slang bank

I often find myself getting myself into trouble for underestimating the meaning of slang words. You know those moments of "yeah sure I know what you mean" when in actual fact you just don't want to look like that caveman who doesn't know new slang.

Today a friend mentioned that I had a "saucy" attitude. Just by the word itself, I silently assumed a negative conotation. Saucy, I thought of it as maybe being gullible or maybe having an ass-like attitude or just saucy! you know like in other words saying that I am a piece of lame flowing liquid that's only good on fries. So yeah after learning my lesson about being prideful in terms of knowing my slang I just asked. What does that mean. And to my surprise it was a nice or rather complimenting slang after all.

Chicago version of what Saucy means: a person of his/her own unique attitude with a sense of wit and a good in-your-face persona.

Well that was good to know. PHEW.

To share a couple of MISGUIDED use of slang.

So, I was brought up or rather educated to refer to an eraser as 'rubber' so all along my school years of writing in pencil, the 'rubber' was a must in the pencil box. So screaming out "hey can i borrow your 'rubber'?" was not something alien. HOWEVER, when you come over to the US (and I am just saying this because this is where I encountered the major tease) and ask your MALE FRIEND IN COLLEGE, "do you have a rubber I can borrow", now that does is NOT acceptable. THANK GOD that friend of mine understood where I was coming from. But you see, the thing is, when you are so used to using that term, you tend to automatically use it anyway. So yeah there were indeed a few more instances when I did say 'rubber' instead of 'eraser'.

Ok. So my friends know that I am selective with my curse words. And the F-word has somehow been one of the many I refrain from using. So I come from a country of multiple races and inter-marriage is not uncommon. So when we have an inter-marriage we tend to abbreviate what that marriage consists off. Oneday I see my college acquaintance nominated in a magazine as a "hot bachelor" or something to thaat effect and I say out loud to my housemates "hey check out this Chi-Bhai. Our Chi-Bhai collegemate has been nominated". In my HONESTLY naive and innocent brain, I abbreviated Chi = Chinese and Bhai = a race of someone from Northern India aka Punjabi. Little did I know that Chi-Bhai or probably not spelt that way but at least pronounced like that, meant F**K. Oh my, oh my was I sooooo ashamed of myself.

So coming to the US, I have had interesting friends of whom were kind enough to provide me SLANG education. Yeah I currently live in Chicago so you can imagine the MOUNTAINESS slang I could possibly LEARN.

Chili in the US is not the same as CHILLI in Asia.
"my baby's mama" really does mean she is the mum of the kid.

the list could possibly go on as I begin to unravel more slang or make more mistakes... we'll see.