Author Archives: Matthew Seals

Folk Speech – Evanston, Illinois

Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Evanston, IL
Performance Date: April 29, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The Language of “Op”

Sample sentence:    Opop opis mopy fopavoporite lopanguopage.

Op      is     my     favorite        language

Mari was telling me one day about a language called “Op” that she and her friends speak at home in Evanston, Illinois. The structure and grammar of the language is the same as English however, Mari and her friends add an ‘op’ before every vowel. In order to make words distinguishable, Mari says that they make sure to emphasis the sound flow of the word and keep similar sound patterns.

According to Mari, her friend’s mother came up with the language when she was younger and taught it to her children. This friend of Mari is fluent in the language and can apparently speak it rapid fire to her mother and her two siblings, who also share the same fast-talking ability. Eventually, the kids started using “Op” at school where it caught on quickly, mostly with the female population. Mari tells me that about 15-20 of her closest friends can all speak it and understand it well. They are all so talented in the made up language that they use it to their advantage. Whenever boys are around, the girls do not want them to know what or whom they are talking about, Mari and her friends speak “Op” as a way of communicating. This language seems silly to me and it sounds even funnier when it is actually spoken but Mari finds nothing unusual about it.

Tongue Twister

Nationality: German
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Pennelleville, NY
Performance Date: During youth
Primary Language: German

Tongue Twister

“Excited executioner exercising his excellent excising powers excessively.”

Whenever I would visit my Grandparents’ house, I would make sure to spend time with my Grandpa because he always had something interesting to tell me. Sometimes it would be a funny joke, a tough riddle, or my favorite: tongue twisters. Although I only knew my Grandpa for a short time, he died in 1996; I talk about him with my Mom from time to time because she of course remembers his knowledge of interesting verbal lore. We agree that of all his tongue twisters, the one above is probably the hardest to say. This is probably because it uses an unusual letter in the alphabet, the letter “X,” which is rarely spoken in colloquial language and therefore somewhat foreign to the mouth, especially is such a continuous string. Even when said slowly, the mouth stumbles over the “X” and “S” sounds, which are so similar that it only makes the sentence even more difficult to pronounce.

Tongue twisters do not really appeal to me anymore though, but as a kid, I loved the challenge of trying to ramble off a complex tongue as fast as possible. I believe tongue twisters mostly appeal to young kids because they turn them into games, chants, or even playground mantras.

Tradition

Nationality: African-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Stevenson Ranch, CA
Performance Date: High School
Primary Language: English

The Cipher

During the spring semesters of my High School years, my friends and I ran track and participated in most of the same events. At practices, whenever the coach was late or whenever we finished the workout early, we would relax together on the infield or in the equipment shed with an iPod, speakers, and our amateur rap skills. It’s called a cipher and it is defined on popular website www.urbandictionary.com as “Two or more rappers freestyling together in an informal context. They could be battling or simply playing off of each other.” A freestyle is when a rapper rhymes and creates a song without having anything written down, which is also called “spittin a freestyle.” Freestyle and ciphers are a huge part of the Hip-Hop and Rap music culture, because it is a form of art created by African-Americans that allows anyone with something to say, a chance to say it.

My friends and I would join up, usually one of us would have beats to provide and we would just rap for fun. Sometimes the rhymes were clever and funny, sometimes they were boring and lame; sometimes we would battle each other, sometimes we would attempt to create songs; and sometimes we would just rap for as long as possible without running out of material or messing up the lyrics and tempo. Ciphers incorporate so many aspects like jokes/punchlines, metaphors/similes, and creativeness/originality that it became a competition to see who could produce the best combination of it all.

However, ciphers are not just about who is the best; ciphers were about displaying our talent and hanging out with friends. When a good cipher gets going, energy is present, people feed off one another and it is almost like a tangible feeling coursing through your body. In a cipher, people do not judge what you have to say because you are free to say whatever is on your mind. Ciphers act as a type of therapy, letting you express stress and frustration in the form original creations that might make a person or two laugh. Basically, a cipher is held when friends want to have fun with each other and it eventually transforms into tradition, something we looked forward to annually because it brought my friends and I closer for the period of time and made us all happy.