TEENSPEAK

Sup with the wak playstation sup!

Lexical Variation
Clearly there are miles between the way teens speak today

to the way older generations spoke when they were young.

Your grandparents may have used words or expressions
such as:
Baby - Cute girl, term of address for either sex
Back seat bingo - Necking in a car
Bad news - Depressing person
Bash - Great party
Cast an eyeball - To look
Cat - A hip person (Beats)
Hang - As in "hang out" which means to do very little
Haul ass - Drive very fast (hot-rodders)
Hip, Swell or Jazzed.

Lexical Variations
Your parents may have used words like:
3rd Base

The bases, known from their dating origins She is totally 3rd base
You would totally get to third base with her. information (get the
411)
Ace
The best; awesome; terrific.
When something was even better than that it was deemed "Bulk
ace" (I'm not sure if this was just an Australian term.)
Get Bent
Get lost,or leave me alone
Get Real
Disbelief or disdain.

Current TEENSPEAK: Is this you?

A Minute
In teen slang, a minute actually means the opposite of what it suggests. You may hear this in phrases such as "Man,
he's been gone for a minute" or "I haven't seen you in a minute." It's used to suggest that a long time has passed.
Bounce
When you call your teen away from talking on the phone, you may hear him say "I gotta bounce." Bounce means leave.
Butter
The word butter is typically combined with the word "like." When a teen says something is "like butter," it means it's
smooth, or it is easy. For example, "My mackin' skills are like butter."
Chillaxin'
Chillaxin' combines the words "chillin'" and "relaxin'." You may have heard your teen use this when a friend asks what
he's doing, as in, "I'm just chillaxin'."
Cray Cray
When a teen uses the word cray cray, she means that something is really crazy or not cool. If you hear a teen say "that
party was cray cray," it means that it was a really awesome party and a lot happened, but if your teen says "don't get
cray cray," it means someone is going too far and not being cool anymore.
Do Me
When a teen says he's "gonna do me" it means that he's going to be himself and not worry about what other people say.
Fo Sho
Saying fo sho is just another way to say "for sure," "of course" or "definitely." Your teen may respond to yes/no questions
that you ask using fo sho. Another variation of this phrase is "fo shizzle."
Freaking
The word freaking is used in place of the word really. For example, a party may have been "freaking awesome." Often
teens will use this word in place of a curse word.

Pronunciation and mistake of an v a

Sometimes teens mix up the use of indefinite articles a and an.
We know that: "A" comes before a consonant/consonant sound:

A bird
A kite
A helicopter
A horse
"An" comes before a vowel/vowel sound:
An ant
An ostrich
An elevator
Sometimes these get mixed up as teens usually dont understand the variation.
They also vary the pronunciation of it. For example A with a short uh sound or
long A sound. An as is a long aan sound or the drop of a all together with the
n sounds coming through.

Pronunciation in Melbourne
Here a study shows that:
A common usage is of teens merging vowels in words like

shell and shall. There becomes no distinction between

SHALL and SHELL.
The same as Celery and Salary.
Ellen and Allen
Full and Fool

Grammatical Variation
Free variation: Where there is no disctinction in semantics

between sayings, questions or expressions. For example: You

didnt do that is basically the same as saying Why didnt you
do that?
You didnt clean your room? Is virtually the same as Why didnt
you clean your room?
I did so is the same as I so did.
Negation: Using the word NOT at the end of a statement in the
form of mockery. Thats a great shirt- not. You a fantastic writernot. However this tends to be more of a fad then anything else.
Acronyms are used in sentences these days and change the
grammatical structure of a sentence. LOL il BBL. What? That is
so YOLO.

Discourse Makers
These indicate their solidarity with other members of the

group. Words like kinda, sorta, like are all indicators of

generation.
Like so random. Like yesterday I went shopping at
southland and there was like no good fashion anywhere,
I'm like so over this seasons looks, its like so overrated.
Using Like instead of said. Eg and then she was like omg
I cant stand that bitch in stead of and then she said.
I have to admit I say LIKE a lot. Take notice of how often

you actually say this and in what contexts you do.

TEENSPEAK STORY
Take a look at this photo:
We are going to write a mini story where every person

writes 1 line each and does so using teen speak only.

Be creative!