Language Investigation #2

I am fairly sure that every group of friends, or even acquaintances, has their own sort of language that is distinct from others, whether that distinction is faint or, well, loud.  It may be somewhat ignorant to say, as I am not part of other "friend groups", but I must admit that I believe the language my friends use to be extremely unique.  In some cases they may use saying which are somewhat typical slang, but the meaning behind these phrases is often different from the standard slang definition.  These people are very eccentric, to say the least, so sometimes words or phrases are made up completely out of the blue, generally just to get a laugh, but somehow they end up sticking around.  They may later be used again simply as jokes, or they may actually catch on as something used in a normal conversation.  Let us begin.

Ask him a question and he is bound to have the answer.  You want that answer in Chinese?  You got it, mister.  He helps you stay in touch with friends, manage your finances, even find a date!  That wonderful www... the "Al Gore".  Why?  Because Al Gore invented the internet, you didn't know that?

Now, the phrases and language uses I'm about to mention are more often used by my friends than by myself because, as we all know, I'm an English major.  It can be somewhat painful to "misuse" this language, and for quite some time it was difficult to hear my friends misuse it.  However, they are intelligent people, and these phrases are used as intentional debauching of English.  Perhaps they find it funny.  Perhaps they enjoy watching people's reaction to it.  Whatever the case, they do it.  "So much".  This is the one phrase I will admit has found its way into my conversations.  We all know what "so much" means.  We also all know that it is used with mass nouns as opposed to count nouns (so much information as opposed to so many purple people eaters).  My friends, however, enjoy using "so much" with count nouns while highly exaggerating the "so much" ("I have SO MUCH points in my hand," for example).  Another misuse of English is when it comes to nouns vs. verbs.  Instead of saying, "Let's go eat", a number of my friends will replace the verb with a noun and say, "Let's food."  "Book" for study, "pillow" for sleep, and "toilet" for... well... using the toilet, are other common replacements.

When speaking of other people, "toaster" is a term many of my friends use to describe people they don't like.  I think it started out as a term some of my more "special" friends used to describe people they thought were fake because apparently its a term used for the robots on a show called Battlestar Galactica which they watch.  One way or another, though, it caught on with a lot of my other friends, myself included. 

I have heard a plethora of ways to say "yeah right" in my life.  "Whatever", "no way", and "uh-uh" are just a few.  In my "friend group", though, it's "toi".  Again I will blame this one on some of my more eccentric friends because it really popped up out of nowhere.

Many of my friends are also coworkers.  We work at a restaurant, Sushi Jeju, so some terms we use go along with the job.  For example, 86 is called out when an item runs out.  There are also a number of Japanese terms used, such as the names of some fishes, styles of cutting, ways of preparing, etc.  Kaibashira (scallops), sashimi (large cuts without rice), and bincho (seared) are just a few examples.

I could go on and on with these special uses of language unique to my friends and me, but I will simply say that you'd have to hang around us for a day if you wanted to hear them all.  Often times we don't make sense, even to ourselves.  There is a common understanding between us, though, and sometimes our communication is more focused on the non-verbal aspects as opposed to anything we actually say aloud.  Most of the time the odd things we come up with just come out to get a laugh, and nearly all the time it works.  We're a group of inside jokes, of never forgotten experiences, of separate uniqueness, and that, my friend, is that.