Entertainment For Lively Minds
ATM. Youth Speak. Translations please......
That young popstrel/noisemonger Jessie J has just tweeted this.
"jessiejofficial JESSIE J
by guardianmusic
Planes give me so much joke. Some people are just so inner!!!! Lol"
What does it mean? Adjectives, pronouns and adverbs just thrown together in any old fashion. Answers on a postcard......
It's just nonsense isn't it? There was a poncey "down wiv ver kids" Professor in Linguistics from A.N.Other Poly on Steroids University on BBC Breakfast the other morning, desperately trying to convince Sian and Bill that the language spoken by the cast of "The Only Way is Essex" (don't get me started) is a genuine descendent of an Anglian dialect and slang and not a lazy bastardization of what they hear on EastEnders crossed with "Gangsta" styling's courtesy of a 13 year old's understanding of the So Solid Crew's Peckham linguistic jiggery pokery.
Rant over.
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Here, borrow mine.
;-)
Jessie J
Is there a more irritating vocalist in British pop? She popped up on Live Lounge or something the other week, and we had to turn her off.
She fills every space with noises.
No idea what that drivel means
but this is ace:
[Jessie J with a kid called Shay (maybe Shea?) on stage at Glastonbury 2011]
My 8 year old daughter loves this song.
She has good taste, I reckon.
That's the 'custard pie test' passed
Lovely way to start a Tuesday
It means
planes are so funny, lots of people go into themselves and refuse to talk to others. Or nosey I think.
Why didn't she say that then?
Tsk.
Anyway, on a plane, I wouldn't want to be disturbed by a screeching harridan. Oh no. Headphones, iPod & Kindle + shut eye.
Slippers optional. Thrombosis socks on.
'Yoofspeak'
a lazy bastardization of what they hear on EastEnders crossed with "Gangsta" styling's courtesy of a 13 year old's understanding of the So Solid Crew's Peckham linguistic jiggery pokery.
Respec
Missing letters
Well what do you expect from someone who can't even be bothered to have a proper surname?!?Just like Katy B.
Possibly they are the same person anyway........
Ooh, risky words
I've no doubt Bob will come steaming in on this any minute now, but even as something of an agnostic regarding modern Pop, I strongly disagree with this. I've heard Katy B's album, and it's very good indeed. Unlike Jessie J: (1) she has a very pleasing voice; (2) her songs are pretty good; (3) I'm not aware of her blaring all over the place and filling the air with platitudes and self-regarding drivel.
I'd still rather hear an album from Katy G, mind :-)
Pop bitch
Think I'd rather hear an album from Kenny G...
Bouncy Bouncy
Or maybe a song from Bobby V(ee!)
...or, as a last resort, a song from Bobby G(ee)
and the rest of his Bucks Fizz chums.
y not?
What?!?! No Jay Z?
Yes
Someone needs to do the POP POP POP better than Richard fucking Thompson post.
I like Price Tag.
The rest of the Jessie J album's pretty dull. The whole of the Katy B album is amazing, apart from one track. And no, the two artists are absolutely nothing alike beyond being the proud owners of some initials and some vaginas. I refuse to speculate on the numbers involved.
Sorry, I'm all out of steam. That'll have to do.
I have absolutely no idea what it means...
and nor do I care. However I would hazard a guess that had I had access to tweeting as a teenager my missives would have been equally impenetrable to the older generation.
Jessie J
She actually scares me a little bit. I think Skynet exists and the company realised that sending back a beefcake robot with an Austrian accent was a bit of an obvious calling card on the world domination front so they opted for a gobby robot from Ilford with challenging views on grammar, foot injuries and how to solve the world's problems by everybody just, like, getting over it.
I know why she scares you.
Ever seen Zoolander?
Mijla Jovovich's character? Uncanny
Jessie J WILL make you kill the Malaysian Prime Minister.
Mi hi hi hiyaaaaaaaa! Give it to me one more time ah ha ha.....
I have to say
Having watched 'Top Boy' and 'Attack the Block' in the last week I have been rather enjoying the new hybrid patois language.
Not quite to the extent where the likes of 'allow it' and 'let's get tooled up, blud' have entered my vocabulary, but certainly enough to raise a smile.
Next time you're called upon to hang a picture
you can stride purposefully shedwards exclaiming "Let's get tooled up, blud!"
Funnily enough
I did that last night while striding towards the cutlery drawer....
