Gotta Hang With the Slang

When I was a sophomore at the University of Dayton many, many years ago, I became friends with a girl named Amy who was from Puerto Rico. Her native tongue was Spanish and while her English was proficient, it was clear she had not mastered the language. No big deal, of course.

My one attempt to learn her native language – in an Elementary Spanish 101 class at UD – turned out to be a bad experience due to an awful and evil-spirited professor who actually expected you to know the language prior to taking the class.

Turns out that half the class did speak or know the language either because it was their native language or they took years of it in high school, so they took the class for the easy A. This didn’t bode well for me, who didn’t know much more than to count to 10 in Spanish.

So for those of us that couldn’t keep up with those who were more fluent, this horrible professor took great pleasure in humiliating us in front of the whole class when we (or I) couldn’t translate the words from English into Spanish in my head to answer her questions (which she asked us in Spanish). Getting stuck would mean having to weather her accusations that I wasn’t studying or trying hard enough. The fact was I probably studied harder than anyone in the class because I was so behind the majority of the class.

The “professor” clearly had no patience with the students that she was actually going to have to teach the language to. That was my misfortune.

Fortunately for my friend Amy, her friends were much more patient when she didn’t understand something. One memory had to do with a popular song at the time – Stuck on You, by Lionel Richie. She didn’t understand the meaning of what Richie was singing about – the whole concept of being “stuck” on somebody. From Amy’s understanding of the language, it the song would be about one person literally being glued to another. We had to explain that the phrase was slang for being infatuated with someone else.

I realized then that while it must be challenging enough for a non-English speaker to learn proper English, it must be that much more daunting to get a handle on our American slang.

The Wall Street Journal made this very point in a recent article. The article cites business people who have moved to the United States and once they got here realized they had a lot to learn about the way Americans talk. (For instance, one dude had no idea what “I’m peachy” meant.) The article further implied that getting comfortable with slang is essential for communicating and building relationships.

Because of this emphasis on slang, more English as Second Language courses are being mindful of the need to teach a certain degree of slang in their courses for the benefit of those just trying to function in the United States. Still, others turn to the “boob tube” (is that slang?) to get their fill on how Americans really talk. In particular, The Wall Street Journal article mentioned Family Guy as a great show to watch for this purpose.

I recently had to be mindful of slang myself, but in the opposite way. I was doing a freelance assignment – an article on a specific personality test. This was a content article that would appear on the Internet and was meant for an international audience. And because this piece was going to be targeted to a much broader audience beyond the United States, I had to be careful not to use slang that might be confusing. For instance, in one part of the article as I was describing the characteristics of one of the personality types, I wanted to say that this type of person tended to do things “by the book.” It occurred to me, though, that “by the book” might be slang that would not be understood beyond the United States or North America, so I ended up having to use different words to convey the description.

I guess I can be empathetic to the plight of those struggling to learn English, or who maybe know English but maybe not the idioms characteristic of the language here in America. For non-English speakers, I would surmise that learning the slang in many ways is harder than learning the proper English itself. So, my hat’s off (figuratively, not literally) to anyone that puts in the effort to learn the ropes (slang) on how we Americans speak.

Considering that I was a miserable failure at learning Spanish (which apparently, is a simpler language than English), those that take the time to learn our language have that much more admiration from me.

Not that I didn’t learn any Spanish. That is, thanks to my friend Amy.  While the detestable Spanish professor never taught me a thing (she just stressed me out too much), I did ask Amy if she could teach me a sentence, which I remember to this day: Mis maestra de Espanol es una j***a p**a.  Notice that last two words I blocked out. That’s because in English, the sentence translates to: My Spanish teacher is a f***ng b*tch. Certainly the meaning is evident.

Funny that of all the Spanish that went through my head that semester, that’s what I remember.

Guess the sentence just sort of “stuck” with me.