Malapropism: “The blundering use of an absurdly inappropriate word or expression in place of a similar-sounding one.”
Or, according to Ludwig:
To keep it simple, the word refers to neologisms such as birb to say bird, or bork to mean dogs’ bark and so on and so forth.
You probably have heard (or read, more likely) of these malapropisms on Instagram and TikTok. They can belong to a specific register commonly used in familiar contexts such as between long-term romantic partners. Malapropisms, together with faux abbreviations and inside jokes are taking over your feed since couples started sharing their everyday lives with you and the algorithm, some hoping to monetise their love, others just for fun. They are part of the marriage language, an Internet trend.
Call it also baby talk, or motherese, or parentese: it is not just the way toddlers talk or are talked to. It is also a lingo that is the consequence of a very common behaviour around the world, the infantilization of the self in romantic context, that generates the marriage talk, for which you don’t even have to be married! In fact, marriage language can be used in romantic relationships, short or long term lovers, family members or besties and consequently posted on TikTok with the dedicated hashtag without anybody complaining, except for the cringe.
Despite the fact that you are probably doing it as well, it might sound very awkward if you witness it from the outside, whether it is an instagram reel or a meeting with your best friend and their omnipresent partner. In the case of TikTok, the average “marriage language video” features the partner behind the camera indicating stuff, asking the other partner “what do we call this?” or “what is this called?”. Precisely like babies, but considering that most of the protagonists are in their late twenties, it all assumes a creepy allure, as most people think.
If everybody finds it difficult to watch though, why has sharing these intimate exchanges become viral? The hashtag #marriagelanguage has been viewed on TikTok more than 30 MLN times: it must mean something.
When posting your own precious jokes, little funny words, you share small stories, little secrets, and in doing that you start bonding with people around you. Psychology says in fact that self-disclosure is one of the firsts and most ordinary ways of generating human connections. Basically, to spark empathy through sharing secrets. Plus, according to some content creators, to share their own inside jokes has been an experience that benefited all the more their relationship. Let me give you three examples:
🥬 “Sponch” = spinach.
🎒 “Pat pat” = backpack.
☕ “Live laugh latte” = iced coffee.
If you are born between 1995 and 2010 feel free to skip this paragraph, but this third example deserves a zillenialsplaining. Don’t look this up on Ludwig because you will not find it: I have just made it up. It is the union of zillenial, those who are born exactly between millennials and gen-Zs and who share generational culture with both, plus ‘explaining’, like in ‘mansplaining’. This word aims at indicating the act of unrequested explanation of a certain concept to someone by a member of the zillenial generation, unfortunately ‘zillenial’ itself hasn’t made it to the dictionary yet, it is still social media lingo, so you’d just be better off this paragraph.
As I was saying, iced coffee could be referred to as “live laugh latte” because, back in the early 2012s the main trending aesthetic demanded taking picture of yourself with thick frame glasses, a “live, laugh, love” print tee or hoodie, galaxy-pattern leggings and a large-size iced coffee takeaway, rigorously from Starbucks as well. It was about giving the soft-yet-cosmopolitan-and-nerdy-cosy-girl vibe. And Iced coffees were so pretty to watch and not yet so available outside big cities that became a sort of aspiration for teenagers pioneering the new Social Network platforms. So ‘live laugh latte’ is sort of a joke for “the equivalent of latte for the 2010s era”, iced coffee!
As you can see, marriage language doesn’t necessarily have to be cringe or exclusive to be defined as such; sometimes it is shared in the hope of finding couples your same age who relate to you and your partner’s behaviour. It generates a sense of cheerful safety, knowing that you ‘belong’, also in the way you interact with your significant other. It’s nothing but the same formula under memes.
Do you have your own marriage language? Is there a funny-relatable story behind it or is it just the baby-language version of an existent word? Let Ludwig know, we are always up for fun!
