Special colloquial vocabulary: slang, jargonisms, professionalisms, dialectal words, and vulgar words.

Special colloquial lexis is represented by several layers of words and expressions often or regularly used in expressive emphatic speech with strongly evaluative (positive or negative) aim. Among them are such English words and phrases of negative evaluation – bespit (обхаркувати), bee-head, beatlehead (тупак, тупиця, “ступа”, “довбня”), and some other words and expressions. Slang is non-standard vocabulary understood and used by the whole nation in very informal communication. These words are highly emotive and expressive and, as such, lose their originality rather fast and are replaced by newer formations. e.g., a pretty girl—cookie, tomato, Jane, sugar, bird. Jargonisms can be viewed as non-standard words used by people of a certain asocial or underground group to keep their intercourse secret. There are jargons of criminals, convicts, gamblers, prostitutes, or drug addicts. This is why among such words there are cases of conscious deformation of the existing lexicon: e.g., grease (money), loaf (head), a tiger hunter (a gambler), редиска (погана людина). Eventually, some jargonisms pass into standard speech. Common by nature, jargonisms and argotisms seem to belong to absolute universals. Like all other low colloquialisms, they may sometimes have not only semantic but also stylistic equivalents in different languages. beaky – шнобель (носатий/носач), lemon – негарна дівчина, lifer – довічно ув’язнений, to beef – скиглити/“скавуліти etc. Professionalisms are words that replace official terms of a profession. They are used by professionals habitually, automatically, without a stylistic purpose just because their use is an established custom of the profession. For example:– in oil industry, for the terminological driller such words as digger, wrencher, hogger are used; for pipeliner—swabber, bender, cat, old cat, collar-pecker, hammerman;– in an educational setting:, window/вікно for відсутність заняття між іншими за розкладом; атестація,;– boxing: right-hander, outing, uppercut, or– military professionalisms: tin-fish (submarine), block-buster (a bomb especially designed to destroy, blocks of big buildings),. Professionalisms should not be mixed up with jargonisms. Like slang words, professionalisms do not aim at secrecy. They also differ from terms because usually they are avoided in formal written speech. When used in emotive prose, professionalisms depict the natural speech of a character as means of speech-characterization

Dialectal words

are normative and devoid of any stylistic meaning in regional dialects, but outside of them carry a strong flavor of the locality where they belong. In Great Britain four main dialects are distinguished: Lowland Scotch, Northern, Midland (Central), and Southern. In the USA three major dialectal varieties are distinguished: New England, Southern, and Midwestern (Central, Midland). In Ukraine, we have western, central, and eastern language types of local vernaculars on the phonemic and lexical level. E.g., hinny/honey, zinking/sinking, maister/master, aunt, neither, either. In the U.S. Southern dialect one might say: Y’all talk mighty fine for You speak English well. One of the most characteristic territorial differences in the lexicon of English dialects is the London cockney with its distinguishing use of / h / in several words with initial vowels as in hopen for open, hup for up, hus for us, etc. In some other words with the initial / h / this sound is, on the contrary, omitted in speech: cf. am for ham, ill for hill, Arry for Harry. The concluding / g / in cockney is often omitted, too, as in doin’, readin’, mornin’, etc.Some dialectal words have entered the general vocabulary and lost their dialectal status (e.g., lad, pet, squash,). Often equivalent in English are also low colloquialisms—vituperative words and phrases (лайливі слова та вирази) like goddamn, hell, rat, swine, cad, pig, skunk, stink-pot and others. obscene/“dirty” words (непристойні слова) as shit, piss and corruption, лайно. Functionally similar to them are vulgarisms which, like the previous group of low colloquialisms, are practically universal by their nature: bum – зад, задниця; punch – пузо/барило, жлукто; mug – рило/морда; stinkard – смердюк/смердючка etc.