Respond to this post. Think about language and the different ways you communicate or speak. Choose a word or phrase that you use with one group of people (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) that would not be understood by a different group of people in your life. What is the meaning of this word or phrase and how would you explain it to someone who is an outsider to the group who uses it?
Prof. Jessica Penner | OL33 | Fall 2021
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I was born in Mayäguez Puerto Rico and I speak both Spanish and English. When I am around friends and coworkers I have a habit of saying “dito” and that translates to “poor thing” or “precious” depending on the context of the conversation. For example, someone shows you a picture of their new puppy and you’d say “dito how cute.” I say this word so often my close friends say it and they know little to no Spanish.
I was born in Mayagüez Puerto Rico and I speak both Spanish and English. I have a habit of saying the word “dito” and this word translates to “poor thing”or “precious” depending on the conversation. For example, someone shows you a picture of their new puppy and you’d say “dito how cute.” I say this so term so often my coworkers and close friends have started saying it as well and they speak little to no Spanish.
I was born and raised in New York. I speak English and Chinese except my Chinese is pretty broken since I don’t often have much friends that speak it. We would just speak English for the majority. When I would talk to my parents, it would usually be broken Chinese with a few English words replaced. I would hear more conversations with my friends speaking English than my parent’s language. If I were to engage with other people speaking their native or parent’s tongue, then I wouldn’t talk to them knowing my way of speaking to em would be pretty bad. Also because I wouldn’t know where to start.
Growing up in the city there are many terms that come up you use to describe things. For example in my group of friends we use the words cap and bread. Cap does not refer to a baseball cap, cap means to lie. So if we are talking to someone and they say say something we thing they are lying we say that is cap ( a lie) or just show the blue hat emoji. Bread refers to money not the food. One more example is a difference between me and my Dominican friends. They call passion juice chinola as me a Puerto Rican, call is parcha, every time they said chinola I had no idea what they meant.
I live in Brooklyn and slang and communication is very different outside of NY when I left the state a few times. Some words I use with friends is “cap” and “jit”. Cap means someone is lying and Jit means someone who’s little and young. These words I used outside of NY and people are very much confused and when I went to Florida this summer, a common word used over there was Jit and it’s slang for them also. I picked up these words from the environment I lived in and the people I was around and it shows how environment and friends has a huge effect on one’s communication and language they use.
I am Tibetan, so a word I use a lot around my family would be the word “La-say”. It pretty much means “yeah” or ” I understand. So if my mother asks me to get her something, I would reply with “la-say ama”. Additionally, if my grandma was calling me over to help her with something, I would yell “la”, to let her know I heard her and I’m coming.
Albanian was my first language so I’ve always spoke it with my family at home. I have been in situations with certain family members where I would have to explain to them what I say in English so I always try to refrain from using slang or abbreviated words with them since it is harder for both me and my family to explain and understand when translated to Albanian because sometimes there is no way to translate slang words to Albanian, so when I’m with the family members that can somewhat understand basic English I speak it to them without any slang words or abbreviations so it’ll be easier for us to understand each other
so for example if im speaking to them and say in a sentence “that’s lit” I wouldn’t be able to directly translate it for them in Albanian and it takes too long to explain it in English for them to understand, sometimes they dont even want to understand the slang i use because the dont want to go on and use it the wrong way when they’re trying to speak English.
Growing up in New York, My parents primarily spoke Tamil and I would speak English and Tamil so when I was in middle school or high school, I would mistake words like “what” or “why” a lot. I wouldn’t say I’ve had a pharse or a word that I’ve always talked to my friends with, more so just mistaking the wording in my vocabulary.
I am from Bangladesh. I speak Bangla at home most of the time. I will pick a word like ‘kaj’. My family, most of my friends, co-workers understand the word. But other then that a group of people in my life can’t understand the word. ‘Kaj’ means work in English. It’s easy word to make someone understand about the word meaning. I will explain it with my own daily life work.
Being born and raised in New York City, a big part of the culture here is the slang that is used. When you are a kid you are always told to speak properly. You might even get penalized for using slang. However, it is a big part of bonding with your peers. The word “deadass” is a staple in a New Yorker’s jargon. It can be used in a variety of scenarios such as if you were excited, surprised, upset, etc.
I was born in Dominican Republic, I grew up there and came here a few years ago. I speak both english and spanish. When I talk to my dad sometimes we speak broken english or he just randomly twist a english word and make it sound like spanish. Also, when I talk to my brothers we use words that maybe some people wouldn’t understand, but they are words that are used nowdays. Like “cap”, cap means basically “lies”.
