Gilles Tran wrote:

> I was recently surprised to hear small kids <5 year old) use certain 
> "gross/funny" words that were already popular with small kids 40 years ago. 
> Since these words are only used by kids, you won't find them in books and 
> parents/teachers are unlikely to use them. One can only guess that each 
> generation of kids n pass them on to generation n+1. That's a 100% oral 
> tradition, flying below the parental and academic radars and disconnected 
> from the mainstream cultural environment. It's pretty amazing actually.

The boarding school I went to had roughly 40 students. We virtually had 
our own friggin' LANGUAGE!

And it only took 1 person to discover or invent a new word and that 
language was permanently changed. Like, within weeks.

One day, somebody discovered a word we'd never heard of called 
"blatent". The dictionary definition he looked up suggested that it 
basically means "lots". (Which I now comprehend is *not* exactly 
correct.) For the next 6 months or so, it was blatent-this and 
blatent-that. Like, "OMG, dude, that girl is *blatently* hot!"

God damnit we were bored stupid...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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