"Hella"

Topic: Focal Vocabulary

Source: When I came to Humboldt State this year for my first semester of college, I learned how to tell where people live at home from certain words that they use.

Relation: In Chapter 4 of our Anthropology book, Robbins says according to Sapir and Whorf, vocabulary reflects a person's social and physical environment.

Description: At the start of this year I had to come up to Humboldt State during early August for the men's soccer team preseason. One night we were all out to dinner at Apple-bees and I was talking with a couple guys on the team.  I was telling them about one of friends from home and my teammates stopped me and interrupted.  They said you must be from northern California, Oregon, or Washington.  I was confused and asked them why.  My friends responded by saying that they noticed I use the word "hella" in my vocabulary.  They continued to explain that only people from Northern California and up the west coast use the word "hella".  People from southern California hate the word "hella" and refuse to use it.  Coming from Washington I had no clue that there was even beef over that word.  I started to think about words that I could tell people were from southern California and the word "gnarly" instantly came to own mind. From my person experience here, everyone that I have met and uses the term "gnarly" is from southern California.

Commentary/Analysis: Before I came down to Humboldt State University, I lived in Washington state all of my life.  Growing up my friends and I developed our own sort of slang language that we used.  As I got older and entered high school terms like "hella" were just naturally in my vocabulary and I have no clue how or when I integrated them.  I had no clue before I came down here that people from southern California do not use the word "hella".  I guess I never really paid that much attention to it before but when it was pointed out to me I could really tell.  As my year went on, I found myself being able to somewhat tell where people were from.  All I had to do was listen to simple slang terms that they use without even noticing it. People who live in the same relative area will usually have very similar ways of talking compared to people who far away.  My brother told me a story about when he visited Alabama everybody would use the term "ya'll".  Where you are from really controls how you talk and people from the same area can usually tell others apart from those that are not.