California slang

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California slang is slang used in California English, or which originates in California. The slang heard in California originates from three different regions: Northern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Southern California. Though some slang is common to the three regions, certain slang terms can help one identify from which part of California a person is.

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[edit] Northern California slang

Hella is a slang word usually used by California's Northerners. It still can be heard in other parts of California, yet it is most commonly used by people in the North of California and not used as much in the other areas other than the San Francisco Bay Area.

[edit] San Francisco Bay Area hip-hop culture slang

Bay Area slang consists of words like: ballin, holla, bounce, chillax, coochie, ginormous, hyphy, hella, ripper, cutty, scraper, perkin and many other words. The word used below, "mobbin" has made the slow transformation towards "shmobbin" as in "Hey buddy, I'm shmobbin down the hill. I'll be there in a minute."

Bay Area slang is influenced by Hyphy and hip hop music, Mexican, Asian, and Eastern European cultures.

[edit] Central California Slang

Central Californian slang tends to be an amalgamation of both Southern and Northern Californian slang, often siding toward the surfers. For example some common terms/phrases are sweet, hella, mobbing, trupunx, balls cold, amped up, intense, you're fucking up, you don't even know, man, dude, bro, "brah" or I know how that is. People will often refer to marijuana as dank, weed, or bud; it is also common to refer to a bowl of cannabis that has been expended as cashed.

[edit] Southern California slang

Slang used in Southern California originates from several subcultures:

[edit] Beach/Surf Slang

This is often associated with the large population of surfers, skaters, and popular Southern California sports. To be stoked, or excited about something, is slang that can be traced back to sixties surf culture, glorified in movies such as The Endless Summer and Big Wednesday. Words such as gnarly, rad, sick, sketch, beast, epic and buzzkill are used regularly now.

[edit] Valspeak

The valley girl stereotype, as depicted in the 1983 film Valley Girl, influenced the speech of northern and southern california natives living throughout the valley in California, by popularizing the valley girl sociolect, where the words "like", "and", "so", "whatever", and "totally" are employed as linguistic fillers.

[edit] Hip Hop

People say cruise, bounce, or mob when planning on going somewhere (let's bounce/cruise to the store). People call marijuana trees, chronic, kush, ganja, buds, hydro, purple or skunk, but most commonly, it is simply referred to as "weed." "Trip" is often used to describe an overreaction (don't even trip, it's not a big deal.) "Baller," "G," and "swag"/"swagger" are all terms meaning or relating to "cool."

[edit] Hippie influence

Groovy, far out, and peace (as a farewell) originated from the hippie movement in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the free-love movement was in full force during the last few decades.

[edit] See also

Portal icon California portal

[edit] References

 This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (December 2009)
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