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Bonus 29: Words from your family - Familects! (Patreon)

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2019-07-04 23:48:50
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Do you have any words that you only use within your family? We asked this question on social media a while back and you had some great responses! 

In this episode, we get enthusiastic about familects. Also written family-lects, this is the term linguists use for the unique vocabulary that develops among families and similar tightly-knit relationship groups. Many familect words are for household objects, especially the remote control, which has dozens of reported familect terms! Familect terms are meaningful to us because they often come from some sort of shared story, such as a childish mispronunciation that catches on, a language or dialect found at home but not much in the surrounding community, or an adaptation from an existing word or name to a new meaning. 

Keep sharing your own familect words in the comments below! 

Read the transcript here.

Pre-order Gretchen's book and ask a question! 

Because Internet, Gretchen's book about internet language, is out July 23rd and you can pre-order it now! If you like this podcast, you'll definitely like this book -- you can even listen to it as an audiobook read by Gretchen herself to get a maximally Lingthusiastic experience. (Here are Gretchen's tweets about recording the Because Internet audiobook.) Pre-orders are super helpful because they tell the publisher and booksellers that people are excited about linguistics and they should promote it more! Here are some photos from Gretchen of what the book is going to look like. 

We're going to do a special Q&A bonus episode with a behind-the-scenes look at how the book came together, so get your hands on it as soon as it comes out and then send us your questions about internet linguistics or the book-writing process in the comments below or as a message by August 15th! 

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript of this episode is available as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page.

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All ThingsLinguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.  

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Anonymous

In my house we had mermaid lollies. A mispronuciation of home-made lollies, the kind where you freeze your own juice. And also lion juice=lime juice. So you could in fact have lion juice mermaid lollies! Also Shrewsburyness is a Liff! From John Lloyd and Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff. A collection of things there should be words for using place names. There's a couple of those I've brought into my own dialect, Shrewsburyness being one of them! Also Affpuddle for a pool of water under a paving slab that shoots up the back of the leg. And Altami for the art of balancing the temperature of a shower tap.

Anonymous

I grew up in NYC, a child of German and Dutch immigrants. (Don't even TRY to get me to say "Th" properly!) My Great Uncle Albert lived with us. When my brother was young, he could not say "Uncle Albert". So, from that time forward, my Great Uncle was known solely as 'Abu'. (He was also from Germany).

Anonymous

As a kid, I didn’t know the word “fart” until I was probably 9 or 10. My family, for reasons I’m still unsure of, always said “woofer.” My favorite bit from my familect, though, comes from my mother’s family: a “pinvy” or some “pinvies.” It specifically refers to gifts that are meant to remain secret, so when someone (especially around Christmas) asks what you’ve got in your bag, you say “Pinvies!” which signals that the person shouldn’t ask more. It’s fun!

Anonymous

I feel like the one that's more specifically familect that comes to mind was my perversion of the ... I think Taiwanese* version of 'taking a shower'. No idea how to spell it properly, but it sounds something like 'se xing gu'. Which as a kid I tried to use the English conjugation on, so I told someone I was 'se xing gu-ing' and that's stuck around as a phrase because my parents thought it was hilarious, so if someone was in the shower you might say they are se xing gu-ing instead. *my mom's native languages are Taiwanese and Mandarin, and I don't know either so even though I have sort of a sense, sometimes I've been wrong about which language owns the word she uses

Marie Blanchet

Aw man I have so many of those. Many words that my family say I have managed to trace back to one specific region of france in the 1800 and apparently no one else on the planet say them (Manger par galaferie, the expression "tu fais pire que la grêle", etc.) so probably even though I can't trace back my genealogy that far, my family probably originates from that region of france before coming to Quebec, which is a fascinating concept to me. The family records burned down in a church and so that's where the family tree stops, but words go back even farter! Also in my house we call the tv remove "la bidule" and the water dispenser "la patente à l'eau", which my boyfriend finds very odd but is starting to get used to lolol

lingthusiasm
>>24639872

Awww, that's fantastic! What a great way of feeling connected to your family history!

