how teens talk

so as there has been discussion on how teens talk due to a couple video games recently thought I would relate this experience. I teach a community college chemistry lab while I look for patent law work (so if anyone needs a patent lawyer ...) one of the students used the word hella in an answer recently. So yes, teens do talk like that.

Is this on the west coast? Or is it someone saying it like how some say "wicked" when riffing on the New England vernacular?

Some do, sure. But there's a lot more to it than that. As someone who was a teen a few years ago and still hangs out with some teens, I can just as easily say that every teen I know doesn't say hella. Unless its meant to be ironic or some joke like that. The problem with "teen" talk is that there is no real teen talk. Its going to vary region by region and even clique by clique. There is some common slang used, but not to an extent where you could capture the way teens as a whole talk and be correct for everyone. I've heard "bomb" way more often than I've heard hella for example.

I find "hella" much more tolerable than "hecka." My friends and I would always make fun of one of our online cali friends for using "hecka" in serious conversation.

Hella has been around in Northern California for years and probably originated there, so it's widely used by all ages, even here in Southern California.

Wonder how farspread the word "dank," is. I find its slang meaning to be very ironic because of its acual definition. When I first heard my friends start using this word, I incorrectly used it as a negative because I was familiar with its definition, and now I hate myself when "dank," slips through my speech in proper slang. Damn you cultural osmosis!

I've used both "hella" and "hecka" a bit, but that's because I listen to E-40 more than I would like to admit. Nobody here (I'm in western Canada) has any idea what the heck either of them are.

I never would use either in a serious context though.

I'm a teen right now, ask me anything about being a teen. Also, today at lunch a friend of mine described his sandwich as "hella". Not "hella good", just "hella".

I'm a teen going to college and the only people I've heard say hella were doing it as a joke.

But now you have to contend with the meta-question of whether that person was saying that on account of Life Is Strange.

"The way teens talk" is a stupid criticism, anyhow, in my opinion. "Teens" are people, and people speak differently in different groups. In high school, my brother and I had slang that we just used with each other. I had slang that I just used with my circles of friends. I had slang that was slang of "my generation. Plus, we all had slang that we would use "ironically". I frequently would say "groovy", but it was more a product of quoting Ash from Army Of Darkness. Then, as it as the late 90s, eventually people thought I was quoting Austin Powers.

The point being, there is absolutely no telling where the characters picked up their slang, and it's utterly irrelevant.

Real quality teen-writing comes from having characters who are overly dramatic, lacking in emotional control, and behaving without any thought to consequence.

People were saying "hella" when I was in high school, and that's well over a decade ago.

Hmmmm...

Agreed. People complaining about "unrealistic dialogue," in Life is Strange have simply not had the interactions I've had with teens over the past couple years. To me, it came across as scarily accurate, and some of the best video game writing I've seen to date. Those characters absolutely talk and act like real teens, right down to them loving old shit you wouldn't even expect them to know of, like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I'm not gonna let any out of touch 30 somethings on a video game forum convince me otherwise when I've seen and heard the proof myself.

@roc_553: The explanation is more boring than what you might think. Small town. I have friends a couple years younger than me who also have friends and siblings a few years younger than them. Leads to a pretty big age range at times.

different groups of people talk in different ways. even one group/demographic has subsets that have different mannerisms/colloquialisms. these don't necessarily have age limits either. especially with so many social circles being easily accessible via social media.

dunno why that's so hard to grasp or why it's such an ire-inducing concept. I feel that when people get upset at teen talk in fiction, it's because 1. it's like looking in a mirror, 2. grumpy old person syndrome, or 3. the writing might be legit bad, but it's often the go-to reason to criticize any game involving teenagers. we also overestimate what people are realistically like while consuming fiction, which is a weird thing on its own.

seriously tho, teens are not a big deal. they're probably angry because of how much people treat them with hyperbolic disdain.

The real question ought to be realistic or not, if dialogue is grating or terrible, why would I want to listen to it at length?

This topic is hella on fleek fam.

Does anyone (not in USA) have teens talk that way?

I thought stuff like Oxenfree and LiS a bit weird because i've never heard teens talk like that in m life (Australia). But I might be an outlier. Do all those mannerisms go over to other countries besides USA?

Yeah as someone fresh out of university in Canada I definitely hear a lot of "teen slang." I'm over 5 years removed from high school but I spent a lot of time around people younger than me since I lived in my university's dorms for 4 years and I fins myself using some of that slang on occasion. But every once in a while I'll drop something that was very commonly said when I was in high school and sometimes the people I live with, who are all about 4 years younger than me, will have no idea what I mean or will give me an odd look. It's kind of amazing how much of a difference you get in such a short gap.

