Obama's baby mama?

Occasionally a phenomenon will occur in society and grow common before formal contemporary English has a chance to agree on what to call it. Oftentimes when this happens, many slangy terms arise for the phenomenon, many of which are considered inappropriate or have offensive connotations toward certain groups.

A good example is the term "baby mama." A baby mama describes the relationship that a man has to a woman that has given birth to his child, but who he is not married to. There is no formal term for this relationship, although considering the fact that a lot of Americans think marriage totally sucks, baby mamas are becoming more common every day. You'd think you could say, "The mother of his child," but that doesn't work. Usually that is a phrase that people use to inspire guilt within a marriage, as in, "Yes, you can mow the lawn for me. I am the mother of your child."

It is also rude to use this phrase for a woman who is actually married, a fact which journalists found out when they referred to Michelle Obama as Barack Obama's baby momma. It was considered racist because they used slang terminology to make Obama seem more "street." ("Street" means from a rough neighborhood. It is similar to "ghetto" as an adjective.)

I would recommend only saying "baby mama" ironically, or else you will seem stupid/offend someone. Instead, make a point to display how you are stumbling around the term. You could say something like, "The lady who had his son, or whatever," to acknowledge that you realize there is this vacuum in formal American English.

Other slangy terms for common phenomena:
Fag hag: When a girl hangs out with lots of gay guys. Don't say it unless you are gay or a fag hag yourself.
Booty call: someone who you have sex with just to have sex, but don't pay because the desire to have casual sex is meaningful. It's ok to call this person your booty call, just not to their face.
I'll try to think of more

When a person is sad because they are rejected by someone with whom they consciously/subconsciously wanted to procreate with/enjoy the relational and pleasurable tools of procreation, we call it heartbreak.

Breaking up
This territory usually has very culturally-distinct metaphors. For example, in Chinese when people break up, it translates to "they blew." In English, "to blow" someone is to give oral pleasure to a phallus. (Contrarily, to blow someone off is to ignore them or skip plans with them.)

The most casual way to say this is to "dump someone." It's rude to say it to the person you are breaking up with, because it implies that they are like disposable waste. Breaking up or splitting up are more polite phrases.

What to say

There's a cliche in English that the one doing the breaking up always says "It's not you; it's me." Avoid that phrase, no matter how true it may feel.

If nuanced English isn't your bag, I would recommend saying "This isn't working out." That acknowledges the multiplicity of vibes that must work out for a relationship to exist.

Marriage
When married people break up but don't get a divorce, they usually say they are "spending time apart" or "taking a break" or having "an experimental separation." These are mature phrases that acknowledge the trickiness of the situation, and confuse their children.

If you're dumped

If you're angry .. Say "Go to hell!" Commanding someone to go to the Christian land of afterlife torture and punishment is an affective way of expressing how immoral/worthless you think they are.
If you're also feeling like your relationship wasn't working out ... Say "I was sensing the same things. The feeling is mutual." Then you're not quite dumped anymore.

To learn more about heartbreak, examine closely these treasured English-language songs:

"Love Hurts" - Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris
"Jealous Guy" - John Lennon
"I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" - Dusty Springfield or The White Stripes
"No Scrubs" by TLC
"Ain't No Sunshine"
"Ex-Girlfriend" - No Doubt
"The Cure" - Pictures of You
"Maps" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" - Joy Division
and of course, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" - Al Green

Clever like a fox: Animal metaphors

Cock of the walk - someone thinks they're the best (this might only make sense in the south)
Puppy love - when young people are in love
Snake - a person is manipulative (it's a bible thing)
I could eat a horse! - when you're really hungry
I need to piss like a racehorse - when you need to use the bathroom. don't use in a formal context.
You look like a wet rat - when someone's caught in the rain (considered rude)
Easy tiger! - when someone is too sexually forward
Quick like a bunny - telling a kid to hurry up
Busy as a bee - self-explanatory
Nice mane ya got there - some one has big hair, like a lion's mane
A whale of a ___ - when a certain instance of ___ is larger than the usual instance of ___
She's a minx - when a woman is powerfully seductive

I'll try to think of more.

What's Up?

"What's Up" is a tricky phrase that alludes many. It's a fairly recent greeting, like "How are you?," "How's it going?," "How's it hanging?," etc.