Anonymous

There are two I can think of from my family. The 'zhooma' (/ʒʊma/) for the stick blender, which I only realised wasn't a standard word when I moved out and wanted to buy one for myself, and realised I had no idea how to spell zhooma, or how I would look for one on an online shop! The second is 'fridge pasta' for originally tortellini, but now any filled pasta. When we were kids, we had fridge pasta at least once a week as a super easy meal, and it was different to regular pasta as it had to be kept in the fridge even before it was cooked! I still struggle telling the difference between types of filled pasta, because they are just all Fridge Pasta

lingthusiasm
>>24653710

Hahaha, these are delightful! The blender does sort of make a zhoom sound, I can see it!

Anonymous

My dad and I have a "lamb effect"- we spoonerize things constantly (familect becomes lamb effect)! In conversatiom we'll sprinkle a spoonerism every few sentances or so, and especially for requests of each other or directions. We've gotten to the point where we often go to spoonerize something we didnt register as already spoonerized because it's just part of our vocabulary! Highlights are "blaming the cattlefield" (claim the battlefield in a card game we play together), "thats a skittle, Larry" (that's a little scary), and "lew ningthusiam!" (when we try to race to notify each other of the new episode first). Just looking through our texts, there's lots more mundane ones, as well as when a frequently spoonerized word is removed from it's partner word, but is understood regardless!

Anonymous

My maternal grandparents sprinkled their speech with a lot of German and Yiddish words, some of which have continued being used in subsequent generations. Only as an adult have I figured out which ones are German and which are Yiddish. But there’s one word we all use that doesn't seem to be German OR Yiddish, and I can't figure out where it came from. It’s a verb, "krutz," meaning to complain in a whiny, annoying way. (Not to be confused with "schmull,” meaning to sulk, not quietly but in a vocal or otherwise obtrusive way. That one’s from the German word “schmollen.” It probably won’t come as a surprise that several generations of kids in our family have been chided for doing both of these.) I'd love it if someone could help me solve the mystery of “krutz”! My only possible lead is that there’s a German word “kratzen” meaning to scratch or scrape. Maybe that word has or had another more metaphorical use having to do with how grating someone else’s complaints can be? Or maybe my family just made “krutz” up out of thin air!

Anonymous

In my family we also used "noonles" to refer to pasta, which was from me mispronouncing it as a kid. My little brother also had trouble with pronouncing "y" as a kid, so we have "lellow" for "yellow" as well. Beyond that, my cousin Wade is referred to as "Vadee" from a comment my great-grandmother made before she died that that is the proper pronunciation of his name according to German, of which she was a teacher for a long time. My dad we call "Fabio" or its shortening "Fabs" and thus my mother is, by extension, "Mobio" or "Mobs." I don't even remember where "Fabio" came from, because it was from way before any of my siblings or I actually knew who Fabio actually refers to.

lingthusiasm
>>40696556

Hah, I love the analogy of Fabs and Mobs! So many stories embedded in names like these!

lingthusiasm
>>40557839

Huh, I'm afraid I can't help you either, but what an interesting intergenerational puzzle!

Anonymous

My family (mostly my dad really, but my family as a whole) have loads of words that we just use in our family, so much so that I once created an entire list of "hartisms" (hart being our surname). This included stuff like "chukataramboras" as an exclamation, which was apparently based upon how certain exclamations are formed in spanish, a language my dad grew up with, which apparently vaguely translates to something along the lines of "flipping star fruit" (I don't speak spanish, so I can't confirm if that's what it actually means, but that's what it means to us either way). There's also "st mary cray cray" (my there's a train station in between our home town and the major big city near where we live called "st mary cray", and my brother, during the heights of "cray cray" used to mean crazy, started saying "st mary cray cray". There's "clustard" "gravel" and "pompadoms", meaning "custard", "gravy", and "popadoms". My dad used to say "you great sklunko" if we'd ever done something dumb, like spilling your drink, which was based off of the word skunk. And my dad had loads of euphemisms for fart, including "flabby woof woof", "shooting the angel" and "double barrelled". My grandad also had a couple, including calling my mum "squiggle" and calling any loud modern music (music that wasn't classical, old hymns or country folk music - this included abba) the screaming abdabs.

Anonymous

In my family, 'N.O.C Charlie' means have your nose over the centre of your plate when you eat. This is something that I believe it was my Poppa's uncle (that's my great great uncle), Charlie, particularly struggled with.