Well, it Beats Gangsta Rap...

The Daily Mainichi, one of Japan's biggest newspapers, breathlessly reports that Japanese teens have formed their own variety of patois out of normal Japanese conversation. Words such as 忙人 (isojin= busy person) and カラコ (karako= color copy) are being created and then bandied around at an alarming rate and the adults aren't able to catch up. According to the October 18th edition of the Weekly Playboy (no relation to the U.S.'s better-known Playboy magazine), things have gotten to a point where the police have begun keeping a dictionary of teenage slang.

However, even the paper sees little value in adults spending time trying to learn this new patois. Like American gangsta rap music and the terminology re-invented by every new generation of US teenagers, it goes out of style very quickly as teens look for new and better ways to make their mark. Seems to me it is just another way of garnering attention, though it is fascinating from a linguistic standpoint. And it does beat the repulsive 'music' forced on us by supposed 'artists' such as the amusingly-named but untalented P-Diddy and Tupac Shakur.