My Language Fingerprint

English wasn't my first language originally. It was my third or my fourth. I guess it's my first language now despite not being the best at it. It was ironic that even though English didn't belong to me, or anyone in fact, that I thought I could police it.

We've all had phases where we thought we were studious academics and anyone we had to associate with had to be one too - with the exception of the one friend who we argued was different. During that phase, I disdained at teenagers using slang and popular culture in general. Only certain types of pop culture was acceptable, we deemed it to be and we were right of course, and so was the slang we used. The word 'selfie' was acceptable because it was widely recognized and was difficult to substitute with an Oxford dictionary word whereas the degrading term 'ratchet' was not, simply because it was 'too cool'. I wrote in proper English, even when messaging friends online, and would be passive aggressively disappointed at anyone who did not.

There were also times where I made up my own phrases like 'fun in a bun' simply because they rhymed. I thought I was the next Shakespeare and that my words and phrases would have the equivalent importance of 'elbow', a rather handy slang term that he fashioned. My friends adopted them when they began to be able to predict the idiosyncrasies in my speech. For some reason, this was acceptable but using other slang was not.

When I began to see that you could be both an 'academic' and talk like an American man who drove a pickup truck, I began to use a lot of slang. For instance, I decided that the word 'bae' was something that I liked a lot so I used it for everything, and I mean everything. Suddenly food was 'bae' and my friends were 'bae' and a TV show was 'bae'. 'Y'all' become acceptable too. All of these slang words came into use as 'ironic' at first as you cannot turn from one extreme to another without some kind of change gradient. I told myself that typing 'u' isn't of 'you' when I was joking with my friends was ironic. When does something no longer become ironic? When you use it all the time?

I don't think it's ironic anymore. I think I take myself less seriously now. And thank god for that because language is meant to be adapted and changed and moulded. Although I know I'm no Shakespeare now, I think my language fingerprint over the years has changed as much as the English language has changed. When I wasn't communicating with my friends in made up words, code-words or words from other languages, I was picking up words that I discovered on the internet. Those words ('bae', 'selfie stick', 'binge-watch') have now been added to the online Oxford dictionary and have gone on to shape the English language as we know it in 2015.