If I had a Piso coin for every time my brows furrowed at an unfamiliar slang my peers have uttered through the years, I would be able to pay the fare for one ride to my campus and then some. Maybe even buy candies to pass the time.
What is slang anyhow? Merriam-Webster defines slang as “an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed typically of coinages, arbitrarily changed words, and extravagant, forced, or facetious figures of speech.” Described as a “notoriously slippery linguistic category,” slang sits between what is considered standard and what is considered jargon (Roth-Gordon, 2020). It is a part of language change pervading our lives, most notably the younger generation, from school to the online community.
A Word-Sized Confusion
At 14, my linguistic belief leaned towards prescriptivism. I would wince whenever someone typed in “jeje(nese)”, finding the often purposefully incorrect spelling unorganized and cluttered. (“Jeje,” “jejenese,” or “jejemon” typing in Filipino culture is similar to Leetspeak, but with the abundance of H, X, Q, and Z.) In contrast to the “jeje” style, I texted as if I was writing a formal email. I largely ignored slangs as well, not that I knew many of them. I adhered so much to the “standard” and formal style when I texted that I didn’t realize I was alone in that regard; everyone around me subverted the formalities I followed. Indeed, who would care to spell a contracted form of a word in full in a text when the contracted form is already understood regardless?
Let there be no mistake, however: I never policed anyone on their typing. When I still had a keypad phone, my typing was similar to Jejenese to save time. My current typing is a matter of preference to me. I am comfortable around rules, order, and what was considered “standard,” which was the main reason why I refrained from using slang even with my friends.
Through the years, however, as my linguistic belief shifted towards descriptivism, I became more observant of the informal language used around me. Reading books on language and linguistics made me appreciate the brilliance and structure governing slangs. I was motivated to learn more. The loneliness I’d felt in persisting to be formal in texting only sharpened that motivation.
It grew steadily with my everyday conversations with my peers. When I asked a yes-no question to my friend, who is more immersed in social media than me, she replied dehins. It had me staring at my phone blankly until I belatedly realized it is the inverted form of hindi (“no”). One time, she’d replied oums and omcm to my questions, which I learned afterwards were modified inverted forms of oo (“yes”) and mismo (“exactly,” “right on point”), respectively. Those moments had me snapping my fingers, feeling like a sleuth uncovering a mystery. Since then, I began to use more slang in my everyday SMS/online messaging.
Before proceeding, I would like to highlight that most of what is written here relates to the Philippine context of slangs. However, the principles outlined are true for languages in general. Readers may see some English — the language, not the nationality — slangs sprinkled here and there, but the primary focus is on Filipino slangs and informal speech.
A Nation-sized Linguistic Innovation
It already goes without saying that slang spreads rapidly now on social media, where almost everyone is tethered to. We see it used by specific social groups, most typically the younger generation. In the Philippines, it’s from social media that the slang words “forda” (“for the”) and “sana all” originated, to be popularized later on by its users, mostly the Gen-Z.
Regardless of their origins and medium of popularization, how are slangs formed?
Contrary to the notion that slang is a mess of absurdity as opposed to the structured mechanism of the language accepted as “standard”, slang formation is very much rule-governed and structured. Linguistic anthropologist Jennifer Roth-Gordon (2020) writes, “Slang creation relies heavily on already familiar language patterns to maximize the feeling of novelty while minimizing the cognitive burden of managing new linguistic information.” This means that behind the newness of slang words, it is governed by existing language rules and familiar grammar. Slang therefore shows that there is creativity in its familiar novelty.
One method in slang formation is to modify a word’s spelling in a way that the word’s original pronunciation is still preserved. Using the image below as an example, notice how the word Filipino word ito (“this”) becomes “e2” in Jeje typing, mirroring the sounds of [ɛ] — “e” — and [to] — “two” / “2”. Take note that a variant of this modification is “i2,” in which the same principle is observed.
Another common way is by inverting syllables of words to create a new word. It is observed in other languages, such as French — called Verlan, the inverted form of the French word for “the inverse,” which is l’envers — and Filipino as an example of salitang balbal (“slang word”). Here are some of the Balbal taught to us in Filipino class in high school:
Those examples, however, in my experience, are dated. Newer slang words have emerged since then. Upon observation, formation of newer Filipino slang words involves: (a) inverting a word and adding an “s” at the end (dehins); (b) replacing a word or a portion of it with a near-homophone (d2 — dito — “here”, ); and (c) blending (e.g. the word “yket,” from English word “why” and its Filipino translation bakit; and “awit,” a shorthand for “ouch, that hurts,” stemming from Filipino words aw(ts) — ouch — and sakit — pain).
Veering from salitang balbal, Filipino gayspeak is also a big player in the Filipino slang scene. As the name suggests, Filipino gayspeak is a prominent sociolect used by members of the Filipino LGBTQIA+ community. They are as rule-governed and structured as balbal if not more colorful and creative. Words derived from standard Filipino words like anak (“child/daughter/son”), buntis (“pregnant”), sino (“who”), and ito (“this”) become junakis, jontis, sinetch, itech/itetch, respectively. Filipino words already considered slang can also have a gayspeak variant. Words such as kaloka (a thing or event that is “madness-inducing”) becomes kalurki, and tigok (“dead”) becomes tegi/tegibels for example. It is also the speakers of gayspeak that popularized the word charot (“just kidding”) and its variants charing and char. It is of note that the latter has become a word that almost every young Filipino knows and now uses regardless of their sexual orientation.
