I've lived in the U.S. for 367 years and have never once heard anyone call it "za". I know Yanks can be as lazy as anyone, but is "pizza" really that exhaustin....whew, man, I need to take a break. :-P
I would call it more degradation than evolution. I agree with DonTheLamplighter. I think laziness most certainly does play a part in these abbreviations. as well as the delusion that it makes you look cool to use them.
Bro, obvi we say a lil' 'za prolly when the peeps come to the 'burb while the 'rents are out so I send a pic to my cuz and the other fam 'bout my fave indie flic on the telly
My fab fam and I were with my cuz and his bro out in the 'burbs watching our fave indie movie on the telly (the cop flick where the perp is a total perv and looks in peeps' windows) when my 'rents decided to take a pic of us using that Instagram app, but we had some gas from the 'za we cooked out on the barbie (totes delish, btw) and couldn't sit still, which made them think we were all copping a 'tude and prolly on 'roids (which was a lil ridic, tbh, 'cus we were obvi in some legit pain), and they got all pissed and said, "congrats for ruining our special family moment."
It doesnt bother me when people write these shortened versions in short text messages. Some of them are ok to hear spoken. But when people start using them in formal conversations or documents, or using them as if they were legitimate* words, i feel great sorrow for civilization.
Yes. We should absolutely do away with all "illegitimate" words. Like texting (was originally text messaging), phone (originally telephone), gym (originally gymnasium), pea (originally pease. All of these were (probably originally viewed as incorrect) shortenings of words or phrases, and all have moved into common usage.
In formal writing you should still use the terms "gymnasium", "telephone", and "text messaging" as opposed to informal shortened versions. Additionally, Internet should always be capitalized. As someone who reads a lot of amateur essays, I find informal writing annoying and tedious to correct all the time. Additionally, informal language makes language gaps worse, so academics are totally within their right to criticize informal language in academic work.
I think teens do, or the more shallow people that try to be populair (no offense, but well they do excist and do have their lingo).
I think only pic,app, congrats and indie are in normal use. Bro is common, but more informal then the above. (you could use those with say your neighbour, but unless you are best buddies you would not use bro)
And telly and barbie are rather common too under a wide public ( not just a subculture of specefic age or lifestyle)
Actually, many of these words are not modern in the slightest, such as 'rents, which is a word my 65 year old dad uses, and is completely shocked that NO ONE uses it any more. Same goes for words like 'lil, which also has gone out of fashion - I have never seen it in print at all except for when I was reading some Donald Duck comics from the 80s when I was growing up.
pic too and app? And well Indie games were never réally know under other names (and it wasnt after years I figured out what it was.. indiana? thought it was just a new word)
many of these are highly annoying but pic and app are as common as photo and vet to me.
What are you talking about, Indie movies are huge, the Indie Film Festival every year is proof of that.
Indie music has its own category on Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora.
Indie games are also a category of games on their own. Go on Steam or other game providers and you will see the Indie category amongst others. Indie is probably one of the most popular ones there.
I think he was thinking of the normal use of the word. In any other place indepedent wont be replaced by indie. A kid that wants to leave home to stay on his own doesnt say I want to be indie..
And indeed I think many may not have realised it. I know I didnt use to know it. I had only heard indie games and indie movies and never independent games... Allways saw it as a word on its own, but was really curious why they used that word ( quarter still didnt dropped) Untill I finally knew what it was, cant remember how I found it out though, if I actively looked it up and found out some other way.
Indie music has been around since the 1980s and was originally termed because it was released on independent labels that were not the big commercial labels
Some are irritating. I admit I do say delish quite often. But as michaelwalling says, Indie bands and Indie films are recognised genres. And who doesn't say TV or telly for television?
In my language it is tv (pronounced tay-vay, not tee-vee) and televisie and I think I used both about equal amounts, maybe slightly in favour of tv but not much, 60/40 at most.
Slightly dependent on the sentences, I'd say I am watching tv, but would say the television is broken (i guess in that cause in english you might say tv-set..)
I've seen both "cus" and "cuz" to say "because". "Cousin" would just be "cous" for me. You have to wonder though, do people really say "steroid" and "perpetrator" so much they need to shorten them?
I would imagine cops had to use the term perpetrator a whole lot and they came up with the shortened perp, which then everyone else picks up from television and movies based on cops.
I'm not sure where I heard it but in my head I hear someone with a very exaggerated California surfer accent referring to his pizza as 'za. It must have been in some movie or TV show.
Thanks to hanging around with my 20-something nieces I only missed one -- not bad for a 52 year old. I missed, "za". Oddly hadn't heard that one, especially since unlike most folks my age, I still rank pizza as one of my four basic food groups! Fun Quiz!
After two years we can deduce that 'Za is just not a common shortening (lots of people didn't know it) and that a lot of people apparently used the word 'indie' without ever realising what word it was replacing. I quite like the fact that 'obvi' wasn't obvious, as well as not being actually "obvious". But I have to say that is also one I've never heard being used.
Last thing, guess what date this quiz suddenly just turned up on the popular list?
