State of Youth Slang In France

[Joanne M. Despres]

I've heard Dominican women of the same age, speaking in English,
call each each other "mi'ja" (a contraction of "mi hija," meaning
"my daughter") as a term of endearment; in fact, I've heard them
address their own mother with the word!  Can't say I've heard
Dominican men/boys use "mi'jo" to each other, but I don't happen
to be acquainted with any bilingual Dominican men.  I know that
Dominicans often call each other "mami" and "papi" as a term of
endearment, regardless of age and relationship (witness "Big
Papi," the nickname given to David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox).
But as far as I know, none of these terms is used across gender
boundaries.  All of which is to say, I guess, that Spanish family
relationship terms are frequently generalized to terms of
endearment by Dominicans, which may help to explain the
phenomenon Grant observed, though it doesn't explain the gender-
bending  aspect of the usage.

Joanne Despres


On 20 Mar 2005, at 7:15, Grant Barrett wrote:

> On Mar 19, 2005, at 21:51, Wilson Gray wrote:
> > Does anyone remember the movie filmed in NYC,
> > "Kids," from ca. 1995? There is a scene in which
> > the protagonist says to his friend, "Nigger, what
> > you doin' lookin' at my mama tittie?" The people
> > who appear in this scene are all white.
>
> I recently saw and heard three young Latinas on the NYC subway,
> outbound from Manhattan, refer to each other as "son." Odd enough to
> hear 13-year-old Dominican boys say it to each other (as you can
> witness on the NYC baseball fields almost any Summer weekend day), but
> between girls?
>
> Grant Barrett
> gbarrett at worldnewyork.org