For some of us, blogging is personal. Others are trying to educate or entertain; many more are hybrids. Yet we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges help you to push your writing boundaries, show off your blogging chops, and, hopefully, spark more post ideas.
To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge or leave a link to it in the comments. (It would also be great if you could link to this post to encourage people to take part – the more the merrier!) Your post should be specifically written in response to this challenge. We’ll keep an eye on the tag and highlight some of our favorite posts on Freshly Pressed on Friday.
Slang words roll off of our tongues with ease, connecting us to our geographical, generational, and cultural affiliations. For some of us, online acronyms like IDK and LOL may have quietly slipped into our offline vernacular. For others, our traditional vocabularies may have been replaced by Spanglish or Portuñol words as we communicate in multicultural settings. Either way, language is a constantly evolving force, and we readily accept its forward progress.
At the same time, there are certain regional affectations that remain the same. These phrases and idiosyncrasies tie us to a sense of place and history through a simple utterance, a single word chosen over another while typing. I’m always acutely aware of this each time I involuntarily utter, “I’m going to the Shore this weekend,” in place of “I’m going to the beach,” in front of someone who’s not from New Jersey. We’ve all had those debates with friends about which phrase or pronunciation is correct, with the bottom-line reasoning being, “Because that’s how we say it.”
For this week’s writing challenge, showcase your slang. It can be a display of regional pride, a contemplation on new words you’ve heard, but still don’t quiet understand, or a practice in dialogue that mimics our regular speaking patterns. Need a few ideas to get you going?
- Pick a word or phrase that is unique to where you live or your cultural background. Tell us a story about how it came about, what it means to you, and how it’s used.
- Write a post written entirely in slang, dialect, or a regional accent. This can be a way of speaking that is completely familiar to you or a form of linguistics that you’ve always been curious about.
- Pull a Jabberwocky and practice creating your own slang by sprinkling some made-up words throughout your post. Who knows, maybe one will catch on!
Curious to read what others around WordPress.com have written about, or in, vernacular? Try a few of these posts on for size:
- Texting is an expansion of our linguistic repertoire, from Sentence first
- On Stir-Bugs, Skinners, and Truck Skinners, from 101 Books
- Plain Talking, from sleepygonzales
- Pidgin English, from 27 months in Cameroon
Now, get goin’ and gimme an earful of your favorite colloquialisms!
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This was fun!http://wp.me/p3imr5-45
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I just love accents. This is something right up my alley. Here’s my post:
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I just had to try this one. Born a cockney, spoke cockney and went to high school so had to speak “proper” english. Then went to Switzerland 46 years ago and am still here living in a country with more dialects than you could imagine and four official languages. I didn’t even know which language to post in.
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So many ways to approach this challenge—it’s going to be fun to read through the range of responses! Thank you! (here’s mine: http://marsowords.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/shukabeela/)
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I tend to make verbs out of nouns a lot, as I did in my latest post. It might be the fact that English is not my mother tongue (it’s my third language), that I sometimes don’t know how else to express things as to use a noun that expresses what I mean, and then make it into something I do. Maybe I should start writing in my mother tongue (= Frisian) then…? Don’t think that’ll expand my audience reach!
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I mean, of course, lots of good replies, not that mine is a great post, though I hope it is!
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South Africanism, What a lekker challenge, ne? http://annetjiesepoems.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/what-a-lekker-challenge-ne/
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As a transplanted American to Great Britain, I am uniquely qualified on this topic of slang and getting lost in translation. Here’s my post, highlighting the very funny – and, sometimes, extremely embarrassing – differences in the meanings of some common words and phrases. Enjoy! http://wordsofautumn.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/a-meatball-by-any-other-name-and-other-humorous-britishamerican-language-confusions/
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sharing a recent post http://wp.me/peFzZ-hlv Thanks to mrscarmichael (http://mrscarmichael.wordpress.com) for suggesting!
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I love to respond to your writing challenges as an excercise my creativity. What do you think about this story…
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Have a read
http://completelypointlessarticles.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/a-conversation-in-dialect/
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I think this is a cute challenge, as everyone has a quirk or way of saying things. Here’s my post about it if you’re interested in reading.
http://wendydotdinh.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/a-manner-of-speaking-a-writing-challenge-2/
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Thank you Erica… I could write tomes on South African English, but will stick with this little facet: http://roobo69.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/english-that-isnt-always-more-south-africanisms/
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Hi, this is both a stab at this challenge and one of my regular extracts from the novel I am writing- hope you like it – http://justmomentarily.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/project-update-up-the-duff/
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I wrote about singlish… but here’s a video on lol which I was just watching and thought I;ll share 😉 – http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk.html
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From the Cape Colored community, South Africa. A rich, colourful yet crude dialect. http://nanuschka.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/weekly-challlenge-a-manner-of-speaking/
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Thought to give this one a go:
http://mumblesfromsanjurotokage.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/dae-ye-ken-whi…m-talkin-aboot/
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Right. This challenge made me think of my Cockney roots, so here’s my contribution: http://lucidedit.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/at-the-rub-a-dub-dub/
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“Romeo and Juliet is a classic geek story, if you tell it right.” http://wp.me/p3p6Sv-2K
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Here’s my effort.
http://thelintinmypocket.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/weekly-writing-challenge-a-manner-of-speaking/
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This is not an example of slang language, but simply a conversation i had transcribed for this challenge Hope it qulifies?
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Here is mine http://comfortablynumb7.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/dpchallenge-manner-of-speaking-he-says-tomato-i-say-tomarto/ x Beth -looking forward to reading some of the others 🙂
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I speak in “song titles”…do you know the language too? 😉 http://cherispeak.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/i-speak-in-song-titles/
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travel on a travel, anyone?
http://mk17design.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/weekly-writing-challenge-a-manner-of-speaking/
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Irish, it’s just a manner of speaking really 😀
http://willeke73.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/irish-a-manner-of-speaking-weekly-writing-challenge/
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My slang is the Queen’s english. Guess I’ll have to pass on this one as well! Sadface.
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Well, folks, I’ve just published my first blog on WordPress. Thanks for the inspiration. Let me know if you like http://silverbackmusings.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/that-dogll-hunt/
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 3:00 PM, The Daily Post wrote:
> ** > rorykirkwood commented: “My slang is the Queen’s english. Guess I’ll > have to pass on this one as well! Sadface.” >
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Learn a new word today folks…….
http://completelypointlessarticles.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/liming/
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