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Slang Dictionaries
Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception. Etymology of the word ''slang'' In its earliest attested use (1756), the word ''slang'' referred to the vocabulary of "low" or "disreputable" people. By the early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to usages below the level of standard educated speech. In Scots dialect it meant "talk, chat, gossip", as used by Aberdeen poet William Scott in 1832: "The slang gaed on aboot their war'ly care." In northern English dialect it meant "impertinence, abusive language". The origin of the word is ...
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Vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language. Definition and usage Vocabulary is commonly defined as "all the words known and used by a particular person". Productive and receptive knowledge The first major change distinction that must be made when evaluating word knowledge is whether the knowledge is productive (also called achieve or active) or receptive (also called receive or passive); even within those opposing categories, there is often no clear distinction. Words that are generally understood when heard or read or seen constitute a person's receptive vocabulary. These words may range from well known to barely known (see degree of knowledge below). A person's receptive vocabulary is usually the larger of the two. For examp ...
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1337 Speak
Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words based on a system of suffixes and alternate meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities. The term "leet" is derived from the word ''elite'', used as an adjective to describe skill or accomplishment, especially in the fields of online gaming and computer hacking. The leet lexicon includes spellings of the word as ''1337'' or ''leet''. History Leet originated within bulletin board systems (BBS) in the 1980s,Mitchell.An Explanation of l33t Speak. where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms. The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective has been credited with the original coining of the term ...
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IsiNgqumo
IsiNgqumo, or IsiGqumo, (literally "decisions" in the language itself) is an argot used by homosexuals of South Africa and Zimbabwe who speak Bantu languages, as opposed to Gayle, a language used by the homosexuals of South Africa who speak Germanic languages. IsiNgqumo developed during the 1980s. Unlike Gayle, IsiNgqumo has not been thoroughly researched or documented, so figures on numbers of speakers are nonexistent. IsiNgqumo is often considered a Western invention by indigenous Zimbabweans but it was actually a creation of indigenous homosexuals, an only recently self-aware group. Sample Although the following sample conversation may be slightly obscene, it is a good representative of IsiNgqumo's use as most of its vocabulary has some connection to sex or gay men. IsiNgqumo: :"''Isiphukwana sake, kuyavuswa na?''" :"''Maye''" :"''Injini!''" :"''Kuncishiwe''" (or) "''kuyapholwa''" Ndebele translation (to show difference): :"''Ubolo sake, kuyakhulu na?''" :"''Yebo''" :"''Imbuqo ...
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Helsinki Slang
Helsinki slang or ('Helsinki's slang', from Swedish , 'city'; see etymology) is a local dialect and a sociolect of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital city of Helsinki. It is characterized by its abundance of foreign loan words not found in the other Finnish dialects. Helsinki slang first evolved in the late 19th century as a sociolect of the multilingual Helsinki working-class communities, where Swedish- and Finnish-speaking youth lived together with Russian, German and various other language minorities. Helsinki slang is not a typical dialect of Finnish, because unlike many other parts of Finland, the Helsinki area was predominantly Swedish-speaking during the time when the city of Helsinki originally evolved, and thus Helsinki slang is characterised by an unusual, strikingly large number of obvious foreign loanwords. Nevertheless, Helsinki slang is counted as a dialect on its own right, among the "purer" dialects of other parts of Finland. Grammatically He ...
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Gayle Language
Gayle, or Gail, is an English- and Afrikaans-based gay argot or slang used primarily by English and Afrikaans-speaking homosexual men in urban communities of South Africa, and is similar in some respects to Polari in the United Kingdom, from which some lexical items have been borrowed. The equivalent language used by gay South African men who speak Bantu languages is called '' IsiNgqumo'', and is based on a Nguni lexicon. Gayle originally manifested as ''moffietaal'' (Afrikaans: literally, "homosexual language") in the drag culture of the Cape Coloured community in the 1950s. It permeated into white homosexual circles in the 1960s and became part of mainstream white gay culture. Besides a few core words borrowed from Polari (such as the word ''varda'' meaning "to see", itself a borrowing from Lingua Franca), most of Gayle's words are alliterative formations using women's names, such as '' Beulah'' for "beauty", '' Priscilla'', meaning "police", and ''Hilda'' for "hideous". ...
