So I might just suck at NPCs, but I'd like to incorporate more 6th world slang into my runs.
I've been going over Big Knobi Klub's glossary, but it's just not coming together.

How would you suggest adding more 6th world flavor to games?
There's gotta be more to it than fraking chummers in the hoop.

Heh, I'm the wrong dude to ask. I felt like posting just because I like the silly old lingo. I never "enforce(d)" it, and it wasn't like you couldn't use RL slang and stuff, but I always felt like it was a fun part of the SR world.

Cue the "the old stuff was retarded" crew. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Even if it was retarded, it's now 'retro' and 'ironic', which makes it okay. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Yeah, I tended to limit use of "chummer" and the like, and flat-out avoided the "frag" and all that because frankly, it sounds like Man We've Got To Keep Our PG Rating lingo. If you are killing people for the Mob you should be able to say "fucking" and not wince. "Drek" is about the only one I kept, largely for its ork-cultural linkage and all that, but people will say "shit" and the like as well.

The twist I put on things, though, was that since my game was set in Minneapolis-St. Paul, whereas Seattle had a bunch of Japanese inspired slang, I ended up pulling things from the Hmong language instead (that being a big cultural component of the sprawl)

khwv khwv literally someone who works very hard, the intimation being that they have to, they're not doing it because they're workaholics and it's fun; for SR, used as a pejorative for a wageslave

menyuam laij literally "kids who mill/wander around", used IRL to refer to low level gang stuff; I had the people on shadownet chats use it as a pejorative for criminal elements lower on the food chain that runners perceived as less "pro" than themselves

siab phem lit. evil liver; applies to somebody especially mean and ruthless. In the shadows, often actually said as a term of respect

Things like this. Whatever the local sprawl you're in, drawing on local culture and flavor can be a boon.

Over ten years of playing I have finally managed to, in my roleplaying, fuse Shadowrun slang and real-life speech patterns (and for 4E, real life profanity) with it not sounding retarded...at least 75% of the time. The problem I have as a GM is getting my players...who are even after a nearly two-years-running campaign, nowhere near as steeped in the lore and the language as I am...to use the lingo. It is less they consciously think about its silliness and more that they just slip into real-life slang because they've been speaking it all their lives. I really wish they'd lingo it up, though. It really just makes everything feel more shadowrunny.

Using the lingo is part of the RP, and much easier for GMs to NPC, since you have the chance to prepare.

Harder for players. And hilarious when they stumble. Even if they know their character, getting players to RP a con or fast talk is just awesome. Had a player (who is British catholic middle class) last night, in On The Run, try to RP the con/fast talk of his ex-cop runner disguised as an ork gangster. He sounded like he thought he was in a 50 jazz movie. It was awful and hilarious at the same time.

Anyway. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

I like the lingo and jargon, but I tend to confuse my Players when I use it.

It's also hard to use with my bad Irish accent.

I didn't like the "substitute for profanity" lingo twenty years ago and I don't like it now. The only time I've seen it done well is when Firefly used Mandarin for their cursing. Using silly made-up words like drek and frag doesn't put me in character, it takes me out. If trying to get your players to use the slang makes them feel awkward, you are probably lowering the fun quotient, not raising it.

So in a topic that can only be a series of statements of personal opinion you are preemptively trying to invalidate a whole category of those opinions. Very classy.

Stay classy, internets!

Drek is yiddish for shit, chief. Is yiddish somehow innately less valid than Mandarin?

I've been watching Farscape lately and some of the lingo from there has been slipping into my SR games (and my everyday speech for that matter)
Example: Frell is pretty much the same as Fuck and Dren is pretty much the same as Shit....I can understand me saying Dren in SR, since it sounds kind of like Drek, but I have no idea how I keep getting away with Frell....maybe cuz it sound like hell?

Maybe it's just the opposite of familiarity breeding contempt, but Frell and Dren seem much worse than Frag and Drek to me.

I like Frell. It's like a contraction of Fucking hell.
"What the FRELL?!"

Frelling, just doesn't work like that though,
and Dren is sort of crap. It sounds like someone's name.

Though on the other hand, I do like the slang Bruce (from big red switch) for trashing someone's gear.
"Sorry I bruced your bike, Daisy, but next one's headed right between the uprights, so keep still and start talking."

That's interesting, particularly considering the modern decline of Yiddish in favor of Hebrew. Why would something from Yiddish get picked up by Orzet like that? (Wasn't it said to be Orzet in origin in-game?) Orks in Europe?

Sorry, historical linguistics buff here, so you've got my attention now.

Drek was around before the established Or'zet in game.

And frag came from lingo in the Vietnam era. It's where an unpopular officer of a unit was assassinated by his unit by having a fragmentation grenade tossed into his tent/foxhole.

Or, if he was really bad, in the latrine. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I was unaware that drek was a real word, but don't let me stop you from taking offense and setting up a strawman in which I denigrated Jewish culture compared to Han Chinese culture.

Ooh ooh! Are we going to play "my historical culture could beat up your historical culture?" Shotgun Hittites!

I call Cossacks!

I know drek is used in the croatian language, probably is used in a lot of other slavic tongues as well. I think it was a german word originally though.

So for us it gets used fairly often.

On topic, I like the unique vocabulary of shadowrun, I think it gives it flavor.

I call 100BC Rome!

A question does not constitute a strawman. I was genuinely curious.

Anyway, to any degree that I was remotely offended (I wasn't) it was because you didn't know that drek was a real word, just because I thought that was something that most people knew.

Most people not from the New York tri-state area.. or certain parts of LA where Pastrami is available.. do not tend to know many Yiddish words. or if they do.. they do not know they are Yiddish.

Like I bet he knows bupkus about Yiddish.. but he knows what bupkus means (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

This. I lived in a Jewish neighborhood in the Midwest growing up and nobody knew any Yiddish, not even the Jews.