My mother and father are from two completely different backgrounds and I love it. My mom is from Mexico and my dad is from Guyana. Pretty “weird” mix as some people would tell me but it makes me unique. My mother’s english isn’t the best but it is pretty good given the fact that she taught herself with the help from my father. My dad speaks good english too but with his family members he speaks as the guyanese people call it “broken” english. It’s like an accent they have when they speak english. And the way they structure certain sentences are different from regular English. It’s sort of hard to explain just because I myself am still trying to master talking like them so I can talk to my older folks like that. My mother speaks Spanish and that is also something I’m trying to master but slowly getting there.
At my job, my coworkers use words to communicate with each other without others knowing. Something they might say is someone is a “green bean” and this basically means the person is newly hired.
I was born and raised in Brooklyn New York and some places in Brooklyn use words that other places don’t and vice versa. there is many words that we use like ‘no cap’ and ‘mad’ . No cap means that the other person isn’t lying he is speaking facts. If you say this to people who are not from New York they wouldn’t understand what that means. Mad has more than one meaning in New York one is you being mad and angry. Two is being you exaggerating something like your mad small its like another phrase for very.
Culturally I am Costa Rican and Jamaican. I have friends and family from both countries. When I speak with my Jamaican family and friends I speak patois, I often say “yah dealid” or “weh yuh ah deal wid” in order to ask what are you up to? My Costa Rican side of the family don’t often understand the patois even though there is Jamaican influence in the city that my costa rican family is from.
My whole family and I, was raised in Colombia and I feel like Colombia we use infinite slang words and expressions when we speak and most of the time we speak so fast others that are not Colombian have not idea what we are saying. But something really basic and common we use that wouldn’t make sense to “outsiders” is the word ‘CHIMBA’. This word is definitely slang and is used when something is cool or your impressed by something or someone. It can also be used as an expression where you really mean something like we use “really” in English. Some people may see this word as a curse word because it can be rude, it just all depends on how you use it.
Code switching is adapting your way of communication in different and certain situations. I am dominican there’s many words that us dominicans will use that other hispanics such as puerto ricans don’t use. For example most Dominicans call a certain type of fruit limoncillos while Puerto Ricans call it quenepas. My group and I were all hispanic and discussed how differently we say certain words and how the same word can have a different meaning in our culture.
I was born in Haiti, moved here when I was 7 years old. I speak three languages, English, Haitian creole, and french. when I’m around my family mostly speaks creole however around my friend I speak English but with broken creole. one word that i use around my group of friends is “ggs “. Which means good game at first when we play video games. But now we use it from when someone is slacking or doing something wrong to redirect whatever he/she was doing.
I would say that between my friends and family I would have different in attitude
and volume while speaking one being
more decent and the other being really
hyper or using terms like bro or dude
words that you wouldn’t use with your or rather my family.
in general.
My whole family and I, was raised in Colombia and I feel like Colombia we use infinite slang words and expressions when we speak and most of the time we speak so fast others that are not Colombian have not idea what we are saying. But something really basic and common we use that wouldn’t make sense to “outsiders” is the word ‘CHIMBA’. We use this word when something or someone is really cool or impressive. But others can use this asa curse word and use it as negative connotation, it really all depends on how you use it.
English is my second language and when I came in USA I had same problem “broken English” but now I know everything. In my home I speak in my language because my mother don’t know English so for her I have to used code switching between family and outside. Also, I have Myanmar friends and When I talk to mother my language like “jabo” that means go and “pore” that means after. So they don’t understand and i have to explain them and now they know little bit about my language.
I was born in Brooklyn where my community is full of Hispanic. The way I communicate is more Spanish then English. However, they have there way to speak English which I could understand because my family is Ecuadorian and when they came to this country they didn’t know any type of English. Also they been in this country for 19 years through the years they have learn and improve there English. Regardless I communicate more in Spanish then English but got use to this community.
I was born in Brooklyn where my community is full of Hispanic. The way I communicate is more Spanish then English. However, they have there way to speak English which I could understand because my family is Ecuadorian and when they came to this country they didn’t know any type of English. Also they been in this country for 19 years through the years they have learn and improve there English. Regardless I communicate more in Spanish then English but got use to this community.
One phrase I’ll use is “Going to Mexico.” Going to Mexico is a phrase the car culture uses to indicate that they’ll be doing an illegal activity such as racing, speeding, and or reckless driving. For example, If I grab my car keys and say that I was “going to Mexico” I really mean that I’m going to do illegal street racing with a couple of buddies. The History behind the phrase was a code to say to avoid legal issues with any laws. There was a time where a news reporter reported a street race video and they assumed it was in Mexico but it was instead somewhere in the US because the highway signs were English and I searched the locations.