“I’m still not a dude,” my mother often reminds me. This is because I find it difficult to speak to her, or anyone else for that matter, without constantly saying it.
“Dude, where’d I put my keys?” “Dude, that show is awesome.” “Dude, I have like 165 pages of reading to do — for tomorrow!” “Dude, have you looked at the syllabus yet?” “Dude, stoppit!” “Dude, chill!” “Dude!” I should try and count how many times a day I say the word “dude”, either while talking to myself or other people. I probably wouldn’t be able to, mostly because I do it unconsciously, no matter how many times my mom says, “I’m still not a dude.” Sorry, mom.
The funny thing is, I never used to say ‘dude’. Ever. It was simply not a part of my speech pattern. When I told a friend that I was thinking of writing a blog entry about my use of the word dude, I remarked, jokingly, “Dude, I say dude all the time.” Her response? “You do.” In fact, it’s kind of hard to miss.
I think it has something to do with me being the sort of person who easily picks up patterns of speech from other people, especially a certain someone I typically see once a week. See, I like television a lot. In fact, I sort of love television, and one of my favourite shows is CW/WB’s Supernatural. I could spend a long time extolling the virtues of my favourite show, but instead I’ll just tell you… they say dude… a lot.
The following is a YouTube video which demonstrates to what extent the word “dude” comes out of the mouths of the two main characters, Sam and Dean Winchester.
You see where I picked it up. “Dude” is an obvious example for me because it’s something I never used to say, but which is now a verbal tick. But I do it with other television shows occasionally as well. Sometimes I find myself speaking in improper, colloquial English, and then I know I’ve watched a few too many episodes of Firefly, which contains such eloquent speech as Jayne’s exclamation, “Them ain’t kosherized rules!”
Of course, I don’t just pick up language from television. Spending time around certain people can affect your speech as well. A good example is the slight differences between Canadian and American speech. I have never, and will never say “aboot”. However, Canadians tend to say “mum” instead of “mom”. Like most Canadians, I say it with the U sound. However, my aunt informs me that in Canada we say “grade one, grade two, grade three, etc.” while in the United States, they say “first grade, second grade, third grade, etc.” After living in the U.S. for six years, I say 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade. For a while, my aunt tried to “correct” me, but I obstinantly refused to be corrected — if only to be annoying.
Part of this, I think, is because it is natural for speech to be malleable, to pick up patterns and expressions from the people around us. These gradual and incidental shifts of language seem natural to me. On the other hand, I refuse to modify the trends I’ve picked up simply to sound more Canadian. Language changes naturally as a result of environment and the people around you; you pick up verbal ticks and turns of phrase from the way other people speak. However, I’m not going to put the time and effort into deliberately training myself to speak a certain way… which might be why I still call my mom “dude”, as well as often saying “college” instead of “university” (in Canada, college implies community college, often unaccredited, instead of in the US, where colleges and universities are approximately equivalent, and all students of post-secondary institutions are called college students) or “first grade” instead of “grade one”.
In a way, the way we speak is a representation of our lives: it reflects where were grow up, where we spend our time, what we watch on TV, who we talk to. We combine all these elements into our own speech patterns so that our way of speaking is unique, not quite the same as someone else’s, changing subtly depending on our surroundings.
Because of being removed from Canada for six years, I don’t really say “eh” all that often, and usually if I do, I’m thinking about it. It’s not something I do unconsciously. There is one purely Canadian expression that I did pick up, though, that’s earned me a few odd looks south of the border: “Well, it’s better than a kick in the ass with a frozen moccasin.” Yeah, it’s official. I’m Canadian.
And “dude” may not be particularly refined English, but… dude, it’s an awesome word!
Related links: Supernatural: Dude! YouTube video, CWTV.com.
