2006年NPR美国国家公共电台十月-American Slang, Adapted and Updated（在线收听） |
| From NPR news, this is All Things Considered, I'm Robert Siegel. I'm Melissa Block and I'm gonna try to keep this next intro short so we can hit the post, fit in the web back, and avoid busting the segment. And you may not be able to decipher that radio slang but there's a guy who makes it his mission to do just that, not just radio slang but also sports slang, hip-hop slang, war slang, and real estate slang. His name is Paul Dickson and he's the author of many books on American English, among them his dictionary of slang, which is now out in its third updated edition. Paul Dickson collect slang like others collect baseball cards or vintage cookie jars with extreme passion. It's a wonderful hobby, because you don't, you don't do any trespass. It's unlike you're collecting birds' eggs or, or you know, I mean it's, it's there, it's there for the taking, and that, and the fun of it is just sort of decoding what other people are saying. So if you meet somebody from, from a subculture, you'll be asking them, you know, give me your lingo. What, what have you got? Well, it's hard to do that. I, I remember one time I asked somebody from a newspaper about the lingo and the jargon and the slang in the newspaper and, and they said, absolutely not, there's no such thing. And the woman I've said that to about two hours later called back and said "You know I was just in the sitting room, we, and we were having lunch and we, when I told them what I said to you and then all of a sudden that the terms kept flying out of their mouths, I mean, calling a newspaper article a piece, I got a piece due this morning, or led, L E D for the lead to a story, and, and et cetera, et cetera. There's hundreds of them, but the the... at the first blush most people don't realize they are using slang. And so I'm looking, I'm talking into a mic sock which is to prevent me from using plosives. Right now, at this moment? (Yes) Did we call that mic socks too? Popper stopper Popper stopper Popper stopper, add that to your next edition I am writing. The pen is out write it down.. I will, I will. Popper stopper, I love that. I was looking in your chapter. You've organized these terms by topic or by subgroup, and I was looking in your section on auction terms and they're a whole new sub-category now because they're eBay. Ebayzian, some people call it. The new online auction has some wonderful terms, one of which, one of my favorites is "pinks" and on, in eBay, if you are in a discussion group on eBay or there's some, something going on, eBay employees will occasionally chime in and they'll see something going on they like or don't like and they are called "pinks" because the little dialogue box is, is pink, but what makes it a beautiful piece of slang is it's reminiscent of Pinkerton, you know, the old, the old private detective. I like in the same section on the, on eBay words reflectoporn. Heehee… You, people are gonna go to their computers. That, there're people out there and, and nobody knows who or why they do this but apparently they will take a picture of a vase or something that's on eBay, that's reflectible, or hubcap or something and they will, they will do it without any clothes on and, and I guess the reason is, more than just naked is because most of these things distort them like fun house mirrors. So some naked image reflected in something shiny? Yes. And there's a word for it? Reflectoporn. Heehee… And some of them are part... reasons like this; some of them are not the most attractive people in the world. Naturally, err, the, the volatility of slang must, must keep on your toes when you're revising your book like you're, you are throwing some words out, right? Oh yeah, I am throwing categories out. I mean, I, I re, this is the third time out with this book and it'd been about ten years apart. And whole new categories come in that weren't there before, I mean, there're things like hip-hop and Java speak, which is sort of starbucksy and that all business, but one I love is, is the language at the modern office, which is called the "cube farm". So, er.. It's a cubespeak. Cubespeak, cubespeak, and, and there are several number of terms that cope with Cubespeak. But one of my, I guess my favorite cubespeak is prairiedogging, which is when there's a, a huge noise somewhere in the building or somebody yells at somebody, all these people pop up and down from their cubes and, and they look like… Yeah, over there... Prairie dogs in the prairie popping up and down... Well, what would be a category that you've gotten rid of completely? I got rid of the counter-culture, the 50s to 60s, the early drug culture. It's now become so much part of the language that it's now standard language. So a bomber or a trip, that counter-culture of do, do your own thing, all that stuff is now become standard English, even hip-hop there's 70 hip-hop terms are now in the Oxford English Dictionary. One of the words in your section on hip-hop speak is the word "grillz" Yes. And we have a song here and this is song grillz by the Rapper Nelly. Let's take a little listen. I got like platinum and white gold, traditional gold I'm changin' grillz everyday, like Jay change clothes, I might be grilled out nicely (oh) In my white tee (oh), on South Beach (oh) in my wife beat V V and studded you can tell when they cut it Ya see my grandmama hate it, but my lil' mama love it cuz when I... -------------------------------------------- at first blush prep.乍一看,事先无准备地 counterculture 反传统［主流］文化（60和70年代在美国青少年中盛行的一种思潮） |
| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/NPR2006/40922.html |