I like this one
and have been singing along to it in the car, which horrified my teenage niece, which is always a bonus.
On a Jessie J note...
Has anyone else heard that song she's done with James Morrison?
I was amazed. It truly is far far greater than the sum of its parts. It seems the awfulness of each person involved has cancelled it out.
"Up" is a really good song, and I sadly have to admit, probably one of my favourites of this year. Quite trip-hop and with fairly epic strings. Well worth a listen.
I think...
...that the absence of grandstanding/huffery-puffery that so much of this kind of single usually contains makes it a lovely surprise. More of this sort of thing please young popsters!
I quitre liked that one
he did with Nelly Furtado a couple of years ago.
Don't tell ANYONE I said that though.
That's lovely
and sorry but did I miss the memo about James Morrison? Great voice, melody and excuse my ignorance but isn't "You Give Me Something" a song we would all give our right arms to write and perform?
Spot on Dave
It's a proper soul song and Proper good.
That song never appealed to me
Maybe it is just me, but I've always seen Morrison as a bit of a poor man's Ray LaMontagne in the world of weary troubadours with husky voices.
I'd much rather listen to this voice, every time:
I sent a text
to a young person and at the end I put "Dave" just to confirm that it was indeed Dave that had sent it. Much hilarity ensued, good job I took out "best regards" really.
I used to sign off with my name on texts
until someone asked "Why do you keep doing that?" so I stopped.
The next text I sent (to someone else) solicited the response, "Who is this?"
Hmm.
"Planes give me so much joke. Some people are just so inner!!!! Lol"
That looks like something you'd read on a Japanese teenager's tee-shirt.
A wide range of those incomprehensible Japanese t-shirts
is available at http://store.engrish.com/engrishtshirts.html
Nothing to do with me - just a very satisfied punter.
"We are breads! Every day we made energy for most people
Some people eat we with jam or butter
It is the great sound"
If the Japanese trust the English
of t-shirt makers, a lot of British people have a similar faith in the linguistic skills of tatooists. You may think that you have the Hindi word for Inner Peace on your shoulder, but you might find a lot of giggling going on behind your back on your first trip to Goa.
Sounds like my sister-in-law.
Came back from Goa or wherever with some tramp-stamp scribble at the base of her spine which, she claimed, translated as "Voyager To Distant Lands".
She wasn't best pleased at my suggestion that it probably means "I Like It Up The Arse"
Taking it up the arse.
Lenny, you make it seem like taking up the arse is a bad thing...
... it works for me...
Modern kids today, eh?
Why don't they use proper words, man, like Cool, Fab and Gear eh?
Right on, daddio!
Right on, daddio!
Right on, daddio!
Far out man.
Modern kids-
they're grotty
Essex accent
is just the old london accent. The new accent that kids speak in the inner city is very different from that. It's now a black - hybrid accent. I can't stand it but it is just how they speak - to oldies it sounds ridiculously affected street jive but it isn't it is just how they learn to speak with perfectly nice kids in their class. (he was 6 when he first called me bruv; 'don't call me bruv, Im your dad' 'ok man', 'don't call me man either, Im your dad')
I'm not sure
it matters all that much, so long as the yoof of today aren't swearing and being offensive. I have given up trying to tell my nephews and nieces to stop using 'like' all the bloody time, but then I am sure I spoke like a complete arse (or rather mumbled) at their age. I get far more irritated by people my age saying "can I get a double mocha with whipped cream to go" when they really should know better. Watching too many U.S soaps and not enough Dad's Army is the reason.
to be fair
I watched an old 'Minder' recently and remember using a lot of that down the youth club. 'you going to that party?' 'yeah, not many'.
Minder
I watched an episode recently where Arthur was going on about being shot at when he was in the army in Malaysia and Terry retorted with
"You told me you spent the whole time propping up the bar in the Union Jack Club and whupping it up Chinese rattly".
I think I know what meant (he said blushing slightly)
Rhyming slang
I can work out what 'Chinese rattly' means but I presume 'rattly' is rhyming slang. Rattly what?
a lot of minder
rhyming slang was made up down the pub by the writers with a pencil and a dog eared script in hand i reckon.
Terry was a miserable cunt as well.
After the riots
I read this article in The Evening Standard (I know it's rubbish most of the time). I think it offers an interesting argument against just letting street slang go.
My personal bugbear is the pronunciation of "like" which now seems to be pronounced "layke" or something along those lines.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23978523-ghetto-grammar-r...
