I like to learn about words from around the world and use them in my speech. I have a particular love for British words. I just love words like spiv, nod, wasteman, barmy, slapper, bruv, lezza, shafted, nonce, junkie, bint, smackhead, nutter, slag, breve, chav, squiffy, slaphead, looney/loon, bender, and dosh.
You might enjoy this book. It’s like dictionary of random slang words from around the world, with different chapters based on categories.
Personally, I was a little disappointed because 99% of the definitions are just one sentence or sentence fragment. I was hoping to find out a little more about the origins of more of the words and maybe a little of the culture behind them.
I spend more time speaking English than my native language.
Do you still use words from your native language?
Of course. My work and my friends are quite international is all. With my family I speak my native tongue.
Yeah, I’m multilingual from a hispanic country, and due to job experience and the media I consume I’ve ended up with a real mess of both accent and lexicon. Nowadays, most of my english and italian interactions are limited to online gaming, and half the time people catch on to my accent, and guess I’m either quebecois, german, or french, despite not being fluent in any of those or ever spending more than a week in any of those countries.
In day to day life, I mix all three (spanish, english, and italian), using the first word that comes to mind. It feels really jarring trying to convey a complete idea in just spanish, and end up translating foreign words in my head. It’s faster for me now to communicate in english than it is in spanish.
Drongo from Australia is pretty funny.
Yeah, far too often.
Can you give examples?