Hella is a regional thing. I've heard "Bruh" or even "Bruh Bruh" quite a bit.

@lilman1101:Your mileage may vary on that one, or in the parlance of certain internet communities, YMMV

Honestly, slang is a tricky beast. The internet has made it even weirder. The world has become a bizarre linguistic cultural melting pot. Code switching abounds.

As someone who grew up in California, I knew people that talked like the people in LiS and Oxenfree (to a certain extent - no one has said "shaka brah" since like 1972), but they weren't the people that I hung out with. I had friends that thought the terminology of hip--hop culture was so great (and hilarious) that they would use terms like "stacking duckets" in history class - and I'm talking about 5'2" Jewish kids. I don't speak Spanish, but I grew up around enough Mexican folks that there's a bunch of Spanish slang in my working vocabulary, and I don't break stride if someone decides to refer to me as "vato loco." "Hella" is generally a Northern California thing, but I've met people from India who say it, and I've met Argentinians who use the word "motherfucker" like it's a comma, "You what, mate" wasn't nearly as popular an expression in the US until "u wot m8" became an internet meme. I met a guy from Mongolia once who barely spoke English, but whose favorite word was "bro." Regionalisms and terminology spread way faster than they used to, and it's pretty much impossible to predict now how people are going to speak by where they come from, or what they look like.

I guess I'm also saying that, in my opinion, things sounding "weird" to you probably have more to do with writing and delivery than the actual things the characters are saying. If the people delivering the lines feel natural saying them, and the context supports it, I generally think that you won't even notice. Chloe sounds normal saying "hella" in LiS, Max doesn't. It's all in the delivery.

Get monked, son.

For those parents of teens who wonder about their weird speech: What Your Teen Is Really Doing When She Says She’s Going To A Warehouse To Get All Holes Stuffed.

I've been hearing more and more of, "rip," short for "R.I.P." You say it after you realize something is unsalvageable or something you were supposed to be in charge of has gone wrong. It feels like everyone I watch on Twitch says it and it's kind of been annoying me.

examples:

"I got an F on my Spanish test. Rip."

"My character died in this popular multiplayer online battle arena videogame. Rip."

"This Twitch streamer had the game audio turned all the way up by accident. Rip my ears."

I've noticed, rather annoyingly, that "good on you" has been becoming more popular in the states due to the very thing you're talking about. The internet has made even national colloquialisms become international.

@hansolol: Yeah, I've also heard a lot of "rip in peace" and "rip in pieces"

I have to imagine this is one of those jokes that spiraled out of control from a single, genuine forum post somewhere. Akin to the ancient "has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like"

The unintentional meme is probably the most interesting flavor

I feel like the only 2 universal things about the way teens speak is acting like they've got life all figured out in an overdramatic way and cramming in as many references to old shit they weren't even alive for. Words like hella are too regional or relegated to subcultures like punk or skater but out of context references to things I had never seen at the time like "I'm gonna Macgyver myself something" or "That dude can't die, he's like a Highlander!" were a constant in my high school vocab a few years ago (21 year old from Wisconsin).

Fuck memes. It's all about now dated urban slag.

@zaldar:2 years ago (when I was at the end of being a teenager) I wrote this in my essay about the architect Richard Neutra. In the paragraph after talking about his tutor Aldof Loos visiting the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Loos returned from America after gaining a new insight into innovative industrial technologies and saw how they could modernise architecture. He hyped America up so much that Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra set their minds on moving there.

As a prematurely grumpy old person, i stopped caring to understand "teen slang" long ago.

In return, i do not complain about fictional stuff potentially getting "teen slang" wrong since it'd be cringeworthy for me either way.

Who... cares? What does it matter if people say 'hella' if they want to? You and the group you identify with might have agreed no one should say 'hella' because it makes you look stupid, but in reality that just makes you judgmental and a bummer to be around.

I'm actually having a hard time listening to the Bombcast sometimes because of how judgmental they are towards other people who do something that they consider out of the ordinary. But then again, it does conflict with me on a personal level. I love diversity in people and I love freedom. So the notion of 'we don't do it like that around here' doesn't resonate with me to begin with. Let people be and act whoever and however they want.

@zevvion: *judging you*

The correct answer is that teen talk varies significantly even within a single school.

The best way to represent teen talk is by having some characters speak with memes like 'dank' while others speak like normal people.

You know, the same as you would for adults. Puberty does not affect everyone the same.

