youth

REAL TALK – ‘SLANG’

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Of the TV series that have featured Urban Slang (or so-called MLE, ‘Multiethnic London English’) for me none surpassed, in authenticity, ingenuity and hilarity, the sitcom PhoneShop*, broadcast on Channel 4 between 2010 and 2013. Writer and producer of the series, Phil Bowker tells me  ‘Like you, slang’s something that has fascinated me since I was a kid growing up in Liverpool.’  It’s a great privilege to be able to print here, with Phil’s blessing, the script of this sequence intended for his follow-up satire on multicultural Britain for BBC2 The Javone Prince Show**, but never broadcast. Phil explains, ‘I wanted to spoof the kind of BBC London style of hack news reporting but instead of the usual fayre of drugs and knives, I wanted to make it about slang.’ Relish now for the first time this exposé of …Real Talk ‘Slang’…

 

EXT. URBAN STREET

Andrew Milligan (Jason Barnett) is on a walk and talk.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

“Why is my man Parrin’ me?” “Dat Gyal is pengalicious” “Watcha me come and lick off a ya headtop”            Words and phrases that you wouldn’t particularly want to hear coming out of your child’s mouth. But this is an everyday reality for thousands of parents across the Country as unscrupulous dealers are targeting our children at the very place where they’re most vulnerable: The school gate.

We cut to a School sign and then back down to Andrew as he crouches down outside the entrance. The floor is littered with discarded pieces of paper the size of christmas cracker jokes. There are lots of ‘capsules’ around too. He reads a couple of them – sickened at what he sees.

ANDREW

Pagan, Sideman, Sket…. (earnestly) Lovely isn’t it?

CUT TO:

INT.KITCHEN.

A mum (Debra Baker) Is interviewed in her spotless kitchen.

 

CONTINUED:

MUM

My 10 year old comes home, he calls his little brother a beg, calls me a slosher and tells me he’s goin his drum to blaze…’ What can I do about that? I ain’t got a clue what he’s talkin about….

 

Andrew Walk and Talk.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

We’ve all seen them plying their vile trade in pubs and car parks the length and breadth of the Country. The So called slang hawkers. You yourself may have even enjoyed using some casual slang at a dinner party. I’m ashamed to say, I have. I had bare laughs. But where does this slang come from? Who’s selling it, and what is the real cost? To find out, I took to the streets.

 

EXT.STREET. NIGHT

 

CUT TO:

 

 

Shot from a first floor window, we see Andrew making a call from a phonebox.

 

DEALER

(Voice Disguised) What you after?

ANDREW MILLIGAN

I’m looking for a, uh maybe a five pound deal?

 

 

DEALER

Fuck off. (Bleeped) You couldn’t even get a noun for that, you mug.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

What would, say £20 or £25 buy me?

DEALER

A small bag of verbs. Proper, good verbs, I don’t fuck (bleeped) around.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

Sounds good my man, but how can I guarantee the quality of your slang?

DEALER

You heard of swag?

ANDREW MILLIGAN

Yes, Swag. I think I’ve heard Louis Walsh say it.

DEALER

That’s one of mine.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

 

Wow.

Wide shot of Andrew waiting by the telephone box.

ANDREW (V.O)

In less than five minutes one of the dealer’s word soldiers rode by on a stolen mountain bike.

We see a kid riding past on a bike throwing at book at him. Andrew bends down to pick it up (It’s a dictionary) He opens it up to reveal a hollowed out centre with a small baggy in it.     He furtively looks around and then opens the bag, looking at the tiny pieces of paper with words written on them.

 

ANDREW MILLIGAN

(slightly out of breath) The dealer wasn’t lying. There is a potency to this slang that I haven’t seen before. I have to admit, it’s quite thrilling.

 

INT. A STUDY

Talking head of Professor EB Black.

PROFESSOR

This is a massive problem we are sleepwalking into. Slang has been around for ever, but it was always kept at an acceptable level. It was fine for criminals, the working classes and immigrants but what we’re seeing now is a huge middle class uptake – it’s extremely frightening and this government needs to do something about it very quickly.                                I’m reluctant to use the word, but what we’re facing, is an epidemic.

Andrew swings round to camera.

ANDREW MILLIGAN

But what the chickenclart can be done?

 

CUT TO:

 

Hard cut to archive. Police raid on property. Shot of battering ram hitting door.

