CHISTYAKOV: California Dreaming

Every region has its own slang. In New England, one slang term is “wicked.” In California, slang is part of the daily vocabulary. A number of people would argue that most of the slang words used around the country originally came from California. Although I’m not an expert when it comes to slang, I know that my daily vocabulary sets me apart from those who live on the East Coast.

There’s a distinct difference between Southern California slang and Northern California slang, but in my school we had a mix of both, even though we were in Southern California. I had many friends who had moved from the Bay Area, and they brought their slang with them. So when I moved to Boston, I brought California slang. There were plenty of kids from California living on my floor as well, which made it homier. When I talked to California kids here, it felt like I had never left home. The people here spoke my language.

But after the first few weeks, I realized that I was surrounded by even more kids from the East Coast. One day, after one of the California kids exclaimed, “It’s hella cold outside,” he received many strange looks.

During one of the first weekends here, after I asked if there were any “kick-backs” going on, I was met with confusion. Likewise, when a California kid used “dope,” “rad,” “gnarly” or “sus” to describe a situation, he or she was misunderstood. It took a while for me to realize that the language I spoke was not spoken nationally.

It’s been discomforting knowing that I need to watch my language in Boston. I can speak in one way with my best friends, using the language I’ve been used to for years, but here, I need to explain the meaning behind the slang that I use. I have gotten used to people frequently asking if what I had just said was a “California thing,” like I’s something foreign and different than what people say here.

This has made me feel like an outsider, like I don’t belong on the opposite side of the country. It has also made me long for home, a place where my friends use the same slang as I do, and I don’t feel like I have to force myself to fit in. Just like people from New England don’t feel comfortable dropping “hella” or “finna” in their daily vocabulary, I don’t feel comfortable saying “wicked” or using any other East Coast slang. Everything has been very confusing, and many people have been too stubborn to learn some of the slang that I and other Californians use. This has made it extremely difficult to get through to people and build on new relationships.

You can take a girl out of California, but you cannot take California out of the girl. I will always be a California girl at heart, and my experience so far in college has taught me to seek out people who will understand that I come from another state and might use phrases that are different than the ones they use.

But if I’m open to learning the different ways people act on the East Coast, then they should be equally as open to learning about life on the West Coast. Moreover, if I can’t bring California to Boston, I can at least incorporate the slang that I have learned. Making new friends is hella awesome, but it’s also pretty sweet when you can learn about a group of people who are entirely different than you in their attitudes and their way of speaking.

Rachel Chistyakov is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and a fall 2012 columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at rachelch@bu.edu.