Conversate

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Lisa from San Diego.

Hiya, Lisa.

Hey there, what’s up?

Well, I have a question about a word that I’ve heard my 20-something-year-old kids use.

Okay.

Or a word or not a word, I’m not sure.

That’s what I want to know from you.

The word is conversate.

-huh.

The first time I heard one of my kids use it, I corrected them and said, you know, that’s cute, but it’s not a word, it’s converse.

And I thought it was just that one kid, and then I heard my other kid use it, and then I’ve heard it on the radio, and I’ve heard, you know, now it seems to be the new word.

So I was curious if you knew how that happened.

And Lisa, how are they using it?

Well, they’ll say, you know, well, you know, we can go over there and, you know, conversate about that.

So they’re talking just going to a friend’s house, or is it like out to a party or talking with a romantic partner, that sort of thing?

I think it can be all of those things.

Okay, so you think it’s a synonym for converse?

That’s what I’m guessing.

And did you converse with them about it?

Well, as much as you converse with a 20-something that wants to be corrected.

Which is never.

Well, yeah, that.

Lisa, let me ask you a question.

I hope you don’t mind.

Are you an Anglo family, African American, something else?

I’m an Anglo family.

Okay.

There’s a really important reason to ask that question because conversate has been in the dialect of African American vernacular English for, I don’t even know, 70 years at least, a long time.

And in African American vernacular English, conversate has come to mean something a little different than converse.

It means to talk raucously or in an excited way.

It’s conversing with the intent of just kind of having fun and goofing around and not so much about, well, here.

For example, if I go to a hotel front desk and say, is my room ready? Then I’m conversing with the person at the desk.

On the other hand, if I see a bachelorette party sitting next to me in a restaurant and I start talking with them, I’m conversating with them because it’s a crazy time and we’re goofing off and doing shots or whatever, right?

And so in African-American vernacular English, conversate has meant something different for a long time.

Do your children listen to a lot of hip-hop?

Yes, they do.

Do they watch a lot of African-American movies or read African-American literature?

Yes, they do.

It’s entirely possible that they picked it up from the media that they’re consuming.

And that’s a fair way to pick up a word.

So the difficulty here is this, is that you’re likely to be judged if you use it, just as you’ve judged your own children, right?

Heaven forbid.

Negatively judged.

And so it’s not in the most formal registers of English, and yet it’s got a really long history.

I found uses of conversate as far back as 1811.

And it’s interesting that it’s a different shade of meaning, too.

It’s a slightly more elaborate word that means something a little bit different.

And it’s formed from the word conversation.

It’s what we call a back formation, which is where someone tried to break conversation, the noun, back down into a verb.

And instead of reducing it to converse, they reduced it to conversate.

And this happens again and again in English.

And it’s one of the typical ways that we form new words.

It’s a legitimate word formation, but it’s almost always marked in the ear of the hearers as not quite right.

So you’re like, eh.

You’ve got kind of like there’s a little friction there when you hear it.

Because you’re like, wait, I know that’s not right.

Unless you’re used to hearing it.

Yeah, unless you’re used to hearing it.

Yeah.

Right.

Before, in the early 1900s, it pops up in the speech in the mouths of characters in fiction who are represented as rustic or rural, hicks, hillbillies, that sort of thing.

And so, and not African American in particular, but just the speech of people who aren’t urban or cultured or sophisticated or highly educated.

And it actually shows up again and again in Caribbean English.

It is still used today in the Bahamas and in Jamaica and in some of the other English-speaking Caribbean islands.

And you’re going to love this Thackeray used it in one of his short stories that was published before 1853.

And so Condorcet’s got this long history, but in American English, it tends to pop up only in African-American vernacular English or in the language of young people who consume a lot of media that was created by or for African-Americans.

So what you’re telling me is I have to go tell my kids that they were right and I was wrong.

Well, what you can say, though, you can say that, yes.

That’s a good parental thing to do.

That’s what I want to hear.

But I would also say you’ve got to realize that some people are going to judge you if you use that word.

It’s not the kind of word you want to use, say, to a person of authority.

So don’t use it in an interview, but you can use it with your friends when you’re ready to go out and conversate.

Perfect.

So, Lisa, maybe you go and slap them on the back and, you know, say, let’s conversate about this.

I was going to say, the best way that a parent can stop their kids from using a word or a particular part of language, start using it yourself?

Yeah, and then they’ll cringe and they’ll back away from it and stop using it because you’ve intruded upon their territory.

There’s a thought.

I do have a habit of doing that.

And they will seek out language of their own that you don’t know.

Well, thank you for calling.

Well, thank you for answering.

Thank you.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.