POLICE

Police!! Put the pens down! Drop the Quills! I repeat, Drop the Quills…

 

We cut to people coming out with their hands on their heads. They are all wearing glasses or visors. They look disorientated.

 

GANG LEADER

I’ll be back out on the streets in half an hour. You fucking rats.

He looks at the camera.

Penelope, get the bail money! It’s in the study underneath Eric Partridge’s Usage and Abusage….

ANDREW MILLIGAN (V.O.)

This slangmaster is facing a long “sentence” in a “pen” of his own making. But there is a way out. If not fi him, fi someone else.

CUT TO:

 

Talking head of reformed slang dealer Christian Gibbs.

CHRISTIAN GIBBS

I was always interested in language. The etymology, the syntax. Other kids would be out kicking a ball against a wall. I’d be indoors with me head in a thesaurus.

Andrew Milligan nods.

I started mucking around with slang. Making my own words up. Giving them away to mates in school. And then I realised. There was money to be made – and it went from there.

Andrew swings around to camera.

 

ANDREW MILLIGAN

Christian became so successful, within a year of selling his slang words illegally, he managed to buy his parents a new house, and was engaged to a Countdown semi-finalist. But things quickly went wrong.

CHRISTIAN GIBBS

I got greedy. I started mixing with the wrong people. I got too big too quick. At one point, I was running three or four terraced houses full of young academics twenty-four hours a day. I was effectively controlling most of the slang that was being sold in London. And then it all caught up with me.

 

EXT OF URBAN BASKETBALL COURT.

Christian is helping some young people to ‘lay up’

ANDREW MILLIGAN

After a spell at her majesty’s pleasure, Christian dedicated his life to helping the very people who once did his bidding in his urban slang factories.

 

CUT TO:

 

We see the trad shot of guys having fun. High 5ing etc

CUT TO:

 

Andrew Walk and Talk down an alley.

 

 

ANDREW MILLIGAN (cont’d)

Tragically, a few hours after that lay up we learnt that Christian’s past had finally caught up with him and he was ambushed by a gang of rival wordsmiths in a back alley Scrabble game.

 

 

He arrives at the taped off crime scene. There’s an abandoned Scrabble board and associated paraphernalia. He crouches down

ANDREW MILLIGAN (cont’d)

The last words he spelt out on the Scrabble board was a fitting testament to his memory: YOLO/ Gubati/Gggdedjs/

Andrew gets up and continues his Walk and Talk.

ANDREW MILLIGAN (cont’d)

So the next time you’re at a dinner party or even a simple kitchen supper and somebody decides it might be ‘fun’ to pass the ‘slang’ around, remember the real cost and just say no.

 

 

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/phoneshop

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063hcgz

 

 

 

The ‘M’ in ‘MLE’ – Youth Slang’s Origins

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Much of the vocabulary of MLE, the speech variety known as Multiethnic or Multicultural London English, derives (not always straightforwardly) from Caribbean or Black British usages, or from London’s white ‘working class’, often dubbed ‘Cockney,’ argot. There are, however, a number of slang expressions, used in the school playground and on the street by younger speakers, which come from elsewhere in the UK’s language matrix, even from archaic or foreign sources. Here are some examples…

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Feen (n)

Means: a male person

Usage: “Who’s the feen over by the gate?”

The proper names for Yoofspeak, so linguists tell us, are MLE (multi-ethnic or multicultural London English) or UBE (urban British English, with ‘vernacular’ sometimes substituted for English), but not all playground language emanates from the larger cities and ethnic or ‘cultural’ doesn’t only mean Afrocarribean or Asian.

One term that’s widely used around the UK is rarely if ever heard in the Smoke, but belongs to a 300 year-old tradition. Feen, also spelled fein, has been borrowed from the slang of Travellers, the argot formerly used by Tinkers and known as Shelta, itself deriving mainly from Irish Gaelic. In Irish feen simply means “man” but in slang it sometimes has the extra senses of “stranger” or “rogue”. Don’t confuse this with the verb “to feen” (sometimes “feem”), a modern import from US street-talk, which is an alteration of ‘fiend’ and means craving for, or obsessing over, as in “I’m feenin’ for some weed” or “he’s feenin’ over that new girl.”

