Suggestions or suggested resources to develop a slang/lingo?

[Space Cowboy]

Hello all,

I am further fleshing out the background for Wild Sphere, my space western RPG set in an alternate future, and one of the things I want to do is to develop a unique slang/lingo for WS.  

I want the slang to be distinctive (with a handful of key terms), but not too far from modern usage.  By way of comparison, for my uses, the slang from the Aliens side trilogy by Steve Perry ("Earth Hive", "Nightmare Asylum", "Female War") is about right, the slang from the Shadowrun RPG is too distinctive, and the slang from "A Clockwork Orange", Nadsat, is way too distinctive.

Many thanks in advance!

[DevP]

Here's an idea had: have a few pages of a note book that are the "Jargon File", that's consistent throughout gameplay (throughout multiple games, really), and let players come up with jargon on the fly. If they jargon sticks and is reused - i.e. "if it's cool" - they get a bonus thing for later use, as a reward. Tweak this so it's not excessive, you'll have all the jargon you want. (And personally, I'd say require some mandatory use of jargon in doing a technical skill, or else suffer a penalty.)

Of course, you don't have to make these core rules: you can just go with this during playtesting to generate a bunch of jargon, and put out the "best of" for the final product.

[Space Cowboy]

Hey Dev,

Thanks heaps for your suggestion.  I'll try to put together a "jargon file" with the playtesters.  Here's what I have so far:

Brutal- An expletive.  Both positive and negative.  From "Red Dwarf".
Rad- A friend.  Shortened from "Comrade".
Shinderu- Dead.  From Japanese.
Splatted- To be killed, esp. in a violent way.

In terms of how distinctive I want WS slang to be, if you haven't read those "Aliens" novels, the comedy "Red Dwarf" (of which I am a huge fan) is also a good example.  Lister and Co. have some distinct phrases/terms (in fact, I'm using "brutal" as a nod to that brilliant series.  I don't what to use "smeghead", though, which seems flippant), but nothing that seems like a different language, as is the case in the "Dune" novels, which are also brilliant.  When I was reading the latter, I had to look up a whole bunch of terms whose meanings an ordinary reader could not simply pick out from the context.

[Mark D. Eddy]

I played in a game where "durf" was the standard word for "kill." Because, it was argued, "durf" is the sound that a body makes when it hits the ground. Other slang terms from sci-fi sources:
Malf or malfing: Short for malfunctioning, a tech's swearword. (This may be from BattleTech originally...)

From Spaceways:
Cake: Female genetalia, generalized to women.
Knife: Penis.
By extension:
  Slicing or Taking a slice: Intercourse.
  Freshbaked: Virginal.
Redshifted: Left, went away.
Blueshifted: Approached, came towards.

Murphy: The bane of all engineers. Larry Niven and Christopher Stasheff used Murphy in parallel ways. ("There is no God but Finagle and Murphy was his Prophet" and "Blessed St. Vidicon, save us from Murphy," respectively.)

Sensei: Japanese for Master or Teacher. Especially a teacher of Martial Arts. I know what you're probably thinking, but in some parts of the world, it is jargon.

(As an aside, I believe that smeg is supposed to be a shortened form of smegma. If you don't know what smegma is, look it up in a dictionary.)

[Space Cowboy]

I played in a game where "durf" was the standard word for "kill." Because, it was argued, "durf" is the sound that a body makes when it hits the ground. Other slang terms from sci-fi sources:
Malf or malfing: Short for malfunctioning, a tech's swearword. (This may be from BattleTech originally...)

From Spaceways:
Cake: Female genetalia, generalized to women.
Knife: Penis.
By extension:
  Slicing or Taking a slice: Intercourse.
  Freshbaked: Virginal.
Redshifted: Left, went away.
Blueshifted: Approached, came towards.

Murphy: The bane of all engineers. Larry Niven and Christopher Stasheff used Murphy in parallel ways. ("There is no God but Finagle and Murphy was his Prophet" and "Blessed St. Vidicon, save us from Murphy," respectively.)

Sensei: Japanese for Master or Teacher. Especially a teacher of Martial Arts. I know what you're probably thinking, but in some parts of the world, it is jargon.

(As an aside, I believe that smeg is supposed to be a shortened form of smegma. If you don't know what smegma is, look it up in a dictionary.)

Hey Mark,

Cool beans.  Thanks heaps for your post!  The WS slang is slow, but it's definitely a lot of fun to do.

Once again, many thanks.

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

Just wanted to interject a few thoughts, in the hope that they help you come up with plausible slang for your setting.

First, it is rare that a slang term ends up being longer (in letters or syllables) than the root term to which it refers, especially for explitives or value terms (good, bad).

An obvious exception to this is what I would call "metaphorical slang": words that are used as slang which are relating to metaphors of the root term. For example, "brilliant" can mean very good or very intelligent--an extension of a metaphor that a jewel that is brilliant is more valuable than one whose flaws makes it dull. Even more complex is the "Manchesterian slang" that has been made popular in recent caper films: for example, "barney" means trouble, because "Barney Rubble" rhymes with trouble.

Second, slang is a direct result of frequency of use. Few slang terms evolve for rarely-used words.

An obvious exception to this is acronyms, which will take the initials of a complex term and spell a new word. Consider "snafu," which stand for "Situation Normal: All Fouled Up" and conveys a very complex set of meanings in two syllables: things are bad, that's normal, and I'm cynical about it.

Third, terms that must be understood immediately and unequivocally are often made into shortened, "slang" variants of themselves. For example, "frag" comes from a military command to throw a fragmentation grenade--NOT something you want a soldier confusing in the heat of battle.

Finally, a great resource that you could plumb is the http://www.quetzal.com/conlang.html website. It contains many Constructed Languages which, if you review, will provide you with insights into language structure and efficiencies of word use. It will make it crystal clear why the most commonly used words in most languages are almost all mono- or duo-syllabic.

Hope this helps;
David
"Czar Fnord"