I know some of you are interested in language developments in London. Around a year ago, I noticed Apoa using the word random more often than I would have expected, and then noticed lots of kids were doing the same. They weren't using it in a new way, just more often than you would expect. Typical utterances might be:
It was just a random thing to do.or
There were just a few random people there.
So I was pleased to hear an actual innovation from Charlotte Church on Jonathan Ross last week. She'd been talking about her adventures in 'Chip Alley' (an environ I myself frequented on Cup Final day) and other bits of Cardiff and told him about one time when she was having a meal in a restaurant. She said,
I was sitting there with a few randomers-
Jonathan said,
Hold on a minute. What did you say? 'Randomers'?
And she said,
Yeh, you know, just a few random people.
One interesting thing about it is there isn't any obvius motivation for using this word more frequently. It just seems to have been picked on at random.
B-)
[Also posted (slightly adapted) on London Language]
Interesting example. Although the new word "randomer" does not relate to "random" in the sense of a "doer" of any action, this also reminds me of another innovation coined by Jerry Seinfeld in one of his episodes. He was talking about people's behaviour in cinemas and the traditional act of "shoshing", and so he classified people as "the shoshers" and "the shoshees".
On a more general note, the tendency of 11-year olds to use "random" often may reflect the culture of "random shuffling iPods" and the corresponding slogan "life is random"?
You could well be right about the influence of ipods and things on this. I also think there's something attractive about the idea of being random when you're a teenager (as opposed to being organised like those stuffed-shirt wrinklies). The other day Apoa used the word when she showed us the multi-coloured wellie boot piggy bank she'd bought and broken in Wales. It was 'this random thing I bought' which I think is on the cusp of naturalness for grownups.
B-)