I remember reading that at the time.
It misses one crucial point, which is that everyone is multi-lingual. You, me, everyone. I use different vocabulary when talking to my mum than when I'm talking to my wife, or friends, or bank manager.
"Street slang", for want of a better name, is just one of most kids' available languages. Most - not all, but most - also speak reasonable Standard English (with caveats which are nothing to do with their generation, or their mastery of slang: see below).
You won't find a school - and I work in one of the most Inner (literally, not Jessie J's definition) of Inner London boroughs - where kids routinely address teachers in slang. Maybe if they're being deliberately defiant - "Miss, dat's extra, blud" - but not in the normal run of things. They speak in a language that you and I would absolutely recognise as standard English.
Those "proper" words that Lindsay Johns mentions would likely not be familiar to those kids' parents and grandparents, either. The issue is a socioeconomic and educational one, not a generational one. Latinate, academic words are unfamiliar to much of the population, regardless of age.
There's a really interesting piece of research which the University of Wellington in NZ did a while back, and which resulted in something called the Academic Word List, which is 600 or 700 root words which are mostly only found in high-level or academic texts. Coincidentally, these words match broadly the vocabulary gaps found among speakers of English as an Additional Language.
Coincidentally coincidentally, the same words are also largely missing from the vocabulary of native English speakers from socioeconomically deprived backgrounds. A lot of the interventions in place for EAL kids in school would do wonders for a lot of working class/underclass kids, but there isn't the money.
He does talk about that point as below...
.....Some educators take a position of cultural relativism. They assert the legitimacy and value of street talk, or at the very least, the importance of teaching young people to "code switch" - how to differentiate in which milieu it is socially acceptable.
I have no time for such an approach. In my experience, young people find it very hard to code switch. Text-speak, poor grammar and street patois routinely pervade the essays I set them, let alone their conversations with me.
I didn't say he didn't mention it.
I said he misses the point. The further down the ability scale you go, the less kids are able to "code switch", but that's not unique to this generation or this type of slang. I do think code-switching is a valuable skill, one which we all have, and I wouldn't presume to make value judgements about the "validity" of languages or dialects. I think anyone functioning in our society needs as a matter of pragmatism to be comfortable in standard English, but not because it's "better" than street patois, just that it's the lingua franca.
His experience and mine of code-switching are very different. Also, I'm pretty sure his students' parents would have handed in essays which were equally flawed, but with a different vocabulary.
Generational change..
We have always code-switched, but this has historically been a verbal thing. The advent of the text-message as a means of communication has also resulted in a universal form of written slang, presumabl one which Da Yoof can switch in and out of at will.
I would be interested to find out what the levels are of illiteracy these days. All kids can comunicate by text messaging, even if using a pidgin. The fundamentals of reading and writing are there. They cannot not be.
It's really hard to get quality stats.
Supposedly, the National Literacy Strategy raised standards hugely between 1998 and 2009. It no longer exists, but in fairness - and I can only speak for secondary schools - most of the practice from the NLS is more or less embedded in English teaching, and most of it is really pretty decent stuff. (Ideally it'd be embedded across the rest of the curriculum too, but that never really happened.)
The figures quoted by National Strategies before they were liquidated and all their staff sent to the gulags were that the number of kids achieving a Level 4 in reading (the expected level at the end of Year 6) increased from 80% to 86% between 2000 and 2009. The improvement in writing was less, but still very statistically significant. It stands at about 67%. I can't find the 2000 figure.
Of course, those figures are deeply suspect, and subject to the same inflationary pressures as GCSEs and A-levels. But I think it's probably fair to say that the NLS did work to an extent. Kids tend to read pretty well, in the main. They're used to the internet: you have to. Writing is more of an issue, but 'twas ever thus. I have exercise books belonging to kids my dad taught in Merton in the 60s, which I'd be happy to show anyone who believes kids used to be significantly more literate than they are now.
I'm not talking about my experiences
Just quoting the article. I don't agree with all of it, I just said it offers an interesting argument.
My personal experience is that it is changing and that a lot more people seem either unwilling to "code switch" or are unable to.
Sorry, stupid moment.
I thought your second paragraph was you, but it's still him, in quotation! My apologies. I'll edit accordingly! Sorry!
No worries
If you knew me better, you'd know I'd never start a sentence with...
"I have no time for such an approach"
I'm much more of a fence sitter.