Monday DE: Slanging Match

[splash_of_blue]

Happy* Monday, everyone!

Your DE for today, should you choose to accept it: tell me about your characters' use of slang. Is there any canon-specific slang your character uses? What does it mean, where does it come from? Feel free to provide gifs/YouTube clips/etc. if relevant.



*Ugh.

Comments

[configuration_birdwatcher]

Bastion is aware of slang, but mostly just as a concept, and never uses it themself. They can usually figure out what a slang word means from context and/or metaphor, but they don't see the point of using it in general conversation.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

oh noes a language usage DE.

So, while most of the kids code-switch to some extent between formal Japanese and some form of slang/casual Japanese (Mimi and Hikari default to prototypically girly slang, Yamato and Taichi default to quite overtly 'rough' and masculine slang, and Takeru cheerily code-switches between somewhat overly cutesy boyish slang and the same rough slang his brother uses depending on what's most useful, while Sora and Jyou tend not to use slang at all, and Koushiro never veers from formal language), which are denoted as much by tone and inflection as by word usage, Yamato is always using slang forms of Japanese, and never uses formal language.

Probably most characteristically, Yamato's keen on 'yagaru,' an apharetic slang inflection that attaches to verb stems and denotes extreme hostility towards the verb. He uses it a lot when he's eleven, and by the time he's seventeen or eighteen in Tri he tends to reserve it for when he's particularly angry and/or when he's talking to or about Taichi.

(He also reserves the most hostile personal pronoun possible for Taichi! The one usually used for sworn enemies. It is a rare honour.)

Yamato also tends to lapse into slang terms when he's nicknaming people. Hiroaki Ishida gets 'oyaji,' a not terribly unusual but kind of rough and informal slang term for 'Dad' that roughly comes out to 'old man.' And in Milliways, when he refers to Cisco as 'kid' or 'kiddo,' he's probably not using the standard form of 'ko,' or the more friendly, affectionate form of 'bozu,' but actually 'kozou,' which is a lot more slang-y, a lot rougher, and has a meaning somewhere between 'kid' and 'brat.'

[fairy_fixit]

Neither of mine really use slang, because any new bit of canon has to be translated to French, German, and Portuguese and slang makes life difficult for the translators. In the primary British English version of the game, imps use Cockney rhyming slang but that's about it.

Well, Amascut says and thinks "camel dung" instead of "bullshit".

[cottoncandypink]

Wilford's language is weird. He's memey, but also incredibly dated at the same time. I think his tendency to use dated slang is probably what led to his retcon in the first place, but I still feel like it was an odd choice that mostly served to hide his identity for a reveal at the end.

Even before the retcon, and especially since, I've used his slang usage as a disguise in and of itself. Part of his character that got lost pretty early on was Wilford being in his 60s or 70s, because it just didn't work with an actor in his early-mid 20s. I think he got aged down to something closer to his actor's age, but I decided to bridge that gap, and put him in his late 30s. It also let me bridge that weird gap with his slang. He uses hilariously dated slang as a means to seem completely out of the loop and kind of moronic, despite being pretty on top of current trends. He uses modern slang in his day to day life, but the dated slang when he's trying to put someone on the wrong footing, or when he's just feeling ornery.

[a1enzo]

That was basically Enzo's job on the show:

clip 1 (more at 4:48)
clip 2 (more at 7:11)
clip 3
clip 4
lampshaded

As for meanings, the glossary is still a work in progress.