Oxford University Press has come up with a list 307 words that gives adults a peek into the lingo used by today’s generation. The list was compiled from the writing of 1,000 Victorian and South Australian students and analysed by researchers at Melbourne University.

It showed that the words like ‘mother’ and ‘father’, commonly used 30 years ago, have now been substituted by ‘mum’ and ‘dad’, while use of Mr and Mrs has almost vanished. According to the researchers, social, geographic and gender differences have also had a major impact over the evolving lexicon.

While girls are more likely to use words that suggest relationships/connections with other people like mum, aunty, and sister, and possessive adjectives implying sharing like ours, on the other hand boys use more of possessive pronouns like mine, his, etc. They use more of the words relating to danger and heroism like dragon, monster, snake and scary.

“Boys are more egocentric than the girls,” Joseph Lo Bianco, chair of language and literacy education at the university, said.

Julie Baillie, from the primary division of Oxford University Press believes that a “vocabulary of consumerism” has evolved through more common use of words such as bought, new, shop, shops, shopping, want and wanted.
The researchers found that the languages spoken at home also play a key role in changing the vocabulary. “In none of the English-speaking homes is the word cousin ever mentioned, whereas in bilingual homes it seems the social network extends to the broader family,” said Lo Bianco.