Tuesday, September 9, 2008
language investigation #2: Go Nuggets!
It was a little difficult for me to think about a community that I shared a language with. I don't think that my friends and I talk in a way that no one else would understand or if they were present would make them feel like an outsider. The closest thing I can think of as a community with its own language is being at a Denver Nuggets games or being a Nuggets fan. If you don't know that is our NBA basketball team here in CO, just in case. Unless you go to or even watch the games you wouldn't get any of the remarks, who certain people there were or some of the players nicknames. One thing that is pretty big is when the announcer says "Melo" for Carmelo Anthony, everyone repeats him. You can even hear this on TV. If you didn't go to the games you would never know how crazy the mascot is, or even know that is name is Rocky. No who goes has to say, "the mascot Rocky who is the big yellow mountain lion in a Nuggets sweat suit"; its just plain Rocky. Also when the announcer says certian players nicknames and not real names, you might not know who just scored. For example "The Answer" is Allen Iverson. So next time you go to a Nuggets game if you haven't been before, you have a little heads up than all of the other new people there.
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3 comments:
Sports in general for me can be extremely hard to understand. The announcers are always dropping terminology that makes me scratch my head. It is frustrating to watch, because for one I'm not really that interested and two I can't even feign interest because a lot of the time , I really don't know what is going on. Even more difficult to understand than the actual games are the shows where they have sports newscasters that just sit down and riff with each other about sports. There is definitely an insider language in the world of sports that I am glad you pointed out.
Being a Nuggets fan myself I found your blog very interesting. Even on the Nuggets alone you could pull out tons more pieces language that might not be understood by someone who was not part of this nugget community. You could also go deep into the terminology of the game itself without even talking about the Nuggets them selves. Great language investigation and I look forward to reading more form you.
I've never been to a nuggets game, and the information you said definatly came as news to me. Its funny how little things like attending a sporting event can have its own lingo intirely. I'd love to go to a game and now i'll know what to do! thanks for posting.
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