I’ve been on the West Coast for a few days now. The house in which I’ve been staying is frequently populated by teens. To my dismay, much of the time I can’t understand what they are saying. This is because they talk in a rapid fire way, running their words together, and speaking at a decibel level that is difficult to impossible for adult ears. I put it down to West Coast middle class black speech, and just as those suffering from early stages of hearing loss, resigned myself to being cut off from this speech community. Oh well, it’s such a small community, I consoled myself.
Yesterday, I was at one of those suburban shopping centers messing around at the Barnes & Nobles. I took a break and wandered over to one of those suburban Chinese places. After considering the menu for a few seconds, I decided on Kung Pao thinking that its spiciness would counteract their overly sweet sauce.
“Chicenorbeef,” the Asian teen asked.
“What?”
“Chicenorbeef”, she repeated.
Out of that garble of words I must have picked up the word beef. Ah, I thought, she wants to know if I want chicken or beef. Next we went through drinks, then whether I wanted to eat in or take out. At no time did I fully understand her, but was able to use the context to intuit what she was saying. It was worse than I thought, it was all West Coast teens, I concluded, but buoyed by my limited success decided there was some hope for me. Perhaps I could have meaningful dialogue with this group.
Later, at the house one of the teens asked me “satwhoranhouseeksetx,” which turned out to be are there any eggs in the house.
