Struggle of Language

When I was young my word choice was watched very carefully by my parents. Being the eldest of 3 children, my parents kept a very keen eye on me, my mother in particular. I was not allowed to say words or phrases that have since become somewhat acceptable in public. The word "butt" was a big one. According to my mother's high ideals, I was not to mutter that forsaken word while I lived under the roof of which she and my father provided. As such, it was only when I was at school, when I was only surrounded by my peers, that I could feel safe saying that word. Even then it felt like a struggle to go against my mother's wishes. As young pre-teens, we would jokingly say "I'm gonna kick your butt!" whenever we got mad at each other. We never had any plans of actually following through with out empty threats; it was just the language that we had created for ourselves. However, I still had to struggle with our new school language. I'm sure anyone can agree that "I'm gonna kick your butt!" does not convey the same message as "I'm going to kick you in the bottom!" does.

I distinctively remember having a conversation about the two languages with my father. I told him how all my friends were using less-than-polite words to get their points across. How my hollow threats fell on deaf ears because I could not be taken seriously. How I felt like an outsider. He told me to start saying those words and to embrace the other language I was hearing. But only at school, he said. He did not want to hear those words at the house.

So I learned to say "butt". Along with that came "shut up" and various other harsh sounding words. I had begun to learn the language of the playground that my mother had persisted I not engage in. I kept the two separate, being very cautious not to accidentally slip the word "butt" into a conversation in the household. This became increasingly difficult when my brother, the youngest of us three, came to the age where he found annoying me to be a favorable pastime. I could not ask him to kindly shut up. Instead, I had to politely ask him to stop talking and close his mouth. Like before, these did not convey the same messages, and instead it riled my brother up even more. I always expected telling him to shut up would actually keep him from talking. I had imagined that phrase would close the door or seal the deal. But while in the watchful eyes of my mother, I was powerless, forever doomed to be poked at and asked pointless questions by my sibling.

I've come a long way from those pre-teen days. So has my mother. Whenever I come home it has become commonplace for me to tell my brother to shut up within the first 10 minutes of my arrival. He uses words that I was never allowed to say at his age. The school language that I am now apart of, the "college language", has also changed. I've noticed that cussing is a lot more common in this college language than was ever in the school language. During a Skype video call a few weeks ago, I accidentally said "shit" in a conversation between my sister and my parents. I knew right after I said it I was not supposed to be using the college language. It didn't really phase my sister (I'm sure she was pretty used to it), but it caught both my parent's attentions. While I have not had the chance to learn two separate languages, like Spanish, French, or Russian, I have learned different variations of the English language. I've had to struggle between when to say what and what is acceptable when. And so I ask, have you had a similar experience? How have you been able to cope with it?