American Slanguage

American slang is funny, indeed.

Have you ever stopped and wondered what the phrase “Have a good one” means?

This is one of the lesser-known American slang usages. It pops up once in a while, when you least expect it. So what exactly does “one” represent here? And why should I have just a good one – why can’t I have two or three of whatever it is?

Another slang that hits you wherever you go is “Whats up, dude?” We all know what it means – which is, well, nothing. You maybe tempted to say “tubelight” or “ceiling” or “sky” in reply depending upon where you are at that instant, but please refrain from doing so.

By the way, there are many accepted usages for “Whats up”. Like “Wassup”, “Tsup”, “Sup”. These days, it’s probably enough if you raise your eyebrows and exhale.

Another variant of “Whats up?” is “What up”. As if the existing term wasn’t grammatically incorrect enough.

The one phrase that I had a tough time with when I got here is “You’re all set”.

When someone says “You’re all set”, it roughly translates to – don’t hang around, take a walk, goodbye, hope I don’t see you again!

The first time I heard this phrase from a lady at the card office, I was in half a mind to say: “Lady, watch your grammar”. But somehow better sense prevailed. And I realized what she meant was that she has finished serving me, now she’s ready to help the next person in line – but not before I said “I beg your pardon” around twenty times.

Something funny happened when someone asked me “How are you doing?” .

This question, as you would probably know by now, is largely rhetorical – which means you don’t actually have to answer it, and responding with a simple “hi” usually suffices.

It definitely doesn’t warrant a detailed description of your rather fun-filled weekend as a reply, especially if it was your professor that asked you the question- all she wanted probably was a brief comment about research.

If someone yells out “Dude” (or to be more accurate, “Dooooooooooood”), usually it means one of two things:
1. You are looked upon as being a cool sort.
2. You have said something terribly absurd.

If someone keeps telling you "Take it easy, dude!", please DO take it easy - even though you may want to take out all your anger on this person, because you really don't have any intention of not taking "it" easy.

If you encounter “yada, yada, yada” in the midst of some text, it doesn’t mean that the author has frozen trying to recollect a verse from the Bhagavad Gita. It simply means that he doesn’t want to expand on something. (P.S. equivalents are: “blah, blah, blah”, “and so on”).

If you get the term “holy fill-anything-here”, you know you’ve just put the person who said it in a state of shock by something you said or did. Being from India, we already know that cows are holy, but little did we know that a lot of other seemingly unholy things are as well. You can have holy crap, holy shit, holy smoke, holy cat, holy mackerel, holy moly, holy Schmoly.

In classes, you will learn more slang. You will do “back-of-the-envelope” calculations (on the blackboard) and you will also learn the key technique of “hand-waving” - which, by the way, won’t land you any favors with the TA if used in exams.

If something is “humongous”, its so huge that saying its huge doesn’t do it justice .. it has to be called humongous – only that would accord it the respect it deserves.

Ok, that’s about it for now.

You have a good one!