What Did You Just Say?!?

We all know what we consider to be the customary way of talking among young adults and that it can differ from place to place. Then again, we’ve also all met the ones who take their (lets just call it unique) way of speaking beyond the norm. You know the types: the Like-a-Lot Girls, our Wannabe-Urban-Homies, or the Super-Prestigious-Snobs. All of them different in many ways, but still share that one common trait: we think they talk strange. Some people can make it hard or even impossible to hold a conversation with them due to their dialect. Not that we haven’t tried. These people seem to arise everywhere in our day ranging from work to even the supermarket.

I’m sure everyone can recall that one day they found themselves trying to hold a conversation with a Like-a-Lot Girl. This girl earned her nick-name through her favorite word: “Like.” You’ve probably seen her chewing her gum loudly or twirling her hair while reading a magazine behide the counter of your not-so-favorite store in the mall. She’s overly excited to talk to you when you buy something and you’ll be lucky to fit two words in among her useless babble. “Like” is every other word and her whole obnoxious Valley Girl image is enough to make you dizzy. The greatest example of the Like-a-Lot Girl was my friend Lindsey from middle school. The everyday conversation with her would consist of “Like, oh my god! I’m like so tired from school that I could like just go home right now and like pass out into like, a coma or something and like, never wake up.” It was almost enough to make you want to pack her up in a box and mail her to Thailand. Whether we like it or not we’ve had the moment we felt like that, but listening to a word every five seconds is better that not being able to understand them at all.

Picture this: You’re walking down the hall of your high school or dorm and you bump into a young man whose pants are down below his underwear, his hat on sideways, and he’s wearing a t-shirt, obviously too big for him. Before you can apologize you hear the words “Yo why you all up in ma' grill man! You best check yo'self fool, fo' real!” Confused, you walk away with “What?” running threw your head. You’ve just come in contact with, what I like to call, the Wannabe-Urban-Homie. I’m not sure when it became popular to sound illiterate, but these individuals use this slang like it’s the next best thing since sliced bread. It’s an impractical struggle to hold a conversation or even just attempt to understand the point they’re