Homophones in It Haso Slang
Creating conlang slang is possibly the funnest aspect of conlanging to me. Slang can have really interesting origins, both culturally and linguistically.
I’ve decided that a lot of slang in It Haso centres around homophones. This crops up in several different ways.
First in homophonic reduplication: a series of words that sound the same but have different meanings.
bad bad? (lit. what [is] big) - what’s up?
tso tso! (lit. ten ready) - 100% ready/I’m keen to do this/Let’s go
matim matim (lit. grandma situation) - the mother of all events, both amazing and disastrous
ma ma lut lut (lit. to feed [the hills] [is] satisfying [and] pleasant) - I would rather be anywhere else but here right now/I want to curl up and die [the hills are where tombs are, so to ‘feed the hills’ is a euphemism for death]
Another form of slang is inspired by Verlan, French slang that inverts syllables, the name itself an inversion of l'envers ‘the inverse’. This slang is simply normal words backwards minus all the grammatical markings, often forming funny or sweet homophones.
basu - reverse of sabu ‘grandfather’, homophone with basu ‘cat’
chabo - reverse of bacho ‘sister’, close to chaba ‘to love’
Lastly slang homophones are often created from abbreviations of compound words.
dama - police station, abbreviation of darbaimati ‘house of Mati, goddess of protection’, homophone with dama ‘blood’