Every family has their own special lexicon. Those words or phrases that make sense ONLY to you. Inside jokes or television/movie quotes turned into everyday language. Often I don't even know there is a reference to pop culture at all until I've been using a particular phrase for years. I was well into my 20s before I learned that Bedtime For Bonzo was a movie and not just something you say to kids to let them know it is time to get ready for bed.
A lot of my family lexicon comes from Monty Python. We can blame my dad for that one. My dad, along with most of his ten siblings, is very, very good at imitating voices and accents. I am still occasionally startled when I hear my dad's voice come out of the TV if Monty Python is on. Oh, but it is wafer thin! We already got one! I'm not dead yet!
I'm pretty sure we have a fair amount of Star Trek in there, too, though the only one that comes to mind at the moment is the ever-popular "Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a _____!"
Other sayings just come from family history. I'm sure my dad will correct me on the particulars of this, but sometime during my dad's childhood there was a boy in the neighborhood who had a sister named Emma. He was around on and off to play with some sibling or other (there are eleven in my dad's family spanning 20 years in age). I believe the boy may have had a disability of some sort. Emma was in charge of him at any rate, and when Emma said it was time to go home, it was time to go home. His response to her was always the same.
"Oh-tay, Emma."
It sort of melted into a one-word response, ohtayemma. I grew up hearing and saying this all the time in place of a simple "okay" or "got it" or "will do". I didn't realize it until recently, but my wife has started to pick up on this saying, too. I remember pointing it out to my dad. T is really family now! She can do Fisher-speak!
Yesterday I learned that my iPhone is a member of the family, too. (What? IT IS. Shut up.) iPhones, like most cell phones I suppose, have predictive-spelling built in that learns what words you type often as a sort of built-in spell check or shortcut. Yesterday I was texting T and when I typed in "Oh", the predictive spelling filled in "Ohtayemma". Aww. It's like warm-fuzzy family memories wrapped up in my phone.
I probably shouldn't point out that the predictive spelling has also learned "crackwhore" and "strippers". Awesome.
Do you have any good bits of family lexicon to share?
