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My pater has occasionally remarked that his least favorite thing about smartphones is how they "Preclude use of our familial creole*", which is A) true and B) a crying shame. It also made me furiously interested in somehow studying the phenom of familial language use -- vocabulary and grammar and idioms that function within a given family (or
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Adding -o is at least intelligible to others. :P My family adds -friend for lots of animals... and occasionally power tools. (The shop vac is known as either "Mr. Sucky" or "My fat friend"). The foo-friend thing would really throw me, though, since it swaps between saying the letters rather than the sounds.
Would the synonym replacement work at all like Elfwood's old profanity filter, which replaced 'bad' words with their 'accurate' term, even in the middle of other words? It 'corrected' "Title" to "Breastle" on my page. :P
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That's dirty!
since it swaps between saying the letters rather than the sounds
Yeah, and I think that mixing of how letters are treated (said as part of a word, said as letters, or said as if they were in another alphabet, or whatever) is probably something I tend towards. And I think maybe it's not that unusual? Like, "d-bag"?
And yes, title -> breastle is a good example of a similar process. Also, sometimes invoking references to specific censorware, e.g. saying "gently caress" per the somethingawful forums, not that I ever actually participated there.
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Well, it IS French. ;)
letters/sounds: I suppose it's really the second letter that throws me? We use initials a fair bit, as a society. But then, Erik is prone to making EVERYTHING into an acronym, and I frequently stare at him blankly for awhile then, too. So maybe I'm just bad at spelling. :P
For animals, one of our familiar quirks is using the "Mr." title. And talking to them. "Oh, hello Mr. Hawk!" "Look, there's Mr. falcon!" Which is very Narnia/Beatrix Potter and also I suppose patriarchal. But "Ms" doesn't sound right and Mrs and Miss would require making assumptions about an animal's marital status...
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My family of choice uses a lot of feline sounds. Mrr, mrp, meer, mreep, chrr, prr, prrp, mrow, mrawr, mew, mew mew, rawr, I can go on. I use deep throaty and clicky sounds that I've joked are dragon. Comes out something like "hrrrack-tik-tik-tik-TSSSSSK." Hard to describe, has definitely got me weird looks. (Apparently the animal noises is an Aspie thing?)
My family of origin has some odd phrases that I have said and then gotten strange looks for. "Gosling drownder" for one, to reference a really bad storm. "Elephant in the closet" being another. Now that I'm trying to think of examples, I'm having trouble thinking of them, but boy do we have them.
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I use feline sounds, but it's not really any of my groups, it's just me and they have to put up with it. Oddly I do it slightly less now that I actually have cats. Perhaps they talk enough for all of us (they're *very* talky).
"Gosling drownder" is pretty evocative -- I've certainly never heard it before! Is Elephant in the closet like the phrase 'elephant in the room?'
I totally get you on blanking out examples, btw. I made the post thinking I had SO MANY examples, and then couldn't think of many. I really notice them when Kiyoko was staying with my folks the most, because we'd realize "Oh, wait, this isn't an English thing we're explaining, this is a purely US thing."
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I tend to not realize them until someone comments on them, too. There are apparently a LOT in my family of origin, because I fairly regularly have people comment on my twisted common sayings, but I can never seem to remember them when I try to think about them. *headdesk*
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My friends, yes. Hooooo boy, my friends, yes.
(And, fwiw, I will infrequently say 'iffen' as well. I have no idea where I picked it up.)
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