I'm all, then he's all (Was Re: English diglossia (was Re: retroflex consonants)

In a message dated 1/29/2003 12:09:26 AM Pacific Standard Time, Erin Notagain 
writes:

> Tiovaqnaki Tels Joe:
> 
> >Anyone else here use "says" as the generic verb for reporting what someone
> >said?  In anything informal, I'll often have "says", as in:
> >
> >   Then he says, "I think I'll just throw your ocelot right off the 
> roof!".
> >   So I says to him, "Then the bunny's gonna get it!".
> >   Then he says to me, "What on earth is Joe smoking this time?".
> 
> 
> What I use all depends on the situation. If I'm recounting word-for-word, I
> use "go":
> 
>    She goes, "You and that X-Files thing! Are you ever going to give it 
> up?"
>    So then I go, "Of course not. I've been watching over 4 years and I'm
> not stopping."
>    And she goes, "They're not real people. And the show is over."
> 
> But if I'm just giving an approximation of the conversation, I do the Ditzy
> Teen thing and use "like":
>    She was like, "You spend too much time with The X-Files!"
>    And I was like, "You're nuts for thinking I'm just going to stop."
>    And then she was like, "And you're just nuts."
Kankonian actually has a word for this. The word is "sen", and the entry for 
it in the dictionary is "said -- informal word used in reënacting a 
conversation". The dictionary goes on to give this example sentence:

Mui wan sen, "Ar kardasas hiel?", yau is sen, "Dani".
And he's all, "What do you think?, then I'm all, "Cool".

Since it ends in the letters "en", which is the past tense suffix in 
Kankonian, it probably came from natural using a past tense verb while trying 
to stick it in one syllable, and sticking SOME consonant in there (s of all 
letters) so there would be something before the "en". But it's a fixed form; 
"s" is not a Kankonian verb. This is the word that can be a useful 
translation for "I'm all", "goes", "like", "says" (past tense useage), 
"went", and all those other things people do when they try to recount what 
they and the other person were saying.

I have some other words for essential slang, too. "Khatz" is an adjective, 
defined as "slang for undesirable". So "Ham as khatz" means "That sucks". The 
word would literally be interpreted as "sucky".

There is also the adjective "havi". The entry for "havi" reads:
"(slang) irrelevant or not as important; not the main concern.
Ziwanda as havi, yazhem deploiz na is!
Screw ethics, what about my job?"
It would be used in translating the English use in this sense of "screw" or 
"forget about".

And of course, the queen of them all:

"se
like (vernacular filler particle)
Homoses na is ien se tethes is yakh is se faz ham.
My parents would, like, kill me if I, like, did that."


Did anyone else include slang words in your conlangs that would be able to 
translate English terms like these?

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