Foreign influence in Filipino slang formation is also evident. Words like “forda” and “sana all” bear English influence. In daily use, forda is such a versatile word that it can be used as a sentence marker in virtually any sentence a Filipino can think of. Sana all is also used in many situations that elicit envy or wishful thinking in a person. While the individual words “for,” “the,” sana, and “all” already have existing meanings, the slang words they form create new semantic meaning as opposed to a new lexical entry. This is to say that some slang words create new definitions as opposed to new words for existing definitions.
Now that some of the mechanisms underpinning slang formation have been outlined, here are more slang words that had me squinting at my phone and figuring out their meanings:
Whenever I ping their phones to ask a question about an unfamiliar slang word, my friends would explain it for me, the entire affair amusing them to no end. Who needs Urban Dictionary when you have friends as slang gurus? (Thanks, you guys. I appreciate you all!)
Now, if slang is as rule-governed as I (and linguists) say, why is there stigma around it? One certainly can’t expect to see salitang balbal and Filipino gayspeak to be at the same level as the standard language, although some slang words may be considered standard over time. Linguistic anthropologist Jennifer Roth-Gordon (2020) cites in her paper on slang that, “The stigma of deviance comes not from the linguistic terms themselves, but rather from the low prestige, outsider, and/or marginalized status of its speakers.” Filipino gayspeak and balbal therefore may be the object of ridicule and derision on account of the social status of their respective speakers.
A Me-Sized Micro-evolution, or the “Ella 💅 era” as my friends have put it
Perhaps because I felt more equipped, my usage of such words became more frequent. They even made it beyond the virtual realm. I have a schoolmate who utters naur (“no”) and saur (“so”) very frequently that I sometimes find myself saying those words too in the company of my friends and my family. (Imagine the pronunciation of naur as “no” with an Australian accent.) The phenomenon was so pervasive that it transformed how I use emojis in texts and chat.
Revisiting my prescriptivist era, I’d rarely used emojis save for a couple of smileys here and there. The more I saw how my peers talked online, the earlier I’d come to realize that smileys (and blushing smileys) were now becoming more archaic in favor of emojis like 🙊, 🥺, 🥵, 🥲, 🙇♀️, 💁♀️, 👌, 🤌, with the most significant emoji in my recently-used being 💅. I’m aware that a 4-Pics-1-Word-like use of emojis exist in North America, but as I rarely see it locally, I didn’t focus on it too much.
Could there be a single culprit for the constant shift in my speech in text and in person? A ten-minute conversation with the schoolmate I mentioned would surely have me saying naur, ghurl, and anteh throughout the day, just as how a five-minute conversation with a predominantly English-speaking individual would have me speaking in English for a while. The culprit, it seems, is revealed by Communication Accommodation Theory.
As stated above, my idiolect changes depending on my environment and interlocutor. Through a concept called “convergence,” I align my speech to match my interlocutor’s idiolect. When I chat my close friends, I now use words like anteh, okinams/okie, gesi (sige, or “alright”), ocakes (“OK”) and slang forms of words like auq (shorthand for ayoko, meaning “I don’t want to”). However, in other linguistic contexts and when there is no prior acquaintanceship between me and my interlocutor, I align my speech to sound more formal and polite.
Proceeding to my “Ella 💅 era,” I honestly have never felt more closer to my peers by communicating with them through slang. Using words they use and memes they send gave me a sense of kinship with them, no matter how abstract and small it was. It made me seem more approachable and them as well. While I can’t promise my friends to fully reach my “Ella 💅” level (whatever that means), I can promise them to never stop endeavoring to converge my speech with them.
A Multi-paragraph Conclusion
What now in the face of this linguistic phenomenon? I observe it, I speak it, I listen to it, I change with it. Where at first I avoided slang, nowadays I use it often with my friends and younger members of my family. I still text formally with my elderly, college seniors, and professors. It took me years of active listening to my peers to be conscious of this change in my speech, but now knowing what I do about language, I am more open to this change. Like everything else in this world, change is constant. In this case, change is not inherently good or bad; it is only our perceptions that often dictate it.
Writing this made me realize how far we’ve come from the older forms of our language and the purist beliefs that resisted language change. It also made me realize how vital slang can be to a community’s identity and expression. There is still a line, however vague it is, between the “standard” and the slang, but what’s important is that we understand each other in the end and that we do not discriminate against each other for it.
With this, I conclude that unless I decide to live under a rock, there is no fighting this change.
Reference:
Roth‐Gordon, J. (2020). Language and Creativity: Slang. The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118786093.iela0192
Further reading:
Chin, M., & Mendoza, J. M. (2022, June 24). Knows mo itey?: Dissecting the ins and outs of Filipino gayspeak. The LaSallian. https://thelasallian.com/2022/06/24/knows-mo-itey-dissecting-the-ins-and-outs-of-filipino-gayspeak/
Barrow, J. (2020, November 16). Why Do We Change the Way We Speak Depending on Whom We’re Speaking to? ALTA Language Services. https://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/change-way-we-speak-depending-speaking/
JEJEMON. (2012, May 29). Pinoy Chronicle. https://pinoychronicle.wordpress.com/jejemon/
K. (2020, February 18). Halimbawa Ng Balbal: Mga Halimbawa Ng Balbal (Filipino Street Slang). Philippine News. https://philnews.ph/2020/02/18/halimbawa-ng-balbal-mga-halimbawa-ng-balbal-filipino-street-slang/
