What language does your teen speak? - Page 2

[MillingNome]

I'll be the oddball... or my kid will be. DD only uses "like" too much.

[KaraBoo]

This is how I talk. LOL

Yeah, we say "ginormous," "dude," "craptastic..." and we make up our own words too.

We love language and how it can flow and change. I think my children, aged 8 and 18, have large vocabularies (they've both been told this on numerous occasions) so casual speaking doesn't ruffle my feathers at all. When they need a word, it comes to them. No prob. It's all good in the hood (an oldie but still used around here). LOL

One word that bugs me for some insane reason is "random." Often, I've heard children or teens use it when they don't really know what the original meaning is...it shows in their usage. I dunno why that bothers me, but it does.

[panamama]

funny thread.

we say ginormous a lot in our house too. not a lot of like, dude, or dudette though. i have had to scold for the "that is so gay" phrase a few times :

but mostly, my teen just speaks in grunts & clicks. uh-huh, unn-uh, mmm hhhmm, shhhchhhhhttt (sucking teeth), pppppffffffff (exagerrated sigh), etc.

drives me nuts.

[nolonger]

[QUOTE=J

Yes we call him the cellar dweller ... his room is in our basement w/ a bathroom thats connected to a rec room w/ computer and big screen
I dont allow food in the basement or I would NEVER see him

The "COOLEST" thing is his cell phone doesnt have service in the basement. He HAS to use the house phone.[/QUOTE]

Fabulous ideas. I'd wonder if I even had kids sometimes if it wasn't for the wet towels on the bathroom floor that I didn't leave there.



Not to scare parents of preteens and young teens. My family is in crisis right now and I shouldn't even be posting until things improve, but it was just so nice to find a lighthearted thread I can relate to in the midst of all this and remind myself how fun teens can be, how much I miss the good times, and that they really are worth the effort of working through the bad times.

Thank you, OP.

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by doulamomvicki

We have alot of the "dude" and "that was random" going on here.

I was starting to wonder if "random" was just ds1 - I don't hear it from his friends much...

DD also uses the word "like" excessively (As in "like I would never wear that." or " I was like totally bummed that my mom wouldn't let me go. She is like such a retard"

This is not excessive. The same speech from ds1 would be:

"I was like totally bummed that my like mom wouldn't like let me go. She's like such a like idiot" (ds1 never says "retard" or "tard" - doesn't seem to be in around here...luckily).

I have banned the whole saying "gay" in a derogatory sense because ds#1 is gay. He told his sibs was hurtful when they would use the word "gay" in place of lame or stupid.

The way "gay" is now used is totally bizarre. DS1 wore his Halloween hat to school on November 1st. It was a Three Musketeers kind of hat with a feather in it. A bunch of kids told him it was "gay". Whatever - as someone else said, a piece of clothing has no sexual orientation. It's interesting, though - I don't think I've ever heard ds1 or any of his friends use "gay" to mean homosexual...they actually say "homosexual".

Has anyone else ever seen the spelling "geigh" to mean lame? WTF?


ETA: DS1's other things are random phrases that have nothing to do with anything. He loves "pickle" - no connection to anything, just "pickle" (one of his best friends does this with "gobble"). He also answers questions with "I ate it", "your face" or "your mother", when those answers make no sense. Okay - "I ate it" is usually in response to "where is X?", but the others?

Me: Please pass the salt.
DS1: Your face.

DH: DS1, what do you have for homework?
DS1: Your mother.

WTF?

[BathrobeGoddess]

Originally Posted by UnschoolnMa

Oh yea we say ginormous too. A fave of ourse is "craptastic" "what's crappenin" and "wonky"

Ahhh...Simpsonese...my favorite language!

[UnschoolnMa]

Originally Posted by Storm Bride

He also answers questions with "I ate it", "your face" or "your mother", when those answers make no sense. Okay - "I ate it" is usually in response to "where is X?", but the others?

Me: Please pass the salt.
DS1: Your face.

DH: DS1, what do you have for homework?
DS1: Your mother.

WTF?

Your face happens here too from Ds (15).

[Maiasaura]

it sounds to me like "your face" and "your mother" are meant to be derogatory, or fresh (my *mother's* meaning of fresh, as in talking back). kind of like a teenage "f*** you". does he say it that way? or some other way? does it make you angry or frustrated when he says it?

craptastic...is that meaning generally crappy?

i'm reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman right now..there is a guy in there that says "absaTIVEly". i might adopt that

the "random" thing would bug me, too. i hate when people use terms having NO IDEA of their original meaning. like it's funny, i have taken to correcting people when they say "i learned it by osmosis"....i'm going "no, that's diffusion"

pamela

[UnschoolnMa]

Originally Posted by mercyn

it sounds to me like "your face" and "your mother" are meant to be derogatory, or fresh (my *mother's* meaning of fresh, as in talking back). kind of like a teenage "f*** you". does he say it that way? or some other way? does it make you angry or frustrated when he says it?

Naw, around here it's just got a "whatever" kind of tone behind it. My teens cand and do say the F word with regularity though, so "your face" is no big deal. :

craptastic...is that meaning generally crappy?

Yea pretty much. Like instead of fantastic or spectacular we say craptastic or craptacular, lol.

