Who knows where slangs come from? But in Trinidad and Tobago we have a history of coming up with terms that permeate a generation. To me they are like values that we share as an age group. There have been so many there have been over the years.
The thought for this post came to me this morning while listening to BLS online, NY radio station WBLS, known to New Yorkers as BLS. A caller said “I’m 41 Sun!” I thought to myself that there may be young people wondering why an ‘old man’ would say “sun”. The fact is that his generation would have been using that slang in their youth, in their 20’s and so it was still his. But that may not be understood by some who feel him too old to use that kind of slang.
It’s interesting what people feel 40 something’s should be doing and saying. Most are married with children and should be protecting their young ones from the evils of the world, insisting on proper values.
In Trinidad and Tobago it’s worse in that the values we ascribe too are determined by the ruling political parties and those in my view are rooted in the post independence era, heavily imbued with colonial mores.
One term that my generation coined was the phonetic equivalent of pyong, much like the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. It means one who loves something a lot – a t.v. pueong watches a lot of t.v., a mango pueong can’t not eat a mango. And in true Trini form one is mildly but albeit vilified for being a pueong/pyong. The contemporary equivalent would be a "banton", I hope – it not being any longer my generational responsibility to come up with slangs and be able to defend their definition.
As I write the UN believes that any exacerbation of the North Korean dilemma would be “uncontrollable” to quote General Secratary Ban Ki Moon. My only hope is that if my Seoul is in danger that I have enough time to fly south for the winter as it would mean a new cold Cold War.
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