‘Ohio skibidi’, ‘gyat’, ‘yapaholic’ — Gen Alpha, the first generation to grow up in an online world, is adding fast-moving and colourful slang to the lexicon.
Language has always changed over time, but the internet has created layers of slang that can feel impossible to keep up with, Dr Howard Manns linguistics lecturer at Monash University tells RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
“A lot of these slang words that people of our age or older people might think are hip and new, like no cap, meaning it’s the truth, or lit, meaning something great, fam, referring to your friends, or slay, meaning that’s really good.
“These words are already on their way out, and a lot of this is from the pressure of social media and the increasing influence of gaming and YouTube.”
And as language abhors a vacuum, new words are flooding in, he said, for instance slay is out, skibidi is in. Skibidi comes from a popular surrealist head-in-toilet meme.
“It’s not about knowing about skibidi and where it comes from, it’s being able to use it in the right way.
“So skibidi as an example, a lot of Generation Alpha will use this to mock another idea that’s around these days for generation alpha, the idea of brain rot.”
The idea older generations have of Gen Alpha is that excessive online activity is giving them brain rot, he said.
“The young people will actually use this really emotionally and shout it sometimes, to mock parents and to be ironic about them getting brain rot, but also partially to mock kids who they really do think have brain rot.”
The lingo evolves too, he said, with words or phrases which might be passe getting a new lease of life.
“One of the things that keeps words going a little bit longer is how we use them and how we keep adding to them.
“Capaholic, yapaholic is another really popular one. My kid occasionally accuses me of speaking Yapanese, saying that I talk too much.”
While slang may be changing faster than it ever did, it’s nothing new. Indeed, some slangy phrases still used today go back, in some cases, to previous centuries, he said.
“We see this with a word like cool, which has been around since the ’60s, but somehow still maintains this slanginess to it, but an even better example, and one of my favourite examples, is booze which has been around at least since the 15th century, but somehow still sounds a bit slangy to us.”
Some contemporary everyday words had their origins in slang, he said.
“Fad, joke, boom, these words, they’re just part of everyday English, but at one point they were slang – in fact, are all words that were slang at the time of Shakespeare.”
Rhyming slang has travelled the world from Victorian tunnellers in London to US prison inmates, he said.
“Rhyming slang goes all the way back to the navvies, the engineers who were working on the British railroads.
“They were some of the first to use rhyming slang that subsequently went on to the Cockneys, which subsequently we picked up here in Australia.”
Australians then took rhyming slang with them to the gold fields in the US, he said, but the people who used this secret language were predominantly criminals.
“There was this gang, the Sydney ducks, who were really prolific users of rhyming slang. And what was interesting was the only place that rhyming slang actually picked up in the US was in prisons, because of the Sydney Ducks, hung out with other criminals, and those criminals took this language into American prisons, and you can still find it being used as a secret language in American prisons.”
He believes the rich linguistic tradition of slang is in safe hands with Gen Alpha.
“Their slang is constantly evolving, and they’re being very creative in their use of slang… capaholics, yapaholics, Yapanese, these kids are being creative.
“So, I think we have to give them some credit here, no cap, and say they’re doing all right these kids.”
rnz.co.nz
