Brad Wing

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!

If I recall correctly, we also knocked this idea of “family only” language around a bit in another forum thread.

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.