A think piece - 05/07/2024
“I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved, even for a heartbeat” words that struck the soul from tumblr user viridianmasquerade. The original post details a collection of habits the user has that they picked up from people who they had loved at some point in time. Its a sentimental piece that makes me think about how I too am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved. My brain then starts racing and then I think about how my friends are as well, and this is reflected through our language.
Whether its words picked up from social media or idioms you’ve added to your vocabulary, people tend to have phases where they say certain words or phrases. Think “slay”, “its giving” and “rizz” (I hate that word, makes me feel like a grandma for some reason) and this has existed for generations; like millennial “doggo” or Gen X “all that and a bag of chips”.
But sometimes you just have your own word or saying that just sticks with you. For example, I’m addicted to saying “lit sauce” (awful, I know) and the saying “but thats neither here nor there” and I have different words or phrases I say and I noticed my friends also have them. For example one of my friends has started saying booze instead of alcohol. Its a small change but when you’re with people a lot, you notice the way they speak and when you notice the way they speak, you yourself adopt those words.
About a two years or so ago I started calling my friends “mija” which literally means “my daughter” in Spanish but is also used as an affectionate term. I’m not sure where I heard it but I just started saying it. I don’t say it anymore but one of my friends still uses it and I just think thats so cute. I also use the word ‘jarring’ a lot because I think its such a fun word. I heard another friend say it one time and I said “oh i love that word” and she responded “yeah I got it from you” which made my whole day.
I have one friend that would say “Going to twerk” instead of “going to work” and I heard it so much that I started saying that too without even realising and now a seperate friend also says “going to twerk”. Another friend isn’t a big swearer and uses the word “freak” instead of the fuck so we’d constantly be hearing “what the freak” and now my whole friend group says that. Another friend and I used the word “legal” to say “I’m being for real” and when used you’re pretty much saying “god can strike me down if I’m lying”. Even the name of my Substack is a term my friend used. He once said “You give your two cents and I am but a humble piggy bank” and I named this platform after it.
Isn’t that so beautiful? Me and my friends have developed our own language of sorts. We speak in ways that other people don’t and if you heard “going to twerk” or “legal” used in these contexts, you wouldn’t understand. Even if we didn’t mean to start using each others words or phrases, we did. We are mosaics of each other. When we speak like this we are subconsciously telling the world “we have a bond you can not comprehend” and its not just my friend group.
You can read hundreds of examples online in comment sections, forums or even videos of people explaining the slang that they have in their friend group that no one else understands and isn’t that so amazing? We all speak our own languages with the people we love. You may not understand mine and I may not understand yours, but thats okay because we’re not meant to.
Daily vocabulary, like any aspect of you, changes with time and the slang you use today you may not use tomorrow. I probably will grow out of “going to twerk” and “what the freak” at some point because it won’t always be appropriate, but it is appropriate now. Treasure the ridiculous ways you speak with your friends even if it doesn’t make sense to others because through it all, what you’re really saying is “I understand you, even if no one else does. I understand”
Bye! Thank you!
me when humanity is actually beautiful
what the flip 🤭