February 10, 2006

Horse 492 - Five Stones and a Slang

Have you ever seen that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Captain Picard is trapped on a deserted planet with an alien who only speaks in allegory? You know, "Shaka, when the walls fell" and such.
It's a well-known episode that comes up a great deal in discussions of literary and linguistic theory, or when nerds start developing their own language that makes no sense to others.
While I've talked about it in the first context before, I'm here to talk about the second. Over the years, my friends and I have developed a complex network of in-jokes, references and exclamations that are quickly approaching unintelligibility to the uneducated outsider. Here are some examples of things that are just on the border of making sense:

"This is a game of beans and HIGH ADVENTURE!"
"Schmick, goat, pudding, kebabs"
"Go build a table"
"I think you just stood in Winnie"
"Nice Chaminda"
And the gimme that most people actually WILL understand,
"They're just nonsense words, like rama-lama-ding-dong or 'give peace a chance'"

Because of my experience with my friends, I firmly believe that it is mankind's destiny to rape the English language further and further within small groups of nerdy friends, until finally, some time in the distant future, people living two houses from each other will find each other's slang incomprehensible, yet will understand "Louie Louie" perfectly.

Okay, maybe not that last part.

PS: Is pwnX0r3d a stronger version of pwn3d? I don't know about these things, the grammar for 1337 hasn't settled yet.

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