Group Of Young People Laughing Watching A Joke Or A, Stock Photo | Crushpixel

Hollage (n)

 Means: something hilarious

 Usage: “Have you seen Charlotte’s latest outfit? Très hollage!”

 Posher teens have their own version of yoofspeak, their own mix of would-be street slang, babytalk and invented expressions, typically in the form of girly yells of approval (by both sexes) and squeals of delight (ditto).

When the denizens of the middle-class playground are trading witticisms a favourite trick is to insert touches of French – the odd real word (“quelle disaster”, “beaucoup trouble”) and Franglais pronunciations. “Rummage” (sex), and “bummage” (enthusiasm) have been frenchified, but current favourite is “hollage”, meaning huge amusement or hugely amusing, pronounced to rhyme with English “college” or like French “collage”, or, some young purists insist, as three-syllable “holla-age”.

It looks as if the little sophisticates have adapted “holla”, (the hip-hop version of “holler”, meaning to yell), one of cool Yoof’s iconic expressions from the noughties, and slightly misunderstood it in the process, since it originally described phoning, praising or seducing rather than braying with laughter. In the US the very similar-looking “holla-age” has indeed been used to describe “the appropriate way to acknowledge or compliment a female.”

🤦 Person Facepalming Emoji 😀😂👌❤️😍

Dinlo (n)

Means: an idiot

Usage: “You can tell Callum anything and he’ll believe it, he’s a right dinlo.”

Some linguists are claiming that far from dying out, regional dialects – and that includes local slang terms – are being helped by messaging, chatting and tweeting on social media sites, as well as old-fashioned word of mouth – to spread further across the UK. A probable example of this is yet another term for a complete dope, or dupe, (in practice nearly always male) which originated in Romany (and not in Cantonese as claimed on Urban Dictionary) as dinilo and has long been in use from the New Forest, via Portsmouth’s ‘Pompey – slang’ to East Anglia. Dinlo(w) is the usual form, although “dinler”, “dindler” and “dingle” have also been recorded. Yoof elsewhere have now added these to their already rich lexicon of insults, sometimes abbreviating to “dinny” or just “din”.

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Trek (v,n)

Means: (to go on) a long and tedious journey

Usage: “Man we been trekkin’ for hours!” “From her endz to ours is a trek.”

Researchers into Yoofspeak will know that in nearly every batch of new expressions offered up as the latest teen lingo, there are one or two which are not really slang at all. This is because most of the younger generation are not familiar with them and don’t realise that they are standard English: also, to be fair, because they sound and look exotic, possibly subversive to the uninitiated. “Trek”, used more or less in its original sense is a popular feature of playground complaints – the moaners probably don’t know much Afrikaans (from which we got the word), and even Star Trek the Prequel is a distant memory. More recently the word, or the variant “treks!” can be an exclamation, declaring that something, not necessarily a journey, is too tiring or boring to bother with or to finish, but one post on Urban Dictionary defines it much more specifically – and perhaps just slightly more positively – as a “4-10-mile” walk undertaken to counteract the effects of drugs or alcohol.

Examples of the same phenomenon are “luka” or “lookah”, used by some London kids to mean money, which seems like Multiethnic dialect but is really the picturesque old phrase ‘filthy lucre’ after a makeover. (Oddly, in the US, the Slavonic boy’s name Luka seems to have been conflated with the colloquial “looker” to denote an attractive male.) “Burly”, which one user explained as a blend of “beautiful” and “gnarly”, expresses admiration for a tough-looking male, and “reek” as in “Ben’s room really reeks” is also considered a really cool novelty. (Incidentally and tangentially, adult informants tell me that for them “reek” mainly registers these days as the name of a character in TV fantasy Game of Thrones, or as a mistyping of ‘wreak.’)

(These terms were first recorded in my Youthspeak column in the TES)

UK YOUTH SLANG NOW

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I have a fairly extensive archive of new language, including contemporary slang, from which glossaries, dictionaries and articles are spun off. When I interview young people to ask them about the language they use, to collect examples, or to animate discussions, I use extracts from the archive, but in the form of a simplified glossary. The glossary consists only of terms with their definitions, with all other ‘lexicographical paraphernalia’ – parts of speech, etymologies, regional labels, notes on usage, etc. – removed.  This material is not intended for publication, except by me, (or if commercially in return for payment) but is often used by researchers, authors, teachers and students to stimulate discussion and to help with fieldwork and projects. Here, by way of illustration, is a selection from the letter B…

