Category Archives: Folk speech

Chinese Proverbs

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Piece:

When I was a small, my parents made me memorize some classic proverbs:

Men, at their birth, are naturally good

Their Natures are the same; their habits become widely different

“What do they mean to you?”

hmmm. I think there was a very high value on education and being conscious of my surroundings. I put family as a very high value, or I was socialized to be.

Informant & Context:

My Informant is a Chinese-American student at the University of Southern California, who speaks Mandarin at home with his family members. These traditional Chinese proverbs were translated by him.

Thoughts:

These proverbs really stress ideas of optimism. The first proverb, blatantly so, the second one does so by emphasizing the impact of ones surroundings on an individual. My informant definitely takes this as a positive thing—a call to be conscious and observant rather than morose that difference has arisen.

Hontrash

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angelas
Performance Date: 4/24/16
Primary Language: English

Piece:

“Hontrash”

Years ago (in 2007 ish) the Defense of the Ancients (Dota) community and Heroes of Newerth (HON) community were at odds because it’s essentially the same game. Players knew that one would eventually triumph over the other as the popular game of the genre and the loser would be discontinued—like a fight for survival. Dota eventually won and HON players switched over, so “hontrash” became an insult for people who switched over. Eventually the community moved on from insulting that group of players, and the phrase instead shifted its meaning to become an insult targeting anyone who demonstrated a clear lack of skill in the game.

Informant & Context:

My informant for this piece is a member of the Dota community who has been active since approximately 2007 during the time at which this phrase occurred. He was exposed to this folk speech in online matches in which players around him used the phrase to insult others.

Thoughts:

I became active in the Dota community around fall of 2012 and have never witnessed this insult in my time as part of the community. As a result, I would reason that the lifespan of this folk speech was a band of time in-between 2007 and 2012.

Insults in the online gaming community are quite common at the non-professional level. I would reason that this is an affordance of the nature of anonymity with the games—each player speaks from behind a computer screen.

Destruction

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angelas
Performance Date: 4/22/16
Primary Language: English

Piece:

Destruction (pronounced like Christopher Walken shouting)

A melee (Super Smash Brothers Melee, a game by Nintendo) term from the melee community—a commentator named D1 would try to hype up the game whenever something cool happened. Because he over-exaggerated how intense the gameplay was and continuously said “destruction” at mildly interesting moments, the phrase became a joke in the community and is used whenever you want to hype up something that isn’t actually hype worthy.

i.e. whenever a player accidentally kills them self or misses an attack.

Informant & Context:

My informant for this piece is an active member of the competitive Super Smash Brothers Melee community, which has been active since 2001. He has attended multiple tournaments and watched others on live stream web sources such as Twitch and Youtube.

Thoughts:

I find it interesting that a lot of the folk speech insults in online games originate from an attempt to parody something in the community’s spotlight. This particular one parodies a specific commentator in combination with a particular player’s mediocrity. Folk speech in this community is also highly interesting due to the local nature of the game; since the game is offline, the only way to spread game culture is to attend tournaments and other events related to the game.

Johnnystock

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/16
Primary Language: English

Piece:

In melee (Super Smash Brothers Melee, a game by Nintendo) you have 4 stock lives. There’s a player named Johnny who has a habit of playing poorly—he overall is just mediocre and then suddenly you’re just dead.

“So is Johnnystock like the first two lives where he plays poorly?”

No. It’s just like when someone suddenly kills you. Like out of nowhere.

Informant & Context:

My informant for this piece is an active member of the competitive Super Smash Brothers Melee community, which has been active since 2001. He has attended multiple tournaments and watched others on live stream web sources such as Twitch and Youtube.

Thoughts:

This is the first piece of folk speech in video games I’ve recorded that isn’t an insult. Since it is mostly used in verb form (to be Johnnystocked) it serves the purpose of lauding the Johnnystocker rather than chastising the Johnnystocked individual. This is an example of folk speech arising as a manifestation of the actions of those at the center of the community (the professional players).

New Zealand Slang

Nationality: New Zealand
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/16
Primary Language: English

Piece:

“Do you have any slang in New Zealand that you don’t hear here at all?”

Oh yeah, we have lots.

Togs – swimsuits (apparently the old english form for swimsuit)

Jandals – flipflops

Motorway – freeway

Cuzzie – friends

Scarfies – people from Dunedien

Jafa – (Just another fucking Aucklander) People from Auckland

Stubbies – really short pants that men wear

Chur – thank you. I lot of people say chur instead of thanks.

Wops wops – middle of nowhere

“Is there a reason for any of this?”

No. Well some of them maybe

Westies/Bogans – People from west Aukland but it’s like dumb unwashed hippies

Munted – Broken

Oh, and we call ketchup tomato sauce.

Informant & Context:

My informant for this piece is a USC student from New Zealand who lived in Auckland for 18 years. The above are popular youth phrases in New Zealand whose meaning does not carry over to the US.

Thoughts:

The most interesting ones of these to me are Jafa, and Westies because they are discriminatory phrases about people from Auckland, the city my informant is from. The previous pieces of folklore I had acquired from this person suggested a greater assimilation of culture between different peoples in New Zealand, but these phrases suggest that there are stereotype based rivalries between different geographic groups in New Zealand. Though I did not get one, I’m assuming there is also a word that Auklanders use to insult the people that call them Jafas or Westies.