“Inside” Language: Howard Shepherd and Dave Shepherd speak as clearly and openly as they can about “insider” language–normal words that outsiders cannot understand.
Our show is introduced this week by the man called Anne from Israel, known to Word Nerds Forum members as RabiAkiva. (0:01)
We encourage you once again to check out Charles Hodgson’s book Carnal Knowledge, a wonderful dictionary containing words and expressions for parts of the human body. (2:46)
A MyChingo message from Jason in West Australia (4:51)
Howard and Dave use their interest in road cycling to talk about jargon, lingo, and other forms of insider language. (6:35)
A greeting from the Reduced Shakespeare Company podcast (18:37)
Acronyms, abbreviations, and other forms of “inside-the-beltway” jargon (19:15)
Song: “Inside Joke” by Little Thom (25:41)
Rude word of the week: “wheelsucker” (30:13)
Music bumper from “The Corner of Sacco and Vanzetti” by Shibboleth. (33:33)
The inside jargon of the world of con-men, circus workers, and magicians: ballyhoo, patter, and cant (34:30)
Music courtesy of The Podsafe Music Network
Theme music by Kick the Cat
time: 40:38
size: 37.3 Mb
rating: PG-13 (Our song has some hilarious references to procreation and uses a couple of naughty words.)
(You probably prefer it if we leave a comment in the forum but not is the link broken but there’s no thread for show 91…)
Been wishing for a show on inside language for a while. But what I had in mind had less to do with occupational terminology and more to do with very small groups and the “inside joke” feel of much language use in those groups.
Perhaps my favourite “inside language” (and the one that I kept thinking about during shows when James and Barbara were hosting) is the oikolect. (Part explanation, part shameless plug…)
Maybe my family is “more different” than other families but we really have terminological idiosyncrasies galore. Anybody who comes into the family needs to learn those words and idioms.
Because we’re French-speakers, our examples are all in French. Here’s a couple (with IPA approximations between slashes).
«Foulfur» /fulfyr/
In French «au fur et à mesure» means something like “as you go along,” the opposite of procrastination. In certain parts of Eastern Quebec, the English word “full” (sometimes spelt as French «foule» meaning “crowd”) has come to be used as an adverb meaning “completely,” “really,” “totally” or, well, “fully.” Youngsters in Eastern Quebec will say some food item is «foule bon» to mean “really good.” (We have relatives in Eastern Quebec.) In my family, the term «foulfur» means “totally/really done as you go along,” from “full” and «fur et à mesure». Nobody outside of our family would understand this.
«Méralin» /meral5/
During my mother’s childhood, there was a woman, known as «La Mère Alain» (”Mother Allen”) who sold molded plastic toys. Because of the molds, those toys usually have a thin extraneous fringe all around them. In my family, we call this fringe «méralin» from the name of the person who sold those toys.
«Aba» /aba/
A dish we like in my family is made with cauliflower, ham, béchamel, and black peppercorn. It’s not a subtle dish by any stretch of the imagination and, to refer to it, we use an expression somebody had used at some point when my family was living in Switzerland: «À bas la cuisine fadasse!» (something like “Say no to bland cuisine!”). We shortened the phrase to «aba».
«véloferdu» /velofErdy/
My mother keeps all sorts of “to-do lists.” As common as these lists are, there isn’t really a term for them in French. At one point, my brother noticed that my mother had, as an item in one of her lists, «vélo (faire du)» (”bike (to)”). We’ve come to use «véloferdu» as a generic noun for “to-do lists.”
I do have one example in English, coming from my former adviser.
“misling” /majzliN/
His brother had misunderstood the word “misled” as the past participle of “to misle” (instead of the past participle of “to mislead”). So they started using the verb “to misle” to refer to some form of manipulation. “Stop misling me” is the form I remember from class.
What I personally find fascinating about these terms, turns, and phrases is the role they play in the negotiation of social identity. As your musical excerpts implied during Show 91, much of this has to do with “in-group solidarity,” and “esoteric knowledge.” Families are particularly fascinating in terms of the sense of belonging they may generate.
Thanks for this great comment, Alexandre. Sorry about dragging my feet on the forum thread. It’s set up now. I thought about starting the forum thread this morning (Sunday, August 26), but didn’t get around to it until late in the day.
If I recall correctly, we also knocked this idea of “family only” language around a bit in another forum thread.
Dave,
Thanks for the prompt reply. And sorry for calling you “James.” There’s a beer-related podcast I listened to with a host named “James” and I guess I just mixed up podcast hosts.
Thanks for the link to the forum thread on family idioms. Those do sound quite interesting. I’m particularly fond of those family items which became words because they’re so easy to pass along.
Cheers!
Thank you very much for this podcast, you don’t make idea about how it help us, specially brazillian guys. Please, keep going with the gorgeous job in this podcast.
I listened to your discussion about “ballyhoo” and looked it up in the Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary which states that it is of uncertain origin. However, it jumped out at me as Irish (Celtic)immediately In the Irish/English dictionary “Foclóir Gaeilige-Béarla” by Niall Ó Dónaill (An Gúm – an Roinn Oideachais) Athchló 1992 i.e. third edition 1992 the entry under bailigh (pronounced approximately bally) is to collect , gather. Irish changes the first letter of the word in certain cases , so it become ‘ a bhailiú’ (to gather, to collect money) It is pronounced ” a vahlaileeooh’ (with the ee almost not pronounced) One could also pronounce it “ballyhoo’ in certain cases of Irish (with a very soft-sounding ‘h’). The accent is NOT a stress mark, but rather a lengthening of the vowel, much like in Japanese. My guess (unsubstantiated) is that the English (Béarla) word ballyhoo may have to do with magicians and beggars asking for money on the street in the village/town (which by the way is baile, pronounced behleh) and often corrupted into the English name for an Irish town ‘Bally’ . It really means ‘home’ but is even used in the Irish name for Dublin (Baile Ãtha Cliath) — pronounced bell ah cleeah,( as if one word). I wonder if the Irish (Celtic) origin also work in bailiff, etc.
What about a session on Irish words that have made their way into English?) Please do not try to pronounce the Irish words according to the English letters. It doesn’t work (just try to pronounce bhfuinneog [vwinnog with a slight y sound after the n} or bheidh [vÄh]and a pronounced h) There is an entirely different convention as to what the letters mean phonetically.
Brad Wing