 

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B

B – (male) friend

Badmanz – important and/or tough male

Bae – sweetheart, girlfriend or boyfriend

Bag – much, many

Bagga­manz – a lot (of people)

Bag someone out – to criticise, harass

Bait – obvious, intrusive

Ban­gin’ – attractive, exciting

Bangout – failure

Bang-out – successful, skilful

Bants, bantz – banter

Bare – much, many

Bars – (part of) a song

Bashment – party

Basic – unoriginal, conforming to current fashions

Basic B, basic bitch – pretentious but conformist female

Bats – combat trousers

Bay­den – solvent, rich

Beast – excellent, impressive, admirable, cool

Beaut – expression of admiration or approval

Beef – dis­agree­ment, angry altercation

– to aggress

Begfriend – sycophant

Beggin’ – talking nonsense

Beige – boring, tedious

Bell-end, bell – foolish and/or annoying person (usually male)

Ben­nin’ – overcome by laughter.

Bestie – best friend

Betty – girl

BFF – ‘best friend forever’

Big – excellent

Big­gin’ up – com­pli­ment­ing, celebrating

Billies, bills – money, banknotes

Bin off – to throw away, reject, dump (a suitor for instance)

Bitz – area, neighbourhood

Blates – excessive, outrageous

– expression of delight or approval

Blaz­in’ (up) – smoking

Blad – ‘mate’, friend

Bleh – expression of dismissal, disapproval, indifference

Blem – cigarette

Blemboss – someone who smokes to show off

Bless (up) – expression of approval or farewell

Blick – dark

Blonks – big person, usually male

Blud – close friend

Boggin’ – stinking

Bollerz – money

Bonk – to exhaust oneself, tire

Boog – bad, inferior

Booky – suspicious, doubtful, inferior

Boom-ting – party, exciting event

Booty – posterior

– sexy female(s)

Bounce – to depart, flounce off.

Bovvered – unconcerned, indifferent

Boyed – humiliated

Boyment – humiliation

Boyz – money

Braap, blaap – a greeting or expression of approval or agreement.

Brass – bad

Bred­der – someone who copies someone

Bredgie – friend

Bredren, bledren – friends

Breeze – nonsense, rubbish

Brev – male friend, mate

Bro – male friend

Bruck, brok – in bad condition, ugly

Bruv – brother, male friend

Buck – to give

Buff – physically attractive

Bullet – greeting or expression of approval or agreement

Bully van – police vehicle

Bummage – enjoyment

Bump – to trick, defraud, steal from

Bunnin’ – smoking

Bupzin’ – treating or looking after (someone)

–  taking advantage (of someone)

Burned – bested, humiliated

Burner – gun

Buss (out) – to perform (dance moves)

Busted – ugly, unattractive

Bust (off) – to perform (dance moves)

– to recite (lyrics)

But(t) – friend

Butterz – ugly, unattractive

 

Image result for slang graffiti

 

I would be very grateful indeed for any additions to my lists. Donations and/or comments will be very welcome and contributors will be acknowledged. If you would like to use the glossary, please contact me. 

LANGUAGE LESSONS FROM THE COOL KIDS

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Students and fellow participants at King’s College London’s Language and Popular Culture Laboratory wrote about a joint presentation that Iranian colleague Dr Negar Ardakani and I gave last year. The talk took a first look at comparative data on Persian and English youth slang collected in glossaries and lexicons from the two countries.

The article, shared by kind permission, is here:

https://kinguistics.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/language-lessons-from-the-cool-kids/

Negar and I hope to refine our material and publish a more complete version of our talk in due course. In the meantime, if anyone is interested, we can provide more details in very rough draft form if contacted directly.