Ridic isn't that modern...I recently saw it used in "The Lost Weekend" which won the Best Picture Oscar in the 1940s. I had also thought it was a modern term, maybe it went out and came back like our crazy language tends to do!
I think that you are thinking of `cos`, I believe 'cuz' is more of a modern hip-hop slang thing, I feel like it's the kind of thing snoop dogg would say.
I have never heard of thay being a thing. Then again I dont know everyone.. but telly for tv is used by millions so if phone didnt work, you'd obvi try tv wouldnt you?
I doubt there are very many people anywhere who use all of these. people pick and choose, and I think it's more likely to use one of the shortenings if it's a word you use often, hence "perp" most likely originating from police officers.
I am convinced that most of these "word shortenings" are created by adolescents with the intent of driving adults insane. I wanted to strangle my nephew at least twice a week when he was a teen! His language deteriorated from "What's up", to "Wassup", to "S'up".
I hate most of these "words" sooo much. And things normally do not bother me easily.
I am totally fine with pic bro and app, they are rather normall. But totes and obvs etc brrrr I nearly get goosebumps from it. And a little nauseous..
Btw do people really say za??? never heard of it and wouldnt have gotten it if it wasnt for the pic. (tried whatsup, like wazza, and then thought maybe thatsall 'sall => 'za. I guess in my mind I read it as a long za, zaaahhh and with pizza I suppose it is short??? I really cant imagine it being used in a sentence..)
I don't know. Pronouncing probably as prolly is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Totes is a close second. Bro seems pretty inoffensive by comparison. (Depends on usage, though).
Plenty of these words have gone out of fashion, and would not be considered modern in the slightest, such as 'za, 'rents, ridic, 'lil and peeps. The only people who tend to use these words (look at the comment section for example) are our parents who are in their 60s or older. Hardly modern then, are they, if they have already gone out of fashion?
Another appropriate answer for "fab" could be "fabricate" or "fabrication" (at least, it's very common in the blue collar working world). I got the correct answer, so NBD either way.
You know you're too much of a foodie when the first thing that comes to mind when you hear 'app' is appetizer and not application. But I still think it should be accepted or replaced.
You know your generation is doomed when you recognize most of these without even being from an English speaking country.... I'm from Germany and I absolutely hate it when people use words like "bro", "legit" or "fam" in a GERMAN conversation. And believe me when I say it happens very often. They use "nice" instead of "gut", "fresh" instead of "schick", "lost" instead of "verloren" and so on. It really has become a tragedy. Our traditional German dialects are dying out and they get replaced by that shit?
this is so inaccurate nobody says za or tude or ridic or rents or perp or telly (unless you're bri'ish) or cuz for cousins, cuz is another one for because, also bc, obviously is obv, totes is outdated, peeps is someone out of the loop tryna (trying to, there another one) sound cool especially at like a church camp of something, indie is for games, burbs is for adults mainly cuz high schoolers don't talk about suburbs, fam and fab are also pretty dated they belong in like 2014
I think only pic,app, congrats and indie are in normal use. Bro is common, but more informal then the above. (you could use those with say your neighbour, but unless you are best buddies you would not use bro)
And telly and barbie are rather common too under a wide public ( not just a subculture of specefic age or lifestyle)
many of these are highly annoying but pic and app are as common as photo and vet to me.
Indie music has its own category on Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora.
Indie games are also a category of games on their own. Go on Steam or other game providers and you will see the Indie category amongst others. Indie is probably one of the most popular ones there.
And indeed I think many may not have realised it. I know I didnt use to know it. I had only heard indie games and indie movies and never independent games... Allways saw it as a word on its own, but was really curious why they used that word ( quarter still didnt dropped) Untill I finally knew what it was, cant remember how I found it out though, if I actively looked it up and found out some other way.
Slightly dependent on the sentences, I'd say I am watching tv, but would say the television is broken (i guess in that cause in english you might say tv-set..)
"Roid Rage" is a common phrase. I've used perp a number of times while studying court cases and police scenes.
Last thing, guess what date this quiz suddenly just turned up on the popular list?
I got most of them, including indie, which for a long time I thought stood for "Indian".
NHI (No Human Involved) and a host of other abbreviations meant to
make their written reports less cumbersome.
And maybe the previous generation(s) thought the same, from goodday to hello, to hey to hi.
I am totally fine with pic bro and app, they are rather normall. But totes and obvs etc brrrr I nearly get goosebumps from it. And a little nauseous..
Btw do people really say za??? never heard of it and wouldnt have gotten it if it wasnt for the pic. (tried whatsup, like wazza, and then thought maybe thatsall 'sall => 'za. I guess in my mind I read it as a long za, zaaahhh and with pizza I suppose it is short??? I really cant imagine it being used in a sentence..)
But yeah, "rents" is old-fashioned now.
Also obvs instead of obvi? Who says obvi?
Had never heard that one before.
please accept because for both "cuz" "cus"
from the dictionary:
cuz1
/kəz/
conjunctionINFORMAL
because.
"I don't have much money to buy games cuz I'm a student"
Oh, and "info".
Didn't look at the picture
Must remember to look at picture
Must remember to look at picture
Must remember to look at picture
source: i am in high school rn