(Untitled)

[skellington1]

My pater has occasionally remarked that his least favorite thing about smartphones is how they "Preclude use of our familial creole*", which is A) true and B) a crying shame. It also made me furiously interested in somehow studying the phenom of familial language use -- vocabulary and grammar and idioms that function within a given family (or

Comments

[caladri]

I wish I'd replied here first instead of on Tumblr as this is a better place for a texty-thready conversation

[skellington1]

Ha, so I'm not the only one stuck asking the time in French. It just feels right in your mouth!

Adding -o is at least intelligible to others. :P My family adds -friend for lots of animals... and occasionally power tools. (The shop vac is known as either "Mr. Sucky" or "My fat friend"). The foo-friend thing would really throw me, though, since it swaps between saying the letters rather than the sounds.

Would the synonym replacement work at all like Elfwood's old profanity filter, which replaced 'bad' words with their 'accurate' term, even in the middle of other words? It 'corrected' "Title" to "Breastle" on my page. :P

[caladri]

It just feels right in your mouth!

That's dirty!

since it swaps between saying the letters rather than the sounds

Yeah, and I think that mixing of how letters are treated (said as part of a word, said as letters, or said as if they were in another alphabet, or whatever) is probably something I tend towards. And I think maybe it's not that unusual? Like, "d-bag"?

And yes, title -> breastle is a good example of a similar process. Also, sometimes invoking references to specific censorware, e.g. saying "gently caress" per the somethingawful forums, not that I ever actually participated there.

[skellington1]

> That's dirty!

Well, it IS French. ;)

letters/sounds: I suppose it's really the second letter that throws me? We use initials a fair bit, as a society. But then, Erik is prone to making EVERYTHING into an acronym, and I frequently stare at him blankly for awhile then, too. So maybe I'm just bad at spelling. :P

For animals, one of our familiar quirks is using the "Mr." title. And talking to them. "Oh, hello Mr. Hawk!" "Look, there's Mr. falcon!" Which is very Narnia/Beatrix Potter and also I suppose patriarchal. But "Ms" doesn't sound right and Mrs and Miss would require making assumptions about an animal's marital status...

[t_c_da]

We have a pair of blackbirds that live in our garden, the female of which is particularly brave/foolish in getting underfoot when we are doing gardening stuff. They regularly get addressed as Mr/Mrs Blackbird, so you're not alone in that quirk!

Having lived for reasonable lengths of time in .au, .uk, & .nz I have an eclectic mix of words at my disposal and use them often.

One of my tricks is mis-pronouncing longer words, sometimes coupeld with a bit of spoonerism. Australian ABoRIGinals will regularly emerge as aBORiGINals (rhyming with urinals) from my mouth.

[skellington1]

I thought I'd responded to this but apparently I didn't. Oops! The intentionally mispronouncing words thing is fun. Only one I can think of off the top of my head is my grandparents say 'ass-pair-A-gus." :P They had a waiter offer them mispronounced asparagus once, and ever since they say it that way and giggle.

[skellington1]

Also the slugglesworth thing is just totally adorable.

[caladri]

Yes, slugs are pretty cute!