Tag Archives: folk speech

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).

Noob Origins

Performance Date: 4/27/16
Primary Language: English

Piece:

N00b and nub are corruptions of “noob”, itself a corruption of “newb”, short for “newbie”. “Newbie” was in use at least as far back as the BBS era of the 1980s and early 1990s, where it referred to a user who was new to BBSs. It was less of an insult and more friendly than “noob”, which was popularized by Counterstrike players in a context where a poor player can ruin the game for others.

Newbie itself is modern slang, where according to Wikipedia it referred to new soldiers in Vietnam. The word’s origin before this is unclear, but it appears to be a word created to turn the adjective “new” into a noun, perhaps as a diminutive (Barbara -> Barbie, for example).

 

Informant & Context:

My informant is a commenter on the website Stack Exchange, who goes by the username Joe Dovakhiin, a popular message board website in the online gaming community. The comment was in response to a forum question about the origins of the word Noob. I believe the comment was legitimized by the more than twelve thousand thumbs ups it received by other forum users.

Link to forum: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/10420/how-did-the-term-noob-originate

 

Thoughts:

This is one of the most classic or conventional gaming insults in my opinion. It is a phrase that has continued to be used throughout my lifetime, and has a life span almost as large as the video game industry itself. This phrase is especially interested because it has maintained popularity in the entire gaming community whereas other phrases have gone in and out of style like fads.

#LCSBigPlays

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

Piece:

In the LCS (League of Legends Championship series) — it’s the biggest championship series– there are certain known playmaking character that are consistently super important to team fights. This commentator Phreak would sometimes comment “WOW big plays” whenever one of those pivotal moments occurred in a game. Thus started the hashtag #LCSBigPlays. Then it became a balance criticism after characters continually performed well in tournaments and it was theorized that Riot refused to balance these characters because they were exciting to watch in tournaments and the company didn’t want to take away from the spectacle (Specifically in reference to the character Ahri, who has been first-pick banned in tournaments for the last 2 years).

 Information & Context:

My informant for this piece is a student at the University of Southern California who has been involved in the League of Legends community for the past 5 years. He was exposed to this piece of folk Speech after watching the LCS one year in which Phreak commentated and witnessed the rise of the hash tag in online games in the following months.

 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 intrigues me because it indicates a role reversal—using something that has become overused in an attempt to highlight an idiosyncrasy in the game. This folk speech insult has become popular in an attempt to chastise the game’s creator for not providing more balance in the game to it’s players.

Cuban Riddle

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 57
Residence: Miami, FL
Performance Date: 3/16/16
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Original Script: “Un muchacho le pregunta a una muchacha, ‘Cómo te llamas?’ Ella le contesta, ‘Si el enamorado es entendido, ahí va mi nombre y el color de mi vestido. La respuesta correcta es, ‘Su nombre es Elena y su vestido es morado.”

Transliteration: “A boy asks a girl, ‘How do you call yourself?’ She to him responds, ‘If the lover is understood, there goes my name and the color of my dress.’ The answer correct is, ‘Her name is Elena and her dress is purple.'”

Translation: “A boy asks a girl, ‘What’s your name?’ She responds, ‘If the lover is understood, there goes my name and the color of my dress.’ The correct answer is, “Her name is Elena and her dress is purple.'”

 

This riddle only makes sense in Spanish because the Spanish word for lover, enamorado, is a combination of the last three letter’s of the girl’s name, Elena, as well as the color of her dress, morado. ena+morado=enamorado. Furthermore, the word enamorado is preceded by the word el in the joke. El translates into “the” in this context. The woman in the riddle is testing the man to see if he’s clever enough to figure out  her name using only the clue, rather than just asking for it.

The source said she heard it at a bridal shower. They were telling wedding riddles, and this one came up. It’s a coy riddle, with the woman sounding very flirtatious. It seems she’s interested in this man, but only if he’s smart enough to beat her game. It seems odd that her dress would be purple rather than white, though. Perhaps in some earlier version of the riddle, the man was a prince? Because purple is known to indicate royalty.

 

For another form of this riddle:

Ortiz Y Pino De Dinkel, Reynalda, and Dora Gonzales De Martínez. Una Colección De Adivinanzas Y Diseños De Colcha = A Collection of Riddles and Colcha Designs. Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone, 1988. Google Books. Web. 23 Apr. 2016.