Say What?

My family (as in, my parents and siblings) have a very strange language all our own. It's a mixture of Hinglish (Hebrew/English), Spanglish (Spanish/English), Yinglish (Yiddish/English) and then just random family words which are entirely made up. We have so MANY words and expressions - you could literally carry on an entire conversation without using any 'plain English' words. Many of the words are bastardisations of existing words - and thus would probably make sense to the general public - but many are not. I LOVE the fact that my family shares this crazy language. About a month before DH and I got married, my family got shlepped to this very boring Rotary event. Rather than pretend to look interested, we spent the majority of the night writing on napkins and the tablecloth, coming up with a dictionary of family words for my soon-to-be DH. We giggled, we cried tears of laughter, we swore a lot, and that night is one of my most fond memories. The Dictionary which my sister produced for s-t-b DH was useful for him - or at least, I think it was, because he has been known now to use a lot of my family's expressions. It is rather funny to hear this private-school-accent Australian self use nonsense words.

I recently discovered that my family (DH and my own kids) are gradually building up our own language - a rich tapestry made mostly of nonsense words. I'm sure as the kids Hebrew and Yiddish skills improve, we'll get some derived from there too. Everyone told me that twins and triplets have their own 'language' that they use to communicate with one another. Mine never developed that - although they will still often laugh at something, and I've got no idea what was funny. (and of course, at this age, they say "it was NOTHING, Mummy!") In the meantime, though, they come up with their own funnies, and I add some. DH, being on the more conservative side, gets vaguely annoyed at our collective butchering of the English language. He tries, in vain, to correct us. We just laugh...and keep eating our samwadges*.

*samwadge: -noun- SAM-woh-dge; a sandwich, use: "Mummy I didn't like the samwadge in my lunch today. Did Daddy make lunches?!"