Noelcarlo Degante 

Professor Lobell 

Freshman Composition 

3/4/24 

Post-Covid was a wild time. People were thrown back into society and forced to act as if nothing ever changed. After the initial awkwardness of not being around people slowly dissipated and people became more comfortable with each other, a scramble to make up for the time people had lost during quarantine started. Friend groups quickly formed, almost by force, and I just chilled with the people next to me. They weren’t what I would call actual friends, just classmates/acquaintances. It was by chance that I ended up finding my friend group. They already had connections for months at this point, but I somehow fit in well enough to be accepted by them. As we got to know each other, the idiocy started to show itself. It was the typical dumb things that friends do, insults, teasing, horseplay, etc. But the thing that stuck out to me was the language that started to form. Yes, people my age talk using slang, but this was different. This to me, however dumb it sounds, was witnessing the development of a language firsthand. It took maybe a week to see the first signs. “Hurd” was the word to first make its way into our vocabulary. Now, I don’t fully know its origins, but I think it might have started off as the “Heard” for when you try to express that you understood something. Over time however it became more of a sarcastic “Really?” Someone could be saying the most serious sentence about something they care about or telling us what’s been bothering them lately and if we wanted to make it seem ridiculous or just didn’t care about whatever they were saying, we would just reply with “Hurd?” and nothing else. It was always a joke in poor taste, but it was funny. It also had a dual meaning where it became an insult. We would say that someone “is a Hurd.” And if someone was too much of a “Hurd” or if they said “Hurd” way too many times they would be the “Hurdler.” It was stupid and complete nonsense but it’s what we did. We would take inside jokes and make them shorter so that we could tell them faster while still getting the message across. This would repeat until they were just words and eventually just noises. We became able to express huge ideas in something as simple as blowing air through our teeth.  

I wanted to take the time to isolate one specific case of this “Language” because to me, it’s the most interesting part of this whole thing. It is a little vulgar though. For some context, whenever anyone in the group did anything that went against the rest of us or something that wasn’t “cool” we would say word for word “I don’t f*ck with (blank) bro.” We did this with anyone’s name but for some reason mine had the best ring to it because it was used the most. It could be someone else messing up or going against the ideals of the group and they would still say it using my name. This became one of the inside jokes because regardless of the situation, it was always my fault. Evidently though it became too much of a hassle to say it in full, so they dropped the “bro” and shortened it to “I don’t f*ck with Noel.” Soon enough my friends began to say it faster and faster like it was a competition to get it out the fastest. They sped it up so much that it would make your mouth connect the words “I” and “don’t.” The words started to sound like the double R that you hear in Spanish. Funnily enough, I think that if you can’t roll your R’s yet, saying this would help you unlock the ability to. Time passed and the rolled R became the representation of the phrase because it was the most pronounced part. If you wanted to convey the message, you need not bother to utter a word at all, just roll your R’s and we would understand exactly what you were saying. The final step in its evolution all happened in one day and I remember it because we were walking under a bridge to go get some food after school ended. The echo of the bridge made it funnier to us when we said our usual dumb phrases and lo and behold, they started saying “I don’t f*ck with Noel bro.” It was this day where I got to truly witness all the steps of the phrase’s evolution. They began by shouting the original, then shortened, then sped up, then the rolled R variant, and then finally just a stream of air blown through their teeth. The best I can describe it as was the letter “F”, but it was distinct. Honestly, in the moment it kind of blew me away. The following days in school were just normal classes sprinkled with someone saying “fff” and holding in laughter like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Even now it’s cool to me to see a phrase that started off as a sentence that anyone could understand turn into a noise that only me and my friends knew the true meaning of. As embarrassing or ignorant as it may be, I feel like this brought me an understanding of how languages, or at the very least dialects, are formed. 

To this day whenever we see each other in person not an hour can go by without someone saying one of the dumb words we created. It’s what connects us, it’s how we bond. I don’t know how much of what I say is true but I kind of believe that if it wasn’t for this shared language between us, we wouldn’t have been friends for as long as we have.  I might not even have been friends with some of the people in the group. It helps whenever we have nothing to say. There’s almost never a moment of awkward silence when you can just break the tension with a dumb phrase or noise. When things get serious or vulnerable and we want to return to a sense of normalcy, using the language is the perfect tool to transition with. This language is a curse because it is immature and hard to get rid of but also a gift when used as a tool to bring us closer to each other.