthday this year (25) I will officially be "approaching 30"

Soon you will be listening to Ed Rearden's Week and nodding your head with vigorous agreement.

 

[8ball]

Dost thou? Dost thou really?

Verily.

 

[goldenecitrone]

The abaility of the English language to absorb new words is one of its greatest strengths.

I had no problems understanding the article, but is this some kind of cricketing reference?

 

[frogwoman]

Soon you will be listening to Ed Rearden's Week and nodding your head with vigorous agreement.

who's ed rearden? is that like the lletsa of radio?

 

[8ball]

The abaility of the English language to absorb new words is one of its greatest strengths.

 

[xenon]

who's ed rearden? is that like the lletsa of radio?

It's quite a funny show Radio 4. He's a cantankerous down at heal writer in his 50's railing against and getting irritated by the modern world.

 

[Geri]

I know from my niece that sick means good, and sket is an insult for a woman who looks rather rough.

 

[gentlegreen]

I hope for their sakes that when they grow up, they'll be able to speak properly.

 

[frogwoman]

It's quite a funny show Radio 4. He's a cantankerous down at heal writer in his 50's railing against and getting irritated by the modern world.

So the answer is yes then

 

[JHE]

there's nothing wrong with this, and no point trying to stop it either, the language always changes.

Yes, of course language changes, but (equally obviously) that doesn't mean anyone has to like every change or adopt every innovation.

One of the characteristics of youth slang (and other slang) is that much of it is ephemeral. Some of the terms identified and explained in that article may still be around in five, ten years or even 50 years, but others - I predict most - will not be.

I'm not sure to what extent a generation retains the slang of its youth as it gets older. For example I'm really unsure how much I or other people of my age use the slang of the 70s and 80s. A bit, but not very much, I think.

Will today's teenagers still be 'cotching' with their 'bluds' in 30 or 40 years' time? I don't know, but I do hope they stop wearing 'low batties'.

 

[sihhi]

Multiculturalism may have become a political hot potato for everyone from Daily Mail leader writers to Trevor Phillips, but anyone passing a metropolitan playground will realise that, linguistically at least, the melting-pot patois is already a reality from Tooting to Tower Hamlets.

I don't see much evidence of "melting-pot" it's 'street talk' British West Indian dominance - same as it's been for the past 20 years - cotch, yard, blud, safe, butters ... these have been around a long, long time - some are newer.

Other non-English languages Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Albanian, Arabic, Turkish, Polish, Vietnamese etc aren't really part of it only within those backgrounds are there new words formed by code-switching, but these slang words don't catch on beyond.

It is likely that young people have been growing up in London exposed to a mixture of second-language English and varieties of English from other parts of the world, as well as local London English, and that this new variety has emerged from that mix

Also sket is slut, with all the problems of the latter.

 

[xenon]

I hope for their sake that when they grow up, they'll be able to speak properly.

Why wouldn't they. Did you not use slang at school? Most peple with a modicom of inteligence work out pretty quickly to modify their mode of speech dependant on the context.

 

[free spirit]

Problem is, talking like this will prevent kids from getting or keeping jobs.

At least it will if they don't also know how to talk and write properly.

 

[J Ed]

This isn't a problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

 

[Lo Siento.]

I hope for their sakes that when they grow up, they'll be able to speak properly.

for what future?

 

[gentlegreen]

Did you not use slang at school?

No. Why would I ?

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Why wouldn't they. Did you not use slang at school? Most peple with a modicom of inteligence work out pretty quickly to modify their mode of speech dependant on the context.

That's just jive-talking. Cats don't spin those spanners no more, maan.

 

[gentlegreen]

for what future?

That's a whole other problem.

 

[frogwoman]

What prattling thou speakest.

 

[8ball]

I hope for their sake that when they grow up, they'll be able to speak properly.

I blame the Teletubbies - it's a further repeat of what happened when The Clangers were popular and 20 years later my entire generation can only whistle.

Fortunately, rather like Cantonese and Mandarin, the writing is the same in our whistle-tongue so I can communicate with you over the internet.

 

[sihhi]

No. Why would I ?

From Slang: Today and Yesterday (1934) could have been one of the following:

"1.In sheer high spirits, by the young in heart as well as by the young in years; ‘just for the fun of the thing’; in playfulness or waggishness.
2.As an exercise either in wit and ingenuity or in humour. (The motive behind this is usually self-display or snobbishness, emulation or responsiveness, delight in virtuosity).
3.To be ‘different’, to be novel.
4.To be picturesque (either positively or – as in the wish to avoid insipidity – negatively).
5.To be unmistakably arresting, even startling.
6.To escape from clichés, or to be brief and concise. (Actuated by impatience with existing terms.)
7.To enrich the language. (This deliberateness is rare save among the well-educated, Cockneys forming the most notable exception; it is literary rather than spontaneous.)
8.To lend an air of solidity, concreteness, to the abstract; of earthiness to the idealistic; of immediacy and appositeness to the remote. (In the cultured, the effort is usually premeditated, while in the uncultured it is almost always unconscious when it is not rather subconscious.)
9a.To lesson the sting of, or on the other hand to give additional point to, a refusal, a rejection, a recantation;
b.To reduce, perhaps also to disperse, the solemnity, the pomposity, the excessive seriousness of a conversation (or of a piece of writing);
c.To soften the tragedy, to lighten or to ‘prettify’ the inevitability of death or madness, or to mask the ugliness or the pity of profound turpitude (e.g. treachery, ingratitude); and/or thus to enable the speaker or his auditor or both to endure, to ‘carry on’.
10.To speak or write down to an inferior, or to amuse a superior public; or merely to be on a colloquial level with either one’s audience or one’s subject matter.
11.For ease of social intercourse. (Not to be confused or merged with the preceding.)
12.To induce either friendliness or intimacy of a deep or a durable kind. (Same remark.)
13.To show that one belongs to a certain school, trade, or profession, artistic or intellectual set, or social class; in brief, to be ‘in the swim’ or to establish contact.
14.Hence, to show or prove that someone is not ‘in the swim’.
15.To be secret – not understood by those around one. (Children, students, lovers, members of political secret societies, and criminals in or out of prison, innocent persons in prison, are the chief exponents.)"