[doctorjen]

My ds #1 is away at college this year (he's 18 1/2) and I'm finding I'm missing some of his speech. "What the crap?" was a favorite, as was "Snap!" usually drawn way out as in "Saa-napp!" I think meaning the same as "Sweet!" kind of thing. He emailed me tonight wondering if I could "hook him up?" meaning he needs me to have his dad bring his boots to him since we have so much snow (he's only an hour and a half a way, only 1/2 an hour from dh's work.) He has some other silly phrases, but they are really related to previous silly conversations between him and I or him and his friends, so I don't think they are widespread usages. One is "g-homey." One time, a friend's dad was driving him home and he and the friend were goofing around in the back seat, and the friend was saying he'd seen a third friend recently and said "So I said, what's up homey G?" At just that moment, they were pulling into our drive and our lawn grass was ridiculously long, and the dad said to my Chris "You need to go G-homey that grass!" For some reason, that absolutely cracked up ds and his friend, and me when it was repeated to me, and we used the phrase regularly for a while, as in "You need to G-homey that homework" or whatever else. We have a bunch of other silly-isms that would take even longer to explain.

Sometimes my little ones pick up the lingo with not quite right results. Recently, my littlest (3 yr old dd) was hiding from her next oldest brother (ds age 9 1/2) and jumped out at him yelling "Booo!" Ds had heard her hiding, but pretended to be terrified, which pleased her no end. She came running to me laughing and said "Mom! I scared Justin out of the crap!" When I told dh later, he chuckled and said "Well, thank goodness she scared him out of THAT!"

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by mercyn

it sounds to me like "your face" and "your mother" are meant to be derogatory, or fresh (my *mother's* meaning of fresh, as in talking back). kind of like a teenage "f*** you". does he say it that way? or some other way? does it make you angry or frustrated when he says it?

Not at all. It's actually pretty funny. DS1 is a bit of a smart mouth, but not in a way that bothers me, and he probably gets it from me. I can't even begin to describe the way he says these things, but it's really goofy.

the "random" thing would bug me, too. i hate when people use terms having NO IDEA of their original meaning.

The "random" thing doesn't bother me, except the way any overused expression bothers me (I wanted to kill my ex-roomie for "talk to the hand"). DS1 mostly uses "random" in a way that's mostly true to the real meaning...just slightly skewed, in true teenage fashion.

like it's funny, i have taken to correcting people when they say "i learned it by osmosis"....i'm going "no, that's diffusion"

I don't think I'm following you on this. From what I can remember of how osmosis works, it seems about right to say "I learned it by osmosis". What's wrong with that one?

[UnschoolnMa]

Originally Posted by doctorjen

She came running to me laughing and said "Mom! I scared Justin out of the crap!" When I told dh later, he chuckled and said "Well, thank goodness she scared him out of THAT!"

I love it!! How cute is that?

We love "what the crap" too. My Ds and I say it quite a bit.

[smillerhouse]

I don't like the "gay" stuff either. I talk quite a bit with my teens about being open and inclusive. My son calls one of my daughter's male friend's "gay" becasue over the Christmas break they went to an amusement park and the guy was carrying what my son refers to as a "man purse". It was a camera case and he also placed his wallet in it. Earlier in the fall, my daughter said the principl at the local high school was called a lesbian becasue she is assertive. There's also the "girl pants" stuff-guys wearing spandex type pants. I think the rigid sex roles are oppresive for both sexs and promote more tolerance and expression around here. Sallie

[TigerTail]

I get a variation of 'your face' from dd (20).

"Your catbox is full of poop." "You're full of poop."

[BrownEyed]

This thread cracks me up! I don't have any kids yet but coach teams of 8-20 year olds(divided into groups by age though).

All day I get the generic "Your mom" response. I have to admit that I say random too much as well.

All in all I'm just amazed by how much the kids curse. The 12 year olds are saying the f word, when I was 12 I hadn't even heard that word.

[ThatCrazyLady]

A big one in our house right now is "Lay off the crack" for when one is being accused of misunderstanding or imagining something. It started when a strange clicking sound would come and go in the car; when I asked DD if she'd noticed it and could help trace its location, it stopped and she coined the phrase. I must admit, I relished hearing it start up again right before I picked her up from school the next week so that when she said, "What's that noise?" I could respond, "Lay off the crack."

It's also mutated into the general term "crackhead" as a derogatory term for DD (16) and DS (12) to insult one another's choices and beliefs, as in: "Do you like my new belt?" "Yeah, right, crackhead!" I should probably object, but they used to hit one another and use terms that hurt feelings instead of getting a laugh.

[hottmama]

What, when did people stop saying awesome? I say awesome all the time and have for as long as I can remember, and I'm only 22!

I also say dude and rocks. My 4 yr. old says amazing, but not in any sort of weird way, just the way anyone would use the word. For example, we watched the Neverending Story and he said, "Wow, that dragon is amazing!"

In middle school I went on an anti-"gay" campaign. It failed. I'm sad to see that teens are still using it a decade later.

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by smillerhouse

I don't like the "gay" stuff either. I talk quite a bit with my teens about being open and inclusive. My son calls one of my daughter's male friend's "gay" becasue over the Christmas break they went to an amusement park and the guy was carrying what my son refers to as a "man purse". re. Sallie

That's very different from the way I hear the kids use "gay". That's how kids in my generation (graduated in '86) used it, but that's not how any of the kids I overhear use it now. I've never heard one of them call a person "gay". They call classwork, weather, the construction work being done down the block, etc. etc. "gay", but not people.

[JBaxter]

I learned a new word in Teenese this morning

DS1 was refering to a girl that used to like him as an "emo" I asked what in the world an emo was ( if it was something to nasty we arnt allowed to say it in the house)

Emo-
Definition- a super emotional person ( male or female) usually talking about dark subjects somewhat goth attire and doing a form of self mutilation like cutting /burning /branding

I learn something every day

[ani'smama]

Oh Snap!