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• ↓ Familect.
• ↓ Virtus.
• ↓ Lost Literacy in Nusantaria.
• ↓ Mother Tongue of Secrets.
• ↓ Brock, Barn.
• ↓ Collation Without Tears.
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"Another good NY Times language column (archived) by Nitsuh Abebe; after a DFW-centered opening, he continues:"

"The way a broad population of people speaks is a dialect, and the way a particular individual speaks is known as an idiolect, and somewhere in between is what linguists call a familylect or familect: the unique way a given family uses language."

"Every family has one. A quick survey of my co-workers produced too many delightful examples to list. The price of eating too much junk food was a case of circus tummy. Whipped cream was shush, after the sound of the can. A dog was a woofnik (an epithet once used for Laika, the Soviet space-dog) and a cat a pitty pie. Instead of greebles there was phyrtche, pronounced “furch,” which meant “something small and unidentifiable that is stuck to a place where it shouldn’t be.” One family adopted a toddler’s way of asking for “Sesame Street” and started calling all television shaba; the habit became so embedded that their next child, years later, came home from day care feeling betrayed to have learned it wasn’t standard English. Another family indicates that something is frightening by saying want some coleslaw, based on the time a son was scared by a haunted hayride and tried to recite the Buddhist prayer kwan seum bosal. My in-laws use the adjective blammy to describe people who are always rushing heedlessly around having accidents and causing commotions. “I never liked Amelia Bedelia,” someone once said. “She’s just so blammy.”"

"Laudator Temporis Acti presents a quote from Plautus beginning:"

Key Topics & Focus Areas for languagehat.com:

Familect.

Virtus.

Lost Literacy in Nusantaria.

Mother Tongue of Secrets.

Brock, Barn.

Collation Without Tears.