In Germany, there a several characteristics which only exist in youth language. First of all the vocabulary partly is different, words like “Digga(h)” (bro) were introduced into German by youth language and have now partly become widespread terms. But there still are specific words only younger people use and these words constantly change while only a minority stays part of the German (youth) language. On the other hand there are some words which already exist in German but are more widespread in youth language, for example the North German greeting “Moin”. The gramma also partly differs since the youth language tends to accelerate the process of language simplification. There are also exeptions for that. The youth language is influenzed by different actors. First of all probably by other languages like English (many, many anglicisms) or Turkish. But also by people who are known among young people and by more complex structures. All these characteristics differ from region to region and only a minority actually applies to the whole of Germany.
Which country are you in? Are there any characteristics of your country’s youth language? Does the youth language maybe differ from city to city? How did it change over the time? By what is your youth language influenzed?
Yes. Almost always.
As a kid, we wanted to obscure what we said from the adults or at least make them stop listening (there was a phase when I was in school of including a speech impediment when speaking; we found that teachers didn’t listen to us after a little while.).
We’d either done something the adults had forbidden or were about to, something that would cause us embarrassment if the adults knew, or it was just more exciting if they didn’t know.
As the adults catch on to what things mean, we all using those terms in that specific way.
I’m using ‘adults’ to mean someone who is responsible for themselves so somewhere between eighteen and thirty.
If you’re an adult reading this in the UK and US (maybe other places), urban dictionary is your friend.
One big thing I notice is that the youngest speakers all use [ɹ̈] for “r”, instead of the more traditional [ɹ], which means it’s formed in the back of the mouth now. I have to think that will change the trajectory of the whole phonology going forwards if it holds up, since dropping front-of-the-mouth r is a major tendency English has had.
Use of “like” as a hedge is the most famous change for young speakers all over the Anglosphere. It’s just handy, honestly, to have a quick way of conveying degrees of certainty in this highly complicated world. If future English grew that into a full mood system it would actually be great. At the other end, the last vestiges of grammatical gender have been on their way out for centuries, and are leaving at an accelerated rate now.
I think young people are much more comfortable verbing nouns than older generations. English is noted for doing this, but usually the words that can be used either way are fixed. In the absence of a better verb I’ll often improvise one, and be understood no problem by speakers my age, but I’ve never heard an older speaker do this.
The audio frequency goes down with age 😇
As does aural frequency range. There are some anti teen alarms which use high pitched sounds only teens can hear.
Some of the American English words used by young people sounds confusing, but are just abbreviations: “riz” for charisma.
Others, I don’t know where they came from: “yeet” to mean throw.
Yeet is from a Vine (that’s like TikTok from 2010). I’m pretty sure it was only surreal at the time, just as the action of throwing the bottle into the crowd was in the first place.
Am American and I think the kids seem to like coming up with words that are random and nonsensical? Like I still don’t know what this “skibidi” word means lol not sure I want to know xD
It’s a TV series
Cartoon where cameraheads fight toiletheads (heads-in-toilets to be accurate).
The toiletheads are trying to take over the cameraheads’ earthlike planet in a similar way as Audrey II plants did from little shop of horrors bad ending version, but are thwarted by the cameraheads’ Transformer technology.
After research, I’ve found that same information. What I haven’t figured out is what kids mean when they say it. Like, I get yeet. I know it came from a video, but when spoken it has an actual meaning, basically “I have great enthusiasm but lack finesse”, most useful when hurling things. But skibidi doesn’t seem to have a meaning? It comes from the video, but as a word it’s meaningless? So… why say it if it doesn’t convey meaning?
I think it’s to imitate the toiletheads/audrey II plants/zombies. Young boys like imitating scary creatures and now instead of kids putting their hands forward screaming “brains” we have “skibidi”. You’ll probably need to flush their heads by reaching and pulling up behind the back of their necks to play along.