How you answer "What's up?" mostly depends on how much time you have to respond. If someone asks you "What's up?" while you pass one another in the hallway, don't take it literally. There will be a temptation to answer with a casual but related "nothing," but that will just leave you feeling unaddressed when the other person keeps walking away. Instead, you must acknowledge that you realize it is a greeting and not, as it seems, an interrogative statement. Answer with, "Hey!" or even, "Hey, you!"

If someone asks you this in a sit-down conversation, or what's more likely in an internet conversation, it is OK to either respond with a casual greeting, or to actually say "what is up" with you as long as it does not provide more information than a casual conversation calls for. For example, do not respond with, "being charged with tax fraud is what's up with me," or "certainly not the frequency of sex between me and my wife," unless you're super funny and are known for your charming black humor. (black humor is self-hating, sarcastic humor, and most intelligent people love it.)

So, what's up?

Talking about people who aren't your everyday cracker

"Cracker" is a word for white people that some white people don't like, but usually they just deal with because white people don't have it so bad. Ideally, they like to be called "Caucasian" or "Anglo-Saxon," although I don't think the Angles or Saxons exist anymore.

I realized the feat in the title of this post was tricky in my Chinese class, when my teacher translated a Chinese sentences as "He gave the money to the Mexican," and it made my whole class giggle.

This is an incredibly complicated issue, so I won't write a thesis or anything, just give some basic tips.

My teacher's problem was that he used another nationality as a noun with an article (an article is something like "the" or "a"). There is something rude about making a nationality into a noun in contemporary English. Instead, it is better to use the nationality as an adjective with "man" or "woman" after it.

No nos - these commit the former error, and also use offensive terminology
Negro
Chinaman (but Chinese man is ok)

There are more but those are the most common.

Negotiating your way toward silence

Conversations use something called adjacency pairs, like Q&A or utterance & acknowledgement. For example:

Q&A
Q: What color is the moon?
A: Grey.

Utterance & acknowledgement
U: I have two mommies.
A: That's unusual.

Because of this structure, it is often hard to end a conversation. It takes some negotiating. In English, there are several ways to do this.

The best is probably to make up an excuse about why you need to exit the dialogue. If you're on the phone, you could say, "I need to go eat some Cheerios," or some other daily task. In person, this is hard to do unless you need to physically leave the conversational space.

A semi-conclusive statement often helps. Something like "well, that's that" works, although it feels a bit insincere. Hedges, meaningless words like "well," and "hmm," also signal the end of your interest in the dialogue.

My personal favorite is, "Well, it was good catching up with you!" "Catching up" is a phrase you use when you see someone you haven't seen for awhile and learn about what they've been doing. To make it extra conclusive, it's good to add some insincere intentions for the future, like, "Maybe I'll catch ya at Whitey's Saloon this weekend!"

How do you like to end conversations?

Human anatomy part one: Breasts

So you're in a social scenario when it becomes necessary to talk about breasts. This happens a lot in America. Hopefully this guide will help.

In Japanese, there are linguistic levels of formality for many scenarios. Not so much in America, but when it comes to breasts, formality is of the utmost importance. Mostly, it depends upon if you yourself wield a pair.

In a casual/friendly scenario

Let's say you are a woman

In most cases, you will call them your "boobs." Not a very attractive word, huh? But it is sort of a round and silly word, kind of like boobs themselves. Men should not say "boobs" because the word has an irreverent, self-deprecating quality that just doesn't make sense because men love boobies so much (boobies is a diminutive word for boobs, which men canuse, however. Note my natural switch to "boobies.")

So, let's say you are a man

Here, it really depends on your age. Most men under thirty should say something like "tits" or the diminutive "titties." It is slightly rude, but has a sexual connotation that "boobs" and "breasts" do not. It is appropriate to use this word in an intimate scenario. An antiquated substitution for "tits" is "jugs," but it has an unglamorous implication that a woman will probably not appreciate.

A formal scenario
In an educational, political or workplace scenario, "breasts" is the only appropriate term. However, carefully analyze a scenario before you say "breasts." It is also a slightly negative term because it is connected to a popular part of the chicken that brings to mind an image of raw, slimy pink meat. In extremely awkward/formal scenarios, it might be better to opt for "chest," a gender-neutral term.

As you can see, there's currently no wholly desirable word for breasts in the English language, so speak carefully!