It was, like, a linguistic epiphany

As you will recall, I was officially certified as the world's foremost expert on Israeli teenagers’ slang. (Don’t believe me? Check out the original post and see for yourself.)

Thus, I naturally enjoyed this JPost column, which correctly observes that Israeli teenage boys limit their conversations to:

“Five words, and one tiny expression.”

Specifically:

“Walla (hey), achi (bro), achla (cool), sababa (another word for cool), tov (good) and ma koreh (what’s happening).”

But, IMHO, it’s what happened after I finished reading that was even more noteworthy. Indeed, it could only be described as a eureka moment.

Picture this:

Me: {reads interesting newspaper column}

Me: {ponders a related unsolved mystery}

{a light bulb comes on overhead, and an assimon drops}

Me: Aha! I think I’ve got it! Can it work? {does some quick calculations; carries the two; subtracts the nine; and takes the square root of 22,201} Yes! It all makes perfect sense!

That’s right, my friends.

Call me a modern day Archimedes, if you will.

After all, I’ve figured out the solution to one of the modern world’s most perplexing conundrums – namely, how do teenagers handle information which simply can’t be relayed using just walla, achi, achla, sababa, tov, or ma koreh?

And the answer is: They rely on k’ilu (like).

Let me explain. (No there is too much. Let me sum up…)

You see, every so often, teenagers discover that they have no choice but to use a non-canonical word.

Under normal circumstances, this would be a major taboo or even a huge fadichah.

But with the magical powers of k’ilu, any potential awkwardness or embarrassment is avoided.

For instance, say you’re a teenager, and you can’t make it to a certain gathering of your friends.

What do you do?

You tell them, “Ani, k’ilu, lo magia.” (“I’m, like, not coming.”)

Didn’t do your homework?

“K’ilu, shachachti.” (“I, like, forgot.”)

Note how k’ilu automatically transforms any term which doesn’t appear in the official teenage lexicon into a perfectly acceptable word.

It’s, k’ilu, truly sababa, no?