Slang & Vernacular of The Paradise Planets

With the book taking place over a hundred years in the future, I felt it was only natural that people would be using much different slang than our current vernacular. We would be using different curse words, phrases, and exclamations. As I've studied languages over the past four years, I've only begun to take notes of our colloquialisms and make these adaptations. In subsequent books, I'll dive deeper into new phrases and terms.

As I've studied our literature, film, television, and online social media outlets, I've been catching terms and phrases that are so overused, they're already ripe for replacement. Our current batch of profanity is so commonplace, these words barely punch with any weight behind them. When I read any futuristic, dystopian novels, and they insert current expletives, it yanks me out of the story. The world they've built no longer seems real or genuine. The same goes for common words like "awesome" or "crazy". We use well-worn terms in our everyday lives, and as someone who is creating a new world that can act as a true escape, I must deviate from those terms and write something original.

What are some of the terms and phrases I got rid of? Instead of using one of our common farewell phrases, I created "Ride the tide!" That's the first of many that I'll introduce there. "That girl/boy is so fine" becomes "that girl/boy is royalty!" "Let's sing it" is another way of saying "we got this" or "let's bring it!" Instead of yes or yeah, people in my world say "yisû" which is pronounced yiss-uh.

I'll create a full glossary of terms. However, I don't always have an exact translation for terms and phrases. I didn't want the all-new vernacular to be a simple one-to-one. That's not how language would evolve. The Gaians and 'Disers of my world will have their own way of speaking, and this will be even more apparent when we shift the setting to the Paradise Planets in future books.

by: Shaun Barrowes