By BRONWYN SELL education reporter
In some towns, school students bunk class and in others they wag. But it seems a girl is a chick wherever you go.
And what was once "ace" or "choice" is now "sweet as" or "unreal."
When secondary school students return for term two this week, some will
study the slang they would usually be discouraged from using in class.
Their findings will become part of a national project mapping which words are fashionable (or "cool," "mint," "stylie," "da bomb") and where.
The Kiwi English Project, being run over the Internet by Unitec, will ask students to identify their slang terms for 25 words and phrases, including "hello," "goodbye" and "friend."
Project director Phil Coogan hopes the project will capture a snapshot of a constantly challenging colloquial language and get young people interested in their own language. "It's saying we have a legitimate variety of English here that's worthy of study and worthy of celebration."
He said there were known cultural differences in colloquial language, but experts had found few regional differences so far.
The editor of A Dictionary of Modern New Zealand Slang, Harry Orsman, said that colloquialisms among young people probably had as many regional differences as did those of adults.
"I come from Havelock, in Marlborough, and when I went to Silverstream [in Upper Hutt], there was a whole new range of common words I hadn't heard for bodily parts and functions that schoolboys talk so much about."
Dr Laurie Bauer, a Victoria University linguist researching young people's colloquialisms, suspects regional variation exists in children's vocabularies, but not necessarily in the words in the Kiwi English Project.
"We have found regional variation in the name of the game you play when you chase your fellows around the playground, and if you touch one of them, they have to take over the chasing," he said.
It was usually called "tiggy" in the northern half of the North Island and "tag" or "tig" elsewhere.
"There is a regional variation in what you call having two people on a bicycle that's not supposed to have two people on it."
It was called "dubbing" in Wellington, "doubling" elsewhere.
Dr Bauer also identified a common unspoken way of saying "hello."
"If you're male, in certain parts of the country, you don't say anything. You just look at somebody and move your head from bottom left to top right."
Related Links
The Kiwi English Project
By BRONWYN SELL education reporter
In some towns, school students bunk class and in others they wag. But it seems a girl is a chick wherever you go.
And what was once "ace" or "choice" is now "sweet as" or "unreal."
When secondary school students return for term two this week, some will
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