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Fenya
Fenya ( rus, феня, p=ˈfʲenʲə) or fen'ka ( rus, фенька, p=ˈfʲenʲkə) is a Russian cant language used among criminals. In modern Russian language it is also referred to as blatnoy language (), where "blatnoy" is a slang expression for "professional criminal". It is also widely used in "thieves' songs". Etymology Initially, this was the name of the Ofen language (, formerly "Suzdal dialect"). This is a language that was formed in Russia, in the Middle Ages, and was originally used by the ofenyas (traveling merchants). The god-haulers — "ofenyas engaged in the resale of icons" created a cryptolanguage, inventing new roots and leaving the traditional Russian morphology, and used this invented language to communicate "not for other people's ears". Overview The grammar of fenya is Russian; the vocabulary has changed over time. The original ''fenya'' consisted of broken Russian words borrowed from Greek and other foreign languages. Vladimir Dahl in his '' Exp ...
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Fala Dos Arxinas
The Armed Forces of the Liberation of Angola ( pt, Forças Armadas de Libertação de Angola) or FALA was the armed wing of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a prominent political faction during the Angolan Civil War. History After their training in China in 1965, the first military cadres returned to Angola, settled in the eastern part of the country and began the mobilization and recruitment of guerrillas. In this way, the first embryonic contingent of FALA was formed. The number of guerrillas increased with the growing number of UNITA members among the population, thus permitting effective military training. This enabled them to begin the mission of liberating the country from the claws of Portuguese colonialism, as proved by the attacks of 4 and 25 December 1966 on Kassamba and Teixeira de Sousa respectively. The first military regions were established along with their respective independent zones and operational fronts like Quembo, Lewa a ...
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Cockney Rhyming Slang
Rhyming slang is a form of slang word construction in the English language. It is especially prevalent among Cockneys in England, and was first used in the early 19th century in the East End of London; hence its alternative name, Cockney rhyming slang. In the US, especially the criminal underworld of the West Coast between 1880 and 1920, rhyming slang has sometimes been known as Australian slang. The construction of rhyming slang involves replacing a common word with a phrase of two or more words, the last of which rhymes with the original word; then, in almost all cases, omitting, from the end of the phrase, the secondary rhyming word (which is thereafter implied), Bryson, a humourist, states that there is a special name given to this omission: "the word that rhymes is almost always dropped... There's a technical term for this process as well: hemiteleia". Given that this is a genus of plant species, and appears in no readily available sources as a linguistic term, it is uncl ...
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Cantonese Internet Slang
Cantonese Internet Slang () is an informal language originating from Internet forums, chat rooms, and other social platforms. It is often adapted with self-created and out-of-tradition forms. Cantonese Internet Slang is prevalent among young Cantonese speakers and offers a reflection of the youth culture of Hong Kong. Advantages * Save time and ease communication * Able to type faster with shorter sentences or letters * Helps create a sense of identity or bonding in online communities * Becomes a medium for expressing their own ideas and an indication of memberships among Cantonese-speakers Disadvantages * Negatively affect Hong Kong students' usage of grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure in Chinese composition * Students believe that it is acceptable to make serious grammatical errors and use informal Chinese vocabulary in formal writing. * Student Chinese compositions are often filled with casual phrases and slang from Internet forums. Characteristics * ''Code-switch ...
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Cant (language)
A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot, pseudo-language, anti-language or secret language. Each term differs slightly in meaning; their use is inconsistent. Etymology There are two main schools of thought on the origin of the word ''cant'': * In linguistics, the derivation is normally seen to be from the Irish word (older spelling ), "speech, talk", or Scottish Gaelic . It is seen to have derived amongst the itinerant groups of people in Ireland and Scotland, who hailed from both Irish/Scottish Gaelic and English-speaking backgrounds, ultimately developing as various creole languages. However, the various types of cant (Scottish/Irish) are mutually unintelligible. The Irish creole variant is simply termed " the Cant". Its speakers from the Irish Traveller community know it a ...
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Caló (Chicano)
Caló (also known as Pachuco) is an argot or slang of Mexican Spanish that originated during the first half of the 20th century in the Southwestern United States. It is the product of zoot-suit pachuco culture that developed in the 1930s and '40s in cities along the US/Mexico border. Origin According to Chicano artist and writer José Antonio Burciaga: He goes on to describe the speech of his father, a native of El Paso, Texas: The Caló of El Paso was probably influenced by the wordplay common to the speech of residents of the Tepito barrio of Mexico City. One such resident was the comic film actor Germán Valdés, a native of Mexico City who grew up in Ciudad Juárez (just across the US-Mexico border from El Paso). His films did much to popularize the language in Mexico and the United States. Development Caló has evolved in every decade since the 1940-1950s. It underwent much change during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s as Chicanos began to enter US universitie ...
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