Weekly English Words with Alisha California English
Hi everybody. Welcome back to Weekly Words.
My name is Alisha, and this week we’re going
to talk about California English. Yeah! I’m
excited because I was born in California,
my parents are both from California, I grew
up speaking Central California English, I
should point out. It’s a manner of speaking
that is close to my heart. Let’s get started.
I’m excited.
‘Bail’.
‘Bail’ is a great word. There’s a lot
of California English words come from surf
culture.‘Bail’ means leave. To leave some
place. It’s used in surf. Time to get off
the surf board, you just jump off. We say
that’s ‘to bail’. A party is really not
very good, you say to your friend, “Let’s
bail. This is not very fun.”It means “let’s
go, let’s leave this place”.
The next word is ‘bum’.
To ‘bum’ something, as a verb, means to
borrow something from somebody else. So instead
of saying, “Hey, can I borrow your pen for
a second?”They might say, “Hey, can I
bum a pen off of you?”We have a slightly
different way of asking to borrow something.
“Can I bum something off of you?”
Next is to ‘rock’.
Okay, this one, maybe, is a little bit more
modern, I guess. To ‘rock’ something,
as a verb, not the motion of to ‘rock’,
like you might rock a baby, but to ‘rock’
something means to be fashionable. Like to
pick a necklace, or a pair of sunglasses,
or shoes, or something that’s kind of stylish.
So it’s kind of fashionable and cool. Maybe
you buy a new pair of sunglasses and you’re
like, “Yeah, I’m going to rock my sunglasses
at the beach tomorrow.” It’s kind of a confident
phrase that means you’re excited about whatever
it is you’re going to present to people.
‘Hella’.
This is a North California word. I do not
say ‘hella’. ‘Hella’ is a word that
just kind of means ‘very’. You can use
it in the same that you would use ‘very’,
or ‘super’, or ‘a lot’ of something.
For example, I think I used this recently
to myself at work, I was correcting some paperwork
or something like that, and I said, “This
has hella mistakes in it.” Very casually
like that, I mean, this has a lot of mistakes.
‘Hella’. It’s more used among young people,
not a whole lot of, at least in my mind anyway,
older people would use this word, but you
can try it out. Okay.
Oh, ‘sketchy’!
This is one of my favorite words. I use this
all the time. ‘Sketchy’ is something that’s
a little bit suspicious. Could be used to
describe a person, a location, a food. Anything
that looks a little bit not quite right is
‘sketchy’. Maybe there’s a person who’s
kind of standing at a party that’s just looking
at everybody but not talking to everybody.
You might say, “Ooh, that guy or that girl
is really sketchy, I wonder what she’s doing
here.” You can use it for a place, if you
enter a bar and it’s really, really dimly
lit and it looks like it might be a little
dirty, and the bartender is a little bit like
grizzled, you might say, “Ooh, this place
is sketchy, let’s go somewhere else.” It’s
a great word to know. I love using the word
‘sketchy’. You might say ‘hella sketch’.
I think I’d just say ‘sketchy’.
And that’s the end. So those are some words
that come from California English. There are
a whole lot of really fun, great surfer—
words that come from surfer culture, and I
really recommend that. I love that kind of
English. But give a few of these a try. I
hope that you don’t encounter too many gnarly
or sketchy people in your life. Anyway, those
were some California English words, so give
them a try if you want to sound a little bit
laid back, and relaxed, and easy going. Thanks
very much for joining us this week and we’ll
see you again next time. Bye.