Back in school, when we were taught Shakespearean plays, we felt ‘weak’1; that language – although English – wasn’t ‘cheugy’2 at all. The ‘salty’ us just could not wrap our heads around it. Once school was done, we thought that was over with, ‘no cap’3.
But no; ‘Big Yikes!’4 For us, the Millennials, or Gen Y (people born roughly between 1980 to 1997), a new kind of linguistic blockade came into effect when Gen Z began taking liberty with language, ‘gyatt!’5
‘Istg’6 this feels like we fell into a mud-puddle again. During my O Levels, I was strictly told against using informal words like ‘gonna’, ‘wanna’, ‘woulda’, ‘coulda’,’shoulda’ etc, in writing. As far as speaking goes, ‘gonna’ and ‘wanna’ are fine as they sound similar to their original words ‘going to’ and ‘want to’.
Ditch the similar sounding words and toss them aside! The English language just got a funky upgrade with a bunch of fresh, snazzy words that dance around every emotion and expression under the sun. And who’s behind this linguistic fashion show? None other than the clever clogs of Gen Z, spinning new wordy webs like pros, NGL7!
Alright, here’s the scoop: Back in the early 2000s, the Short-Messaging System (SMS) was like a word diet guru, slimming down chatty phrases to just their skinny consonants, ditching the chubby vowels. Super handy and pretty rad! “On my way” went on a vowel fast and became “omw.”
Even the heart-melting “I love you” squeezed into a tiny “ily.” Quick and slick? Absolutely! But let’s be real. Sure, they conveyed the message on the go but at what cost?
Language is ever evolving. After Shakespearean English, came the Victorian English and then English as we speak formally and normally these days. And then there are these terms, championed by the Gen Z, that no mere mortal can comprehend, other than they themselves, ‘Periodt’8.
A lot of Gen Z terms, ‘skibidi’, ‘fanum tax’, ‘lit’, ‘faxxx’, ‘hella’, etc, are influenced by Pop culture, predominantly music like Hip-Hop and Dance music and streamers. If these make no sense to you, we are not Bussin’9.
For context, ‘Fanum tax’ was popularised by Kai Cenat, an American online streamer and YouTuber. He uses “tax” whenever he or a guest on his stream took a small bite of food. In a clip, one streamer named Fanum took a bite of some of Cenat’s cookies, so fans started calling it the “Fanum tax.”
“As time goes on, some words don’t reflect our feelings anymore,” said Zainab Samara Quader, a first-year university student and a proud Gen Z.
“Those words are very technical and simplistic, something this generation doesn’t vibe with. So we combine words from the old days with newer fancy sounding ones that explain us better in many ways.”
This ain’t it, Chief10! While I tried to agree with her, I must say her words did feel ‘sus’11. This entire lingo is just ‘camp’12.
Debunking these words has essentially become the talking-points in many Millennial hangouts. I’ve done it ‘irl’13 many times myself with my friends.
“If I were to make a buck for understanding each of these words, I’d be a billionaire by now fr fr14,” said Mustafiz Mustafa, a friend of mine. Unfortunately, he remains quite broke!
And have you tried pronouncing these words for a change? They sound nowhere as simple as ‘lol’. But the idea of coolness may have shifted since and we were outpaced by terms like ‘skrrt’15, ‘yeet’16, ‘gwop/guap’17, ‘szn’18 and so on and so forth! I had to stop right there because my own set of ‘vocabs’ was getting ‘slay-ed’ over there a ‘hundo p’19 and/or ‘bible’20.
‘IYKYK’21 what they mean if you’re a part of the Gen Z ‘famalam’22 and ‘Gucci’23 with the lingo. Here’s what another Millennial, Simeen Faruk, a school teacher by profession – who by the way managed to evade the Gen Z tag only by three months – has to say how to ‘glow up’24 from your ordinary (and boring) daily-use English to the ‘lit’ Gen Z lingo.
“Reddit,” Simeen inferred. “You gotta keep up with Reddit and them fire Subreddits to start with to even begin to understand what (and how) they’re talking.”
“For example, ‘I swear on CARDI I’mma throw you off the car!’ They don’t swear on god no more; they swear on Cardi,” she added, sort of nodding sideways with disapproval.
They’re obnoxiously ‘woke’25 and scream BLM out of context, Simeen says. “And they’re more invested in Selena Gomez and Hailey Beiber than their A levels exams! You know how we say ‘I swear’? They say ‘bible’! You need to keep up with pop culture; be woke yourself,” she said.
This ‘YOLOSWAG’26 lifestyle of theirs is getting us nowhere for sure. What will happen, say, a couple of generations down the line? Will we still understand English while talking in English with them?
I practically feel alienated already. I don’t know if I can feel the ‘chillax’27 when I’m an old timer according to them and here I was thinking I’d be the coolest grandpa ever known. Not ‘okio!’28
The terms explained
1 I’m weak – I’m dead
2 Cheugy – mocking something as “uncool”
3 No cap – Not lying
4 Big Yikes! – Greatly embarrassed
5 Gyatt! – Goddamn
6 ISTG! – I swear to God
7 NGL – Not going to lie
8 Periodt – Saying period with extra emphasis
9 Bussin’ – succeeding or achieving something
10 This ain’ it, chief – Disapproval
11 Sus –Suspicious
12 Camp – Something ironically trendy
13 IRL – In real life
14 FR – For real
15 Skrrrt – An onomatopoeia for the sound of a car wheels screeching
16 Yeet – Expressing excitement
17 Gwop/Guap – Wealth
18 Szn – Season
19 Hundo p – Hundred percent
20 Bible – I promise; similar to ISTG
21 IYKYK – If you know, you know
22 Famalam – Group of close people
23 Gucci – Be fine with
24 Glow up –Transformation from bad to good
25 Woke – Be politically aware
26 YOLOSWAG – Living without worry or fear
27 Chillax – Chill and relax
28 Okio – Okay