Use slang with caution

I.M Soni

Those aspiring to write good English, striving to acquire the tools of effective communication, can ill afford to overlook the hidden by-laws of the English language. Slang is one.

There is a staggering variety in slang which may vary from country to country. “Dialect is a matter of geography, but slang is nationwide.”

It is important to understand slang, what it stands for, its shades and meaning, because we, in India, follow what is known as the King’s (or Queen’s) English.

The American English, with its new spelling, may not be frowned upon but it is yet to be given formal recognition. For instance, how many writers, journalists, or dictionaries’ spell colour as “color”, programme as “program”?

Many talented young men and women unwittingly use slang words and earn red marking on their writing, losing credit. They defend their selves saying: “Well. This is my style.” Of course, they overlook that style must conform to a universal standards and conviction, not individual caprice.

Some think that only poor and less educated people use slang. This is largely untrue. A bit of slang is used by everybody.

Slang is a departure from standard, accepted language, but it may easily turn into standard language if it meets with large favour. Or it may fade out without trace.

“Ain’t” is one oldest slang words. It started in Britain and was given currency by King Charles II. But slang is far older than that and quite international. In Latin word for “head” was caput, from which we get a large number of words. “cape”, “capital”, “capitol” and “caption” among them.

The Romans were not satisfied with their regular word for “head”. They began to use in its place testa, which meant “jug”. This slang use became so widespread that by the time Latin turned into French and Italian, we find the descendants of testa used as frequently as those of caput with the meaning of “head”.

If we explore further back, we find that ancient Sanskrit used a word that meant “pot” as a slang, term for “head”, which reminds is of “crackpot”. “To get someone’s goat” may strike you as typical twentieth-century American slang, yet we find this expression, with the same meaning, in the writings of sixteenth-century French writers.

One feature of slang is its creation of many words for the same thing. “Dollar”, for instance, will appear as “buck”, “simoleon”, “iron Man”, “toadskin”, “smacker”, and dozen other expressions. They very fact that there are so many words contending for the same meaning weakness most of them so that they fall by the wayside. 

Slang is picturesque and appeals to the imagination. The slag current in other language works the same way. French, for instance, has words that literally mean “camel” or “call” to indicate that a person is stupid, and the “bill” that the waiter brings you at the end of your restaurant meal is known as “the sorrowful one”. Spanish calls a pest a “calamity” and uses “to scalp” or “to take the hair off somebody” in the sense of “to kid someone along”. “Chicken” is used for a handsome, dashing young man.

Two other items that call for attention are cant and jargon. Jargon is a form of speech current in a given class or profession and hardly understood on the outside. Cant, the language of the underworld, is a variety of jargon.

American and British cant has been mysterious in the past, but today large segments of it are known, having been spread by detective stories, and many of its expression have become general sang and even regular language. “Sawbuck” for “$ 10” and “grand” for “$ 1,000” are generally understood and used, though they are not the best language in the world. There are, however, many others like “quizmaster”.

There is a form of slang which consists of cutting down and abbreviating long words or using their initials, as when one says “math” for “mathematics”. “eco” for “economics”, or “G.S” for “general science”.

These forms are somewhat frowned upon, but many similar ones are fully accepted, in fact, in a great many cases the original longer form is forgotten. “Cab” for instance, comes from “cabriolet”, an originally French word meaning “little goat’ and applied to a conveyance that leaped and bounded over the cobblestones; “mob” is an abbreviation of mobile vulgus, Latin for “fickle crowd”.

In both these words, it is the initial part that was selected; but in “van” from “caravan” and “wig” from “periwig” it is the ending, while I “Flue” from “influenza” and “skeet” from “mosquito” it is the middle part. “Bus” comes from omnibus, a Latin word that means “for everybody”.

Once in a while abbreviations lead to confusion. When you say “gas”, do you mean the gas from your kitchen range, or are you abbreviating the “gasoline” that is used in the tank of the car?

Language goes by custom rather than by reason. Why “Xmas” for “Christmas”? The X is not the word at all!