My Lost Yoof
Via Policyblender, the BBC is apparently compiling a “lexicon of teen speak” (Brit teen speak, that is). Out of the rather long list of teen phrases provided, I was only familiar with:
- buff
- buzzing
- feds
- fo sho
- jack
- lush
- off the hook
- owned/pwned
- random
- roll with
- sick
- slap up
- vexed (only because its teenspeak meaning seems to be the same as its usual meaning)
- wagwaan (only because I listen to dancehall, I wouldn’t have a clue otherwise)
- wicked
- your mum
I was not, however, aware that the new word for “minger” is “munter”, nor did I know that to “unass” is to “relinquish or surrender control of an object or person; to leave”.
So would a fine young English gentleman these days therefore say “I unassed my beyatch ‘cos she was a right munter”? I don’t know. I feel adrift. Come July when I return to London to roll with my So Squalid Crew in the mean streets of Fitzrovia, I fear I will no longer have their respeck.
I believe you’ll find that we’ve now left the age-window for understanding (or even coming across people who converse in) the current teen speak lexicon.
Btw: “munter” was always an alternative form of “minger”, but was always less popular (no alternative for the ever popular “[s/he] mings mercilessly”).
So its astonishing return appears, to me, to be rather like a last minute success for BetaMax over VHS. Or a crappy news article which doesn’t reflect teenspeak as we know it (and didn’t all news articles get it wrong back in our day?).
90% of teenspeak just dissapears after a year or two. There’s feck all point in keeping up with it, especially as we now have places like http://www.urbandictionary.com for when we get stuck.
To my knowledge, ‘munter’ is not an alternative form of ‘minger’ so much as a word denoting ‘minging’ of a substantially greater than ordinary intensity. I have been assured that it’s very difficult to be a ‘munter’ unless you both have a particularly unpleasant face -and- are the size of a small car park, whereas garden variety ugliness seems to suffice for one to ‘ming’.
It’s true, you have to really ming to munt – and people have munted for years.
‘Your mum’ is an old classic, and one I’d hope an enthusiastic debater would know. Whenever confounded for a reply, I remember people regularly saying ‘er, yermum!’, in order to imply something generally degoratory about, or merely that they had ‘had’, one’s mother. Often the tacit implication was quite specific, as several people would say that they had ‘had your mum on a park bench’, and so the simple use of ‘your mum’ by them would imply the fuller version that you were accustomed to hearing from them.
Ah, the good old days.
Michelle is a wasteman, get me? Gyal gon get slew on road unless she watches which ends she’s cotchin in. Bare mans say a girl is ‘butters’ meaning she’s ugly, that’s gully. But saying ‘minger’ is for fassies, ‘llow it.
As a true Singaporean, I have this to say…
Lu kong si mi?! Wa buay hiao kong ang moh!
Meeja man? Speaking patois, man? Yu more like BATTY man
Yo’ Laces undone, yo’ speakyspokey kyaan done
Mi champion rude bwoy thug life gwaan!