Cross-Cultural Blog

As a 21 year old graduate of UW I would agree that lingo is pretty important. At U Dub we had a lot of lingo and abbreviations that we used that didnt necessarily mean we were in a hurry, but instead were just trying to sound 'cool.'

Some other good Stanford lingo:
-MemChu
-FloMo
-JRo
-Rinc
-IHUM

I would say that describing Stanford students as "pretty relaxed" is accurate as far as how we outwardly act. We're all happy, but don't forget about Stanford's "duck syndrome" :) [You can't see how furiously our legs are pedaling underwater.]

I have clearly sensed pressure to conform to the model of the "ideal" Stanford student. Abbreviating common Stanford words is one way that this happens, but it is also encouraged to be an extrovert, a complete night owl, and if you are a guy like me, a party animal that goes to the frats every weekend. If you do not openly profess to gain all your energy and drive from these things, people will think you are weird, and it can be very isolating and frustrating if you do not fit this model. In fact it seems like I do not fit the popular stereotype in any category, though I do not go around emphasizing it. Now don't get me wrong or mistake me for a reactionary like my parents... I really like the people and Stanford and a few things about the culture, but the overall model needs to be modified so the ultimate goal is something along the lines of fullness and contentment with who one is now as a person, rather than all the odd details about them.

Just wait until you explain to your parents that IHUM is really boring or how much work PWR is. They will be confused for sure.
"Lag dining? What are you talking about?"

I have clearly sensed pressure to conform to the model of the "ideal" Stanford student. Abbreviating common Stanford words is one way that this happens, but it is also encouraged to be an extrovert, a complete night owl, and if you are a guy like me, a party animal that goes to the frats every weekend. If you do not openly profess to gain all your energy and drive from these things, people will think you are weird, and it can be very isolating and frustrating if you do not fit this model. In fact it seems like I do not fit the popular stereotype in any category, though I do not go around emphasizing it. Now don't get me wrong or mistake me for a reactionary like my parents... I really like the people and Stanford and a few things about the culture, but the overall model needs to be modified so the ultimate goal is something along the lines of fullness and contentment with who one is now as a person, rather than all the odd details about them.

I don't think that the short hand terms like rinc, tap, frosoco, coho, belong exclusively to stanford campus. I do believe however, that Stanford is the only place where it is advertised so widely. It seems to be something that is imprinted into our minds, and creates a more campus wide agreement on what abbreviations to use. Maybe it is something advertised to promote a feeling of exclusivity, giving another reason for us to be proud to be stanford students, and for us to come back to Stanford 10 years later and donate money out of our school loyalty.

I like this style of informal conversation. I think it‘s related how cool are we as a closed society. It’s the same here in Egypt especially when mixing between English and Arabic LINGOs. For example, the word DACLART is very famous among the AUCians. It comes from the word declare and how we pronounce the Arabic verb in the past participle tense. Not only this word, there is also VOWETE from vote, FAILET from fail and so many others. Another style of being COOLY communicating is how you say that anything is very nice. Recently, we used to say that it is GAMED- means strong. Nowadays, we say that it is DRANGONLY nice. I really don’t know why the first to use this description used it, but I guess that he/she refers to how strong (GAMED) was the Dragon – the imaginary animal. Some of these words were “emitted” from the AUC, some came from other universities. They are all used by us – the cool Egyptian community. However, they are widely found among AUCians. I think it’s the same for Stanford and I do love this style – the DRANGONLY cool style.
Andrew Naem

It is much easier to use abbreviations than using the long forms. It facilitates communication as long as having a global usage all over your campus. Moreover, most of the abbreviations which you use sound much cooler than the actual words. Here at AUC we use some abbreviations too. For example, we may use some abbreviations for some courses like PENG which stands for Petroleum Engineering, CS which stands for Computer Science, and CENG which stands for Construction Engineering. One can find these abbreviations for all of the courses at AUC. Furthermore, the buildings too have their own abbreviations. We have the SSE building which stands for School of Science and Engineering, the BEC building which stands for the Business and Economics, we also have the HUSS which stands for Humanities and Social Sciences, and one can find for each single building at AUC an abbreviation widely known by every student and instructor at AUC. It facilitates communication between students and instructors as well. Here, at AUC the dead week also exists. It is the week before the finals when you can barely find someone wondering in the campus. Most of the AUCians can be found in the library studying for the finals. The two abbreviations RoHo and ProFo, which you used, grabbed my attention as I found them cool even without knowing what they stand for. I like the way that Stanford students use to communicate with each other. I like the abbreviations which you use as they sound cool. I wish to know more about your social life at Stanford University.