06E076
Teenspeak Made Simple
The Quick and Easy Way to Communicate with People Between the Ages of 12 and 20
Introduction
Ever walk out of a McDonald’s
empty-handed because the 16-year-old behind the counter didn’t understand your
request for a cheeseburger and fries?
Do you say yes to unintelligible pleas from your daughter, secretly
praying you haven’t given her your blessing to get drunk and screw? Maybe you’d
like to do more than helplessly wag your finger at the boy who rides his
skateboard through your turnips.
If so, Teenspeak Made Simple is for you. This self-study guide will have you speaking fluent Teenspeak within months, possibly weeks if you’re under 30.
Students who know standard English will find Teenspeak relatively easy to learn. The spelling and pronunciation of many standard English and Teenspeak words is the same. Several words even have similar meanings. For students who don’t know standard English, learning Teenspeak will be considerably easier.
The first step toward mastering Teenspeak is learning the inflection. No matter how much a teen knows about a subject, he would never be so presumptuous as to discuss it in the form of statements. Instead, he would raise his voice at the end of his statements as if he were asking questions. For example, “If you want the guy to think you’re old enough to get a tattoo without your parents’ permission, pull your pants over your boxers?”
While the English language consists of 954,312,605 words, Teenspeak has just 39, give or take 13. Here are several of the most commonly used Teenspeak words and their English translations. Memorize them and you’ll be on your way to fluency.
awesome 1. awesome. 2. mildly impressive. 3. not the most despicable thing on Earth.
d’oh I’m an idiot.
duh 1. I should have known that. 2. You should have known that.
go, goes 1. present or past tense of the verb to say. For example, “Zachary goes ‘awesome’ every time he sees the wing nut bolted to Taylor’s tongue?”
like 1. no meaning, but used randomly at least every sixth word in Teenspeak conversation. For example, “I’ll like have a cheeseburger with like no pickles?” 2. say or said, when preceded by the verb to be. For example, “I was like, ‘Does that wing nut get in the way when you’re like trying to get peanut butter off the roof of your mouth?’”
mhhrrr 1. hello. 2. goodbye. 3. fine. 4. yes. 5. no. 6. please. 7. thank you. 8. I’m so excited I could wet my underpants.
so not together, so and not add emphasis. For example, “I’m so not eating cow.”
this replaces “the”, which is rarely used in Teenspeak. For example, “This telephone pole like got in the way when I was like driving this car?”
uh see definition 1 for “like.”
um see “uh.”
w’oh combination of wow and oh, meaning impressed. For example, “When Taylor unscrewed the wing nut with his bicuspids, I was like w’oh?”
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