Lost in Translation

I didn’t think one of the first tasks of my PGCE would be learning a new language.

So when two of my fellow English PGCE-ers, both former teaching assistants, mooted the idea of writing a South London slang glossary, I was a little intrigued. Surely, only four years after leaving school, I would be sufficiently ‘down with the kids’ not to need a translator.

Then I started to think about it. My own school had its own peculiar institutionalised language that would baffle many outsiders. ‘Jockers’ for detention (a noun derived from the verb ‘to jock’ or skip a lesson…obviously). ‘Purple’ for prefect. ‘Business’ (both a noun and a verb, as in I business, you business, he/she/it businesses OR ‘did you get any business?’) meaning an interaction from a kiss to anything just shy of full sex.

However, this institutional slang used (for the most part) by both teachers and students is nothing on the words in the glossary that my PGCE classmates sent round, an extract from which is below:

They range from the horrible but fairly hilarious: ‘buffgash’ and ‘wastegash’ (I’ll leave it to you to Google and gasp) to the worrying (‘I’ll shank you’ as a joking threat…really?) and the downright disgusting (‘bloodclat’ - yuck). Not to mention the racially slurring ones.

The glossary came in handy on my first day - after overhearing that ‘new miss is peng’, all it took was a quick glance at the document to check that I wasn’t being completely insulted and might even be being slightly flattered. By a twelve-year-old. Fantastic.

Of course, teen slang is nothing new. The teenage years are often about drawing lines to separate the group from adult society and define social circles. From Pig Latin to hand signs, text language and seemingly indecipherable Facebook code, young people have always developed their own mediums of communication, differentiating themselves into a societal subculture.

But I didn’t realise I was already so out of date.