It's far spread in that 10+ years ago I knew it as a word to describe good 'moist' weed, and these days it's used by all sorts of cretin on the internet.

All I know is since playing Life is Strange, I can't stop noticing that Jeff uses "hella" a lot.

So I really wish you got a notification here when someone replied to your forum posts. I didn't realize people had replied to this until now. No this is in central North Carolina. Now the students in question may be from New England originally I don't know.

As somebody who teaches middle schoolers...some of the stuff they come up with drives me insane. They know I have a ps4, so they ask me lots of game questions.

If I hear one more time how great "Doge-Miner and Cookie Clicker" are...I may go insane!

Who what and the what now?

Most people criticizing Life is Strange and saying that that isn't how teens actually talk, are disconnected and outdated. While it may seem over exaggerated, spend some time with teens now, especially closer to the younger teens and you'll see that a lot of them do actually talk a lot like that.

I guess I spend a lot of my time talking with "adults" and "teens". And I've heard "teens" talk like "adults" and vice versa. So everyone's language sucks and/or is amazing and/or is hilarious.

Nothing is real.

Teens are so cool.

@homelessbird: Near as I can tell I first saw it used a lot ironically on 4chan's videogame boards in 2011 as a joke after Deus Ex Human Revolution had Jensen say it as Rip. Totally possible there is more than one point of origin but that's at least one.

Chloe is a teen punk who really wants to move to California

She is th only person from her town who uses the word "hella"

This is not a hard idea to understand

First off, I read a bit of this thread but not all of it so if this has already been discussed I am sorry.

But I really don't like people talking shit on how "teens" talk. Every one of us has been a dumb teen at some point (or is still a dumb teen?(or is yet to be a dumb teen?fuck)) so it feels kind of crappy to talk shit on how they talk. I am sure every adult thought I talked like an idiot, and when you were a teen I bet adults thought you were dumb.

Instead of talking shit about teens, lets empathize with the bullshit they are going through? I am pretty sure everyone goes through some real shit in their teen years, no need to make it harder.

Step-douche

People are free to judge other people if they so wish, in this case on how another group of people use language. It's quite common and maybe in some ways understandable simply because of the gap of unfamiliarity due to various sociological aspects. Though in my opinion it's not really worthwhile to judge others on how they use language, instead I find it rather sad especially if expressed in a demeaning manner. But perhaps ironically, I'm having a value judgement on people's negative judgements of (teen) language, which may have no actual merit either - outside of potentially influencing the thoughts of some of y'all duders.

Meanwhile other people, especially young females, continue to create new words, phrases, grammatical constructs etc. - some that may deviate from the "correct" norm - among themselves, and those new tingalings may spread to become used by others outside of their groups as well; perhaps even becoming worldwide quickly in this day and age. And that most likely won't stop as long as humans retain their humanity and creativity. Then again I'm really interested in language and how it constantly (d)evolves, so I'm naturally biased to have this hella all-inclusive position.

I'm from the UK so the words used are totally different, i overhear teens a lot where i work and besides them just swearing all the time there's not a lot to comment on, certainly no hella's.

@hayt: Interesting. It's totally possible that's where it came from.

I think /v/'s memes (and 4chan's in general) have a tendency to spread faster than others because of the anonymous nature of the site. Whereas on Reddit and similar sites, you have a culture that's very negative about "reposting" content, especially without attribution - see innumerable posts on the front page followed by comments linking to the old thread from a couple weeks ago - 4chan's essential nature means that 4chan memes aren't the creations of one user, they're the creations of "4chan" as an amorphous whole. They become immediate inside jokes, and even when they're not popular with the entirety of the site, a dedicated group of posters can "force" the meme simply by posting it over and over again until it gains some level of recognition, if not acceptance. Then. of course, people bring those jokes to other sites where they seem fresh, and they begin the journey into mainstream recognition - all the while making the original people who posted them (but probably didn't come up with them in the first place) angry that their jokes have been "stolen"

In any case, I've definitely seen it around since about that year (2011-2012), so that seems like a possibility - although you may remember that Human Revolution definitely had some references to 4chan in it already (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDUBTUa1O7Q), so it's possible Jensen saying "Rip" instead of "R.I.P." was also referential to some previous meme. Knowyourmeme traces "rip" back to 2007 (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rip-in-peace), but I'd take anything you read on that site with a very large grain of salt. I wouldn't call their "research" thorough.

I honestly think this stuff is fascinating, though.

Have you introduced them to the joy of persona 4? I mean you would then have the ability to tell them to get bent ... and man props to you I subbed middle school once ... good lord. Little Monsters were worse than I remembered and they were bad when I was in it.