High school English teacher Lisa Pupo has written an article about teen language.

quote:

Belts had been loosened and buttons undone. As we shoved our dessert remains towards the center of the table, my 17-year-old nephew declared: "Shoddy on the peach pie." Now everyone knows that my mother makes the best peach pie in the state, and we always argue about the leftovers. Shoddy? I think not.

It turns out he was calling dibs on the remaining piece of pie, not dissing it. You'd think I'd be able to decode his vernacular, since I teach hundreds like him every year. But the English language, especially in the hands of teens, changes more quickly than my nephew's girlfriends.

quote:

lazy Americans tend not to enunciate

It is curious how exercised we can become over something as inherently trivial as intervocalic flapping.

It is curious how exercised we can become over something as inherently trivial as intervocalic flapping.

I met a friend's parents yesterday. They are from Argentina. The father suggested a name for his soon-to-be granddaughter: Chiara. I kept hearing Kiata. He finally spelled it out for me. I knew that our alveolar tap is the same as the Spanish single r (e.g., pero 'but'), but I never heard it so well proved to me.

"Lazy Americans .... "

This was said by a member of that ambitious tribe whose creative use of the language was able to convert "Bethlehem" to "Bedlam."

So don't the French teens have their own vernacular, as our teens do? Is that seen more with English, or do other adolescents in other cultures behave linguistically similar to ours? I have always thought that people, across the cultures, have lots in common, and I'd be surprised to hear that teens from other countries didn't have their own vernacular. But I am just guessing.

I was visiting my sister recently in the southwest, and they were talking about the past use of "cool beans." Your article, zmj, brought back memories!

don't the French teens have their own vernacular

I'd find it hard to believe. The word argot (aka sociolect) is after all of French origin. Noodling around the French Wikipedia, I came across this article on argot français contemporain (contemporary French slang) which says that in part it is a language of youth (immigrants and blue-collar workers are also mentioned). It links to this article in L'Express that mentions a French linguist of Algerian origin, and the usual fears of linguistic impurity. Also mentioned in the entry is Le langage SMS (TXT speak). Following the links to other sites and googling Professor Bentolila brings in the usual suspects: young people, foreigners, hip hop singers, and others are ruining the (French) language. Doesn't seem to me like the Académie is doing its job.

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:
Doesn't seem to me like the Académie is doing its job.

Eh, quel dommage, mec!

I thought that would be the case. I was reacting to this paragraph in your link:

quote:

We're the antithesis of the French, who guard their language like the three-headed dog Cerberus protected Dante's entrance to Hell. They've even invented a special organization to act as their guard dog - the Académie française, whose job it is to "work, with all possible care and diligence, to give our language definite rules and to make it pure, eloquent, and capable of dealing with art and science."

their guard dog - the Académie française,

If a gummint organization can't preserve the language by hook or by crook what can prescriptivists do? Nada, bupkis, zip, zilch.

Cerberus is perhaps not the best simile. As I recall, the great three headed dog would let anyone into the underworld, but wouldn't let anyone out. Sort of the opposite of trying to prevent the language from getting tainted by unofficial influences.