I suspect any day is improved by starting with cake, but perhaps that's just my inner four-year-old talking. (I have distinct preferences on what types of cake, which is one of the warning signs.) RE: American as a distinct language/slanguage, and who's generating it, we do know that the demographics *will be* nonwhite majorities in future, IMHO clearly a big part of what's got the Tea Partiers' knickers in such a racist twist. Local demographics may lead to interesting specialities. A good chunk of what you hear in border states will be Spanglish, which feels free to borrow whichever distinct terms that convey meaning more concisely. I don't quite know what to expect from other immigrant populations. Locally, for instance, we have a large Russian population, and one of the more interesting grocery stores started off as a Korean ethnic market which also stocked unusual and specialty items for the local Hispanic population. Now it imports all kinds of things from former Soviet Union states. It makes for very interesting store shelf labeling. Then there's fads. I see all kinds of use of anime and manga terminology which I first started hearing from rapid adopters back in the 80's, for instance--those folks who were learning Japanese so they could translate new movies imported directly from buying services, none of it easy to do. Otaku, in current western terminology.
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Date: 31 Jan 2011 05:09 am (UTC)RE: American as a distinct language/slanguage, and who's generating it, we do know that the demographics *will be* nonwhite majorities in future, IMHO clearly a big part of what's got the Tea Partiers' knickers in such a racist twist.
Local demographics may lead to interesting specialities. A good chunk of what you hear in border states will be Spanglish, which feels free to borrow whichever distinct terms that convey meaning more concisely. I don't quite know what to expect from other immigrant populations. Locally, for instance, we have a large Russian population, and one of the more interesting grocery stores started off as a Korean ethnic market which also stocked unusual and specialty items for the local Hispanic population. Now it imports all kinds of things from former Soviet Union states. It makes for very interesting store shelf labeling.
Then there's fads. I see all kinds of use of anime and manga terminology which I first started hearing from rapid adopters back in the 80's, for instance--those folks who were learning Japanese so they could translate new movies imported directly from buying services, none of it easy to do. Otaku, in current western terminology.