The Best Slang

So there's an official "Talk Like A Pirate Day".  Most people are aware of this.  I am not endeavoring to call anyone's attention to this in the form of a rallying cry of how great and/or terrible it is.  I merely feel that, perhaps, it is not that compelling a form of manufactured/outdated slang to celebrate in such a fashion.  Beyond the standard interjection of "Arr", the various folksy re-christenings of items (money to "booty", any beverage to "rum" or "grog", etc.) and some particularly cliched stock phrases relating to both the aforementioned rum and booty, there isn't terribly much flexibility inherent in the dialect.  Much of this comes from its chronologically remote origins and rather subculturally specific focus.

While I certainly love absolutely anything which both encourages knowledge of the esoteric and abject absurdity, I feel that the attention lavished upon nautical gibbering could best be focused on alternative forms of making oneself look and feel like a complete berk in the most fun way possible.  So I suppose, this long-winded preamble aside, the real meat of this idea is in listing some better alternatives.

• Cockney Rhyming Slang

Possibly the most confusing slang available.  There is a complex method for creating a unit of rhyming slang, that is perhaps better illustrated than described.  Let's do one together!  For instance, say you wish to call someone a "fuck".  Firstly, you find a phrase (preferably two or three words) which shares an end-rhyme with the desired word; for instance, "fuck" can rhyme quite neatly with "press your luck".  Now that you have such a phrase, you simply omit the part of it that actually frigging rhymes, in this case, the "your luck" component.  So, instead of clearly referring to the object of your distaste as "that stupid fuck", you can call them "that stupid press".  Not only will they not understand what you're saying, but likely no-one else will either.

Of course, that's just what happens when you invent your own rhyming slang phrase.  Existing Cockney rhyming slang relies upon an extensive established lexicon of such...uh...let's say "extracted rhymes".  That's a good phrase.  For instance, earlier in this very post I used the word "berk", a fairly common British pejorative and a clear symptom of my own formative years spent reading Terry Pratchett and watching Monty Python.  It wasn't until I thought to check ol' Wikeepedia that I discovered berk was a piece of wonderfully vulgar rhyming slang.  You see, the world "berk" refers to the "Berkeley Hunt", a big traditional British fox hunt.  Hunt, of course, rhymes with the extremely offensive term "cunt", and so "Berkeley Hunt" was used as a rhyming slang for this by shortening it to the innocuous "berk".  It's like playing an etymological version of Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Some good rhyming slang terms:
- apples - from "apples and pears" - meaning "stairs"
- boat - from "boat race" - meaning "face"
- "have a butcher's" - from "butcher's hook" - meaning "look"
- richard - from "Richard the Third" - meaning "turd"

source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/cockney-rhyming-slang.html

• 1920's Gangster Slang

It is important to note that, while actually gangsters in the 1920's were likely to be exactly as foul-mouthed as the modern X-Box Live playing racist, homophobic teenager, the words that they (and teenagers) used were not considered appropriate for polite audiences for many decades.  As a result, when movies were made concerning these bootleggers and leg-breakers, certain Bowdlerizations were necessary.  That isn't to say that this particular branch of American slang was composed out of whole cloth by film writers and pulp novel authors; certainly many of the same phrases were actually uttered in the speakeasies and dives of the Roaring Twenties.  I just make the argument that the words "fuck", "bitch" and "ass" have been around a very long time, and anyone who would happily fill you with daylight via his Chicago Typewriter wouldn't turn up his nose at colorful language.

That being said, of course, does not mean that the peculiar turns of phrase are any less fun.  Not only do you feel particularly hard-boiled, but as is the goal of most such dialects, no-one is going to have any goddamn idea what you're talking about.  I recently had the fortune of finding an enormous list of 1920's gangster slang words and phrases which had been posted online.  I'll link it at the bottom of this section, but meanwhile, I'll call out a couple which are particularly enjoyable.

Authentic Gangster Slang:
-glad rags - fancy clothes
-elbows - police
-hooker - a drink
-lettuce - dollar dollar bill y'all

source: http://www.leepresson.com/slang/gslang.html

Hm.  I had originally meant to list more than this, but I guess there aren't as many slang varieties that catch my fancy as I had originally thought.  Either way, using these is certainly more fun, and more culturally cohesive, than the whole pirate thing.  Which I think was my original point; that was a bunch of words ago and I don't fully remember.

If you think of any particularly rad slang varieties, let me know in the comment box whatchadidja.