Chirps
| 17:39 UK time, Tuesday, 30 May 2006
School holidays here.
Spending time with my daughters while my wife and son visit the in-laws in wild Wales has given me a chance to catch up on the spoken language, v. London 2006.
For example: "chirpsed" is what you want to be if you are a teenage girl walking around the high street hoping to be spotted by boys. You count the number of boys who chatted you up. That's your chirps score, to compare later with your friends.
Should one of the boys become a more serious friend, he's not a boyfriend these days. He is "my man".
And what you do if you get close isn't kissing, it's "lipsin".
No one who know anything says "Hi!" - "wagone" pronounced 'wahg-wun' is the way to greet your friends.
There are more, and when I've understood them (and checked they're not obscene) I'll post them.
Comments
And the best of British luck. You'll need it.
As an American listener, I get a chance to hear your show on the drive home from work at about 2:30 in the morning.
This may sound strange, but I'd like to hear more about this subject on the radio, if that's a possibility.
Many select or small groups have their own lingo or argot. The LOL of text-messaging has now almost entered general speech but POS was Greek to me until a year ago: it means "Parent Over Shoulder" (and therefore "can't message freely"). In "Don Quixote," Cervantes devotes some paragraphs to the argot of prisoners. One man was in prison for "huggging"(that is, stealing) a basket of laundry.