“What are all these things?” Lilianna asks her husband as she shows him a picture of rotisserie chickens, in a TikTok that’s been viewed over 3.8 million times. “That’s a ‘chick rotiss’,” the husband says. In a separate video, Lilianna shows her husband a photo of Bad Bunny. “Who’s this?” she asks. “That’s Good Rabbit,” he says.

These videos are part of the #MarriageLanguage TikTok trend, where couples (and occasionally close friends) share the strange words and phrases they use together. One video shows a couple calling a TV remote a “marote”; another refers to their dog’s harness as “her sports bra”. Many words and phrases are plain baby-talk: one couple admits to saying “bwanket” instead of “blanket”, another say “meow meow meow” in lieu of “I love you”. Some – to outsiders at least – are more absurd, hinting at elaborate inside jokes: this couple calls Red Bull “Fred Durst”, while another pair call chicken nuggets “boots”.

At present, the #MarriageLanguage hashtag has over 33.7 million views. It’s unsurprising the trend has taken off, given that 75 per cent of adults use baby talk with their partner – even if many would deny it – and most of us can relate to having our own little quirks when it comes to the language we use with close family and friends. I often call The Sopranos “The Sorpanos”, after my cousin (who was five years old at the time) mispronounced it while reading the TV guide. My friends and I usually say “oh brother” instead of “oh dear”. When the weather’s scorching, we’ll say it’s “rat hot” or “hot as a rat”. If we’re making breakfast and someone wants their bread to be only lightly toasted, they’ll ask for it “blonde”.

There’s a name for this weird tendency to make up words with your inner circle: familect. “Familect is one name given to the phenomenon whereby people develop their own private language or slang, typically made up of nicknames, in-jokes, puns and baby talk, and often baffling to outsiders,” explains Tony Thorne, a linguist and lexicographer, adding that this phenomenon can also be known as ‘a micro-dialect’, ‘kitchen-table lingo’, ‘family slang’. “The words they invent often refer to the familiar objects around them – the classic example is the TV remote control for which hundreds of nicknames have been recorded: melly, moto, zapper, blabber, and so on.”

Joe, 25, tells me he used to use silly acronyms with his university housemates. “For example, if we were cleaning, someone would ask ‘can you pass me the DP and B?’” he recalls, explaining that a “DP and B” is a “dustpan and brush”. 25-year-old Maddy also has a unique way of speaking with her boyfriend: “we don’t say the ‘n’ in ‘ing’ words,” she tells Dazed. “So, sleeping becomes ‘sleepig’, eating becomes ‘eatig’. I’ll be watching an episode of Friends and he’ll walk in and be like, ‘are you still watchig?’”

As odd as familect is, evidently, it isn’t uncommon. “Family members, lovers and others living in close proximity have always tended to create their own vocabularies,” Thorne explains. He adds that within family homes, adults often adopt baby talk after hearing toddlers learning to speak, who “typically invent their own words or mangle real words in amusing ways”. Additionally, multilingual or bilingual families, Thorne explains, “often use a ‘foreign’ word in the middle of an English sentence, either because it sounds better, funnier or more apt, or just because it reinforces their mixed identity” – which reminds me that my family will often call ‘snacks’ (specifically things like samosas or spring rolls) “gajak”, the Creole word. “Even monolingual Brits often invent faux-foreign words, pronounce English words in faux-French, or deliberately imitate supposedly foreign grammar,” Thorne adds – à la Nigella’s “mee-cro-wavé”.

As for the familect shared by people in romantic relationships, Thorne explains that “sweethearts have probably always used particular expressions – including ‘sweet nothings’, terms of endearment, and private nicknames – which may be embarrassing if exposed to a wider audience.” It’s undeniable that there’s something cringeworthy about familect, even though the vast majority of us do it. As one comment on a marriage language TikTok says: “you couldn’t waterboard this out of me”.

“It is objectively really lame,” Maddy says, adding that she would never subject other people to listening to her and her boyfriend coo at each other. “I think doing baby-talk or any kind of inside joke like that in front of other people is the equivalent of making out in front of them.” But, she continues, “when you’re in a relationship, you have in-jokes that evolve and you pick up new ones over time. That’s just what happens in long-term relationships.”

As Maddy says, developing your own familect is almost inevitable in any close relationship – and it can actually help to foster intimacy. “This kind of language always has an element of bonding, reinforcing friendship and family ties, romantic urges or other kinds of affection,” Thorne says. “Inventing and sharing words, phrases, jokes with a partner is a demonstration of mutual understanding and warmth which is unique to just those two individuals, so perhaps more potent and meaningful than day-to-day social language in general.“

Maddy certainly feels as though her private language with her partner makes them feel more “connected”. Joe feels similarly with his friends. “It makes me really appreciate my friends and the sense of humour we have built together,” he says. He adds that it’s also a surefire way of quickly bonding with new friends and inviting them into his circle. “It’s an inside joke that has brought friends together, but it’s also very inclusive and easy to grasp once you’re let in on it,” he says. “It can be a fun way to integrate people from ‘outside’ the group and get them involved with the silliness.” Thorne affirms this, adding that “allowing others into your private language space also cements emotional bonds with the wider family and with close friends and neighbours, in playful ways rather than by heart-searching and drama.”

On the surface, familect is silly and frivolous, oscillating between toe-curlingly cringe and downright nonsensical. But it’s clear from the countless TikTok videos, conversations with Joe and Maddy, and my own experiences that familect actually serves a deeper function. “It makes the time I spend with [my friends] in normal, everyday moments just as rich, interesting and worthy of remembrance as more grand and special occasions,” Joe says. Evidently, familect brings people together, and can inject a little fun into otherwise mundane moments (maybe we should all start calling ‘a short drive‘ “a cruislet” like this couple do). And at a time when we’re navigating our way through an increasingly individualised society, a trend that celebrates the fun of fostering close connections can only be a good thing – even if personally you‘d never, ever admit to telling your partner you‘re ‘hungies‘.

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