Carton Nicholson
Professor
English 1101
11/18/2018
What are you really trying to say
There are a lot of things flying out of mouths each and every day. Do you ever take your time and think about what your really saying; even if it’s just for a second? One of my old friends from middle school attempted to count all the times he said f*ck in one day. He lost count after about 20. At the time we were just ten and eleven years old. It’s hard to imagine why on earth a ten year old would say f*ck almost twenty times a day. What could they possibly be stressed about at this age? The truth is we all say things without necessarily thinking about it. There is a time and place for the language we us. The language we use will impact the message we are trying to send and the community of people we are surrounded by.
So where do some informal words come from? What do those informal words mean?. Infromal words are just another way of saying Slang. Slang mainly functions as a way of being comfortable. If your not comfortable, then why are you trying to use slang? “ College slang, or any slang really, comes about just like formal language. There are processes that are shared by both, such as blends or acronyms, but it all comes down to the same basic principle: recycling words and giving them whole new meanings.” So what are you really trying to say?
There are many ways to say some words. You can say hello in several different languages.  There are 15 ways to say “Hello” in English Alone. Slang has it’s own ways that people use to say hello. “Yo” is a very a common way of saying it. However, another way of saying hello/greeting would be the word “yer”. “Yer” may not be a universally popular like the word “yo”. However, it primarily is limited to the Newyork and New Jersey area. It is mostly in the Queens and Brooklyn area.
One day you could be visiting someone in the Newyork and Queens and hear “Yerrrrrrr, what’s good bro”? In your head you will immediately think what was just said. Was it even proper English? That’s a totally normal response by the way. Especially when you have no idea what the other person might have been attempting to say. “ Yerrrrr” isn’t in your typical dictionary. Like many other slang words, you could probably find them in your urban dictionary through your search engine. If your familiar with New York than you probably heard “yerrrrrrr” before and perhaps you may even know what it means.
So what does “yerrrrrr” mean? First of all, there are several meanings for it. “Yerr” means one thing while “Yerrrrrrr” means another. It can be very confusing at times. Yer is like other words in this sense. The meaning of the word depends on the tone and duration it is held for. You would think that slang words wouldn’t have such rigid guidelines to it. However, slang words are another language essentially and in order to communicate properly, there has to be some guidance available. If you didn’t have any guidelines, you could possibly have people saying words and nobody comprehending anything at all. That is the truth about slang and other forms of languages  too.
Newyork has so much slang to offer. Foreigners are most likely caught off guard when they hear all the different slang words we have for things. Words like “ Deadass” and “Kicks” are just the top of the iceberg when it comes to what newyork slang has to offer. The good part about it too is that it is also a learning process. I mean you learn as you go along. You could attempt to learn all the slang words in a day. However, you’ll most likely end up using them incorrectly and making a fool of yourself. You pick them up as they become useful to you. For example, I was about 10 when I came across the word “whip”. Now whip can mean to strike something. However, when using it in terms of New York Slang, it means a nice/expensive car. Therefore I didn’t really start using it till me and my friends started driving. They would text in the group chat “who got the whip”. Essentially it is just another way of saying who got the car tonight.
Those words are limited to a  specific community. Some words are specific to a group or community of people. This is because the words are primarily understood by the people within those communities. There is a small chance someone from Africa may understand Newyork Slang. The same goes for African Slang. It may not be easy for every word to be recognized outside of the community. The English language doesn’t recognize every word either. Some words are just limited to the community that they originated from. That is the purpose of some community specific words. There are some words that should be universal. Therefore, I feel as if we have come to point where we’re not focused on being universal all the time. We are focused on making ourselves comfortable in our own separate communities.
Slang has evolved so much throughout time. We all our own individual ways of saying things and that’s what makes us unique. The words we may be comfortable using today, could be out
dated in a matter of the span of a few years. Some things that were cool in 2006 are no longer cool in today society. Our society is constantly changing each day to incorporate and eliminate so many different things. We have the option to either adapt with the time ms or leave things alone. Some of us may try to hold on to the past as long as we are able too. There is a possibility I may be the only 90 year old screaming “yer” and “deadass” in the future. I am perfectly okay with that future. 
