March 23, 2006

San Fran Speak

Being a teacher in San Francisco, I spend the vast majority of my day around the city's teenagers. For many of you, this may sound like a scenario taken from the 6th concentric circle of Hell. But I love it, as the old adage is indeed true: you inevitably end up learning as much from your kids as you're able to teach them. This can often be as inspiring as it is unsettling, but, every once and a while, it's also hilarious. For instance, consider the 'urban Cali slang' my kids have been throwing around as of late. Growing up back east, we had terms like "dirty" (impressive), "sweet" (awesome) and "hooking up," (any sort of promiscuous behavior beyond kissing but short of sex (sometimes)) that left my own parents clueless. But these seem to stretch their relation to codified English even further. But see for yourself, I've listed a few recent favorites:


Hella - (adv) very much, increasingly so - "That burrito was hella good."
A California standard for a number of years, though worth mentioning due to its continuing relevance within the dialect.

Devastating - (trans verb) overwhelming, dominant - "That guy lit the place up with his devastating moves on the court."
An intentional expansion of the standard definition.

Sav - (adj) revolutionary, wild, attractive, stylish - "Oh my god, those pumps that J-Lo keeps wearing are totally sav."
Short for 'savage,' it expands the term's definition to connote strong primal and sexual undertones. I was recently made aware that "'sav' is in 2006 what 'fetch' was in 2004."

Cutty- (adj) dubious, shady, suspicious - "Cutty bounce, cutty bounce!"
Both obtuse in meaning and abstract in application, 'cutty' is a modification of the word 'cut,' meaning 'ghetto' or 'hood'. In the applied example above, such a phrase would be employed as a call to flight after being caught by an authoritarian figure in the act of something illicit or illegal.

Succa Free- (unknown) unknown - "Succa Free is betta than D.C."
Though employed regularly, no one seems to actually known what this term really means. One student explained to me that it was vaguely synonymous with the city of San Francisco as a whole, as "the first letter in each word spells it out clear." Can a 'succa' really be 'free' in San Francisco? All attempts at grasping deeper social commentary have proved futile.


Please feel free to post your own contributions. Urban Dictionary is always a great place to check out, as well.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

When discussing the slang of Northern California (NorCal, if you will), people often overlook the younger cousin of the most definitive slang term (hella), which is of course "hecka." Also an adverb, hecka can be used in two circumstances. It is used most prominently as a subtler version of hella, implying that the object in question might not be really great (hella good), but instead is merely pretty damn good. For example, if your burrito (to borrow from the definition of hella above) was really great except that they forgot to put the guacamole in, you might say that it is "hecka good." It is also used by children who desire the effect of the word hella, but cannot use it due to age restriction and authoritative influences.

9:26 PM  

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