pseudo-obscuring coarse language

[Porter]

I frequently see curse words with the "short i" vowel sound "softened" by adding in the "short a" sound.

Just today I saw somebody use the term shiat while they were complaining about somebody using the word shit.

I hear biatch much more than the original these days.

Are there any other words like that that you've seen that I can't think of right now?

Is this just another example of modifying swear words so that we can say them without them being so harsh (flippin', effin', fetch, darn, gosh, fark, frell, shoot, etc.), or is there something else going on here?

[pooka]

I think it's a vowel thing.  I flew via texas last week and this little girl was talking about her phone being in her "parse".  That was a new one to me.  Those monorail trains at the Dallas airport are crazy.  I mean, it's like I'm a donut in the bowels of a giant robot or something.

[Brinestone]

I don't think so, pooka. I've encountered this phenomenon too, and it doesn't sound like a dialectal thing to me. More like they're trying to make the swear word sound "funny" and not as serious or something.

[Primal Curve]

More like an ironic use of ghetto slang.

[Porter]

It seems more than than an ironic use of a different pronunciation, as evidenced by the guy who used "shiat" while complaining about somebody else using the word "shit".

[Primal Curve]

"Shiat" and "Biatch" are ghetto slang.

[Porter]

Right.  I get that.

Are you saying that "shiat" and "biatch" mean different things than "shit" and "bitch"?

[Jonathon]

I'd say they have a different connotation.

Personally, I don't remember ever hearing shiat.

[Primal Curve]

Are you saying that "shiat" and "biatch" mean different things than "shit" and "bitch"?

I agree with Jonathon. "Shit" and "Bitch" by themselves don't really mean much anymore. When someone says "shit!" or "that's the shit, yo" they aren't referring to actual excrement. The same thing can be said about "bitch." I've heard people say "what's up, my bitches?" when referring to a group of men who don't take offense to the term. Using "shiat" and "biatch" are just a natural evolution of this same shift of usage.

[Porter]

Just because those terms' meanings have changed doesn't mean they don't have any meaning anymore.

[Jonathon]

It depends on what you mean by "meaning."

They are often used in a more abstract sense or as pure expletives, where the point is not to communicate lexical meaning but to communicate something about your mood or state of mind.

[Porter]

But they're also used to communicate lexical meaning.  

Example: "He's my bitch.".

Now, does "He's my biatch." have a different meaning, beyond using a less crude version of the word?

[Jonathon]

But they're also used to communicate lexical meaning.

Right. Primal Curve just said that by themselves they don't mean much. I assume he means when someone uses one simply as an expletive.

As for your question, I don't know. I don't hang out with people who use it, so I can't say for sure what differences there are.

[pooka]

I agree with it being exaggerated ghetto slang.  Though I'm more familiar with such pronunciation of (sheeyit) than (beeyitch).  I'm just doing webster's style transcription since I don't know my IPA fonts.

[Primal Curve]

I agree with it being exaggerated ghetto slang.  Though I'm more familiar with such pronunciation of (sheeyit) than (beeyitch).  I'm just doing webster's style transcription since I don't know my IPA fonts.

That sounds more like redneck ghetto slang.

[Porter]

Without the ghetto.