Daniel Park is a journalism senior and the Mustang News humor columnist. These views do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang News editorial.
I want to discuss the slang that is dribbling out of the mouths of today’s youth. Not the slang that our grandparents used to try to seem relevant in society. I mean please, Grandma, at this point in life you should probably be focusing on who’s going to do your eulogy rather than trying to interact with your family. No, I’m talking about the slang that is continually being produced everyday at an unsettling speed by a great number of people my age.
I suppose what makes me the most upset is the fact that the slang that is suppose to substitute the actual word isn’t that much shorter! I can understand contractions, as they reduce two words into one and therefore reduce two syllables into one, but oftentimes the slang doesn’t do anything to ease the burdens of my life. For example, cray-cray and crazy are apparently the same word. I could potentially understand how this slang came to be. All you have to do is take the first part of the word and repeat it twice. Why twice? I don’t really know. Perhaps you have a stutter. But that’s beside the point. The problem with cray-cray is that if you don’t know what the word is beforehand, then you have virtually no chance of deciphering the code. Cray-cray could mean anything. Crayon? Crayfish? It’s only on the third try that you would be able to say with confidence, “Oh! She must be calling me crazy. It would sound strange if she called me a crayon or crayfish.”
But that’s not nearly as bad as what slang is now. Today’s youth have totally let their imaginations run wild, creating words and phrases that have absolutely no meaning or value. Did you know that “chopper” means penis in the United Kingdom? I didn’t think so. I believe the slang came into existence when British women threatened to chop off their partners’ joystick if they didn’t do something, leaving their husbands castrated and helpless. Or as I call it, marriage.
The people I feel bad for are the immigrants of this great nation. Many of them try to assimilate as best they can, and the main way they do this is by learning English. Now imagine, just for a second, the immigrant who has just mastered the English language. Through sheer perseverance, he has finally grasped sentence structure and syntax. He’s happy and proud to have conquered this difficult task, and a tear forms in the corner of his eye. He can’t wait to put this practical skill into use. So, he does what any rational person does and goes to a nearby college. When he steps onto campus, he is greeted by, “Nah, you’re not special.”
In all honesty, I don’t get it anymore. I may have been able to keep up with all this when I was younger. But now, I just don’t care. Whenever my friends use a word I know isn’t even real, I just smile and wonder if “Real Housewives of Atlanta” is on Netflix (Yes, it is). So here’s my advice: don’t use slang all the time. Once in a while is fine and may even help to spice up an otherwise pedestrian conversation. But using slang every other word? At that point, you should just record a rap album. Maybe someday, you can come up with lyrics like, “Never let me slip, cause if I slip, then I’m slippin.” Seems like someone should make sure that Dr. Dre doesn’t go outside when it’s raining.
It’s almost a guarantee that by the time I’m old, children and teenagers won’t even use slang anymore. They’ll just grunt at each other.
“Cray-cray” will turn into “ugh.”
“Wrecked” will turn into “ugh.”
“I have an incurable strain of syphilis” will turn into “ugh.”
Actually that last grunt might actually be that of disgust. Whatever the future holds, I won’t be ready for it.