(NOT) Girls’ Talk

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Gal-dem, also galsdem or gyalsdem, refers in London’s multiethnic street-talk to a group of females (mansdem is the male counterpart). It’s also the name of a magazine for women of colour. I talked to Faima Bakar about the street attitudes that mean that girls are criticised for using slang and profanity while boys use them with impunity. The topic relates both to MLE, the mixed urban dialect favoured by many young people, and Banter, a hot issue again in 2016. Both of these are treated elsewhere on this site, but here’s Faima’s article on boys and slang…

 

http://www.gal-dem.com/girls-talk-street-tell-my-man-shut-up/

 

Multiethnic London English – a Handbook

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  • Multicultural London English : Innovation Starts Inner City
  • The second and main component (the first, the glossary, was posted here previously) of Chris Nott‘s design project for the Royal College of Art is this book on the complex urban language variety known as MLE, Multiethnic London English.
  • This unique document brings together the authentic words of London youth, interviews with me and with other commentators, press articles and more technical language notes. It will fascinate lovers of language, those interested in sociocultural change and, although the features described are not exclusive to younger speakers, anyone involved in teaching about youth culture, popular culture, style and music.
  • Chris has agreed to make the entire work freely available* and it can be accessed below. The design project is in its original unedited form. For anyone needing corrected pages, I have interviews and quotes in Word format that I can provide on request.

mle-final-book_tony_s

…and ICYMI, here’s the MLE glossary again:

mle-terms_tony-1

               *But please don’t try to monetise it. It is Chris Nott’s copyrighted work.

Multiethnic London English – a Glossary

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“The post-racial, non-rhotic, inner city,

Th-fronting, cross cultural,

dipthong shifting, multi-ethnic,

L-vocalisation, K-backing fusion of language”

As a linguist and lexicographer who once worked as a designer, I have long nursed the idea that an iconic reference work, especially one which celebrates and explores creative, exotic and subversive forms of language, could – should – also function as a work of art.

In 2013 I had the privilege of helping Chris Nott in the preparation of his graduation project at the Royal College of Art. Chris designed a glossary of, and a guide to MLE – Multiethnic London English – that functions as document and documentation as well as being a unique art object.

Chris, now working as a design specialist in the studios of Brody Associates, has given permission for this artefact to be shared for the first time. It consists of a glossary and a separate guidebook (which highlights the words from the glossary too)

Please do consult it, dip into it, read it from virtual cover to virtual cover, or, better still, print it on to high-quality paper and savour its tactility. Place it on a lectern under a strong light. Use it to teach your students, to inform your friends.*

The contents of this reference work, which includes contributions from other lexicographers and linguists, are still topical, relevant, revelatory three years on. The visual elements and format remain unique.

The samples of language and the commentaries presented in the book move our thinking beyond ‘slang’, beyond older notions of race and class, to consider the post-ethnic realities of a UK subject to what theorists now call Superdiversity, in which, especially but not only for younger speakers, complex questions of identity are bound up intimately with language, style and symbolism.

For me what is also essential in treating slang, dialect or jargon is to go out into the streets, the clubs, school playgrounds and workplaces and record the actual words of their users, words which might never otherwise appear in popular or academic publications.

MLE, Multiethnic London English, now sometimes referred to as Urban British English or Interethnic Vernacular was the designation given to a developing social dialect, featuring a slang vocabulary and new patterns of pronunciation and accent, that came to notice at the end of the 1990s and has since influenced the speech of younger speakers in particular beyond London itself.

Here is Chris Nott’s work. First the Glossary…

mle-terms_tony-1

In a few days Chris’s 300-page Guidebook to MLE will be made available too

 

 

 

*But please don’t try to monetise it. It is Chris Nott’s copyrighted work.

FESTIVE SLANG

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It’s already the Autumn Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, and memories of this year’s summertime festivals are fast fading…

An Autumn days view

You can nevertheless re-live those hedonistic outdoor excesses by browsing my Festival Dictionary, produced for Lucozade two summers ago and still offering a snapshot of the latest slang, catchphrases, keywords and catcalls to accompany the traffic jams, the endless toilet queues, the muddied tents and the eventual collective euphoria…

The Lucozade Yes Moment Festival Dictionary is free and obtainable here…

https://www.lulu.com/shop/tony-thorne/the-yes-moment-festival-dictionary/ebook/product-21791651.html?q=Yes+moment+dictionary+tony+thorne&page=1&pageSize=4

URBAN LONDON SLANG

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By kind permission of Natalie King, here’s her blog post for Oxford University Press on the sort of youth language to be encountered in the streets of London today. I can vouch for the authenticity of all the expressions she mentions, but it’s notable that this account bears out my own investigations: these examples of ‘youth-speak‘ or Multiethnic London English have all been used by teens and younger adults for at least five years, some for more than a decade. Slang is not as ephemeral as many people think…

Urban London slang: an introduction for hipsters