Language Museum Blog

Dickens has been translated into street slang, by the author who re-wrote Shakepeare’s plays in text-speak.

The ‘translator’ Martin Baum, has modified 16 Dickens novels into stories nine or ten pages long, including changing the immortal line from Oliver Twist – “Please Sir, I want some more” – into “Oi mate, gimme some more”.

He said:

“There are many people who love and understand great literature but many more who don’t. My book is the bait to draw them in and get them interested in some wonderful stories.” ( Source: The Australian)

Hmm, seems like a gimmick to me. Perhaps I’m biased though, as I have an aversion to Dickens’ work!

* I’m not quite sure where this phrase comes from, but my mum uses it a lot. It seems to mean that the required outcome of a task will be hard to achieve – “I had a dickens of job trying to pull up those roots.” Anyone know the origin?

England haven’t yet been kicked out of the World Cup (despite the shameful draw with the USA) so to celebrate, why not learn some more South African slang?

Last week I brought you such gems as ‘chips! Chips!’ – now it’s time for some more useful terms:

BLIKSEM (BLUK-SEM): If you’re in a pub and you accidentally spill a beer belonging to a man with a thick neck, he may say: “Do you want me to bliksem you?” Don’t respond. Just run. Run for your life. It’s the Afrikaans word for hit or strike or punch.

That could definitely come in handy.

DINGES (DING-US): An indeterminate, nondescript thing or term for an object whose name you’ve momentarily forgotten. Like this: “Please pass me my dinges there.” “What?” “My dinges. I want to blow it.” “You mean your vuvuzela?” “Yes, my vuvuzela.”

Dinges seems to me like the South African version of ‘thing’ or ‘thingy’ in English. As in: “Please pass me my thing there.” “What?” “My thingy. I want to blow it.” “You mean your vuvuzela?” “Yes, my vuvuzela.”

ROBOT: When you’re asking for directions and someone says: “Left at the third robot,” it is not because our streets are overrun with menacing cyborgs made by Japanese scientists. No. A robot is simply our word for traffic light.

(Source: Times Live)

If you’ve ever made up your own word and wished people all over the world would start saying it, perhaps this article will be of use.

It tracks the rise of ‘yaka-wow’, a mis-transcription of “yuck and wow” by a writer for the Times, a British newspaper. Apparently, within a day the word had gone viral and now has 95,000 hits on Google. Originating in an interview with the neuroscientist Baroness Greenfield, yaka-wow has spawned a Twitter stream and Facebook page. Why do people love the word so much?

“The main reason we’ve all been saying yaka-wow is simply because it is a cool word. It should be used more. Try saying it yourself out loud, yaka-wow, yaka-wow. Doesn’t it just make you mouth happy,” posted Alice Bell, a science communication lecturer at Imperial College London. (Source: The Times)

Honestly, I’m wondering how come so many people read an interview with a neuroscientist in the first place?

Interesting article in the Telegraph with a sub-heading boldly stating that teenagers are creating “a secret language to stop adults knowing what they are up to”.

Reading the rest of the text, it’s hard to grasp what all the fuss is about – surely teenagers have been creating new slang to communicate for a very long time? The only new aspect is the use of social networking sites.

Lisa Whittaker, a postgraduate student at the University of Stirling, who studied teens aged 16-18 on Bebo in Scotland, said the slang had been created to keep their activities private, and cited the example of one young girl who was sacked after bosses found pictures of her drinking on the website.

“Young people often distort the languages they use by making the pages difficult for those unfamiliar with the distortions and colloquialisms.,” she said.

“The language used on Bebo seems to go beyond abbreviations that are commonly used in text messaging, such as removing all the vowels.

“This is not just bad spelling, which would suggest literacy issues, but a deliberate attempt to creatively misspell words.

I guess at least this research puts to rest fears that the internet and texting are producing bad spellers – they’re just being creative!

Last weekend, the blog Schott’s Vocab ran a competition to reveal workplace lingo.

Many professions have their own languages, with terminology that only the initiated can understand. The most obvious must be in medicine, where it can seem that doctors are speaking a foreign language with lots of long, strange word combinations.

Even if your job doesn’t have an entirely different vocabulary, you’re likely to use some work-specific language during your day that an outsider wouldn’t understand. It may be specific to your industry, company or even your particular workplace. Coming up with your own shorthand can be a good way of bonding with colleagues.

So, what interesting terms did the Schott’s readers come up with?

running heads: describes the content in the margins, but always makes me think of heads running. (Publishing)

tombstone: […], we refer to that basic block of object information as the “tombstone”. You know, the Artist’s name, life dates, title of work, year of creation, materials, credit line. (Museums)

calendar: to schedule time on someone’s online corporate calendar program (”If you want to sit down and discuss the Pensky file, calendar me”). (Corporate/office)

Code18: for a computer user whose perceived problem isn’t due to a malfunction in the computer but with something in (or not in, more like) his/her own head, 18″ from the monitor. (IT)

I can’t imagine what non-native English speakers make of these! I’m sure other languages have their own workplace lingos also, anyone got any examples?

That is, according to the Global Language Monitor, the amount we have now surpassed for the English language.

The one millionth word was Web 2.0. , which isn’t actually a word, but a phrase containing a noun. Look a little further and you’ll find that this million includes both words and phrases. Which makes financial tsunami more acceptable as their 1,000,001st ‘word’ I suppose.

The former editor-in-chief of the Britannica encyclopaedia is unimpressed with this count, as are the linguists over at Language Log. And as the OED points out, there is no accurate way to count how many words there are in a language.

So, what’s the point of the count? Well, I think the fact it draws attention to the complexity and ever-changing face of the English language is fantastic. It’s prompted many journalists to write articles about the language, and perhaps exposes people to new words. I, for one, would never have known of the existence of the word quendy-trendy (apparently British youth slang) if it weren’t for the Monitor. Thanks guys.

I found this postcard in a souvenir shop in Australia recently, and it greatly amused me (click for legible full size).

Australians have come up with some excellent phrases that (sadly) have not made it into general use in British or American English. “Ya flamin’ galah” is perhaps my personal favourite, and will be familiar to anyone who watches Australian soaps. It basically means “you fool” and is best delivered in a broad Australian accent.

Whilst most of the slang on this postcard you’re unlikely to hear in the major urban areas of Australia, I can’t wait to get to the outback (or “the bush”) to see if someone really will call me a drongo and give me an earbashing for having a barney!
For more Aussie slang, see here.