Benz
SlangShort for a Mercedes-Benz, a luxury car brand.
“Short for a Mercedes-Benz, a luxury car brand.”
Full entry →Free · No account · 356 words
Learn how California actually talks
A free school for California English. Courses, pronunciation, and a dictionary covering Bay Area slang, Southern California place names, Chicano vocabulary, and the jargon that escaped Silicon Valley.
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Courses
All 6 courses18 short lessons. Start with the first week if you have never been here.
- Beginner35 min
Your first week
The twenty-odd words that unlock the rest
Start here. These are the greetings, compliments, exits, and yes/no sounds you will hear in the first conversation you have in California — or in the first California film you watch from the other side of the world.
5 lessons · 29 words
- Beginner25 min
Getting around
Roads, traffic, and what “the City” actually means
California geography is spoken in nicknames. The same phrase can mean San Francisco or downtown Los Angeles depending on who says it. The freeways have names, the traffic has a proper noun, and offering to “swoop” someone is how a lot of nights begin.
3 lessons · 18 words
- Intermediate30 min
The Bay
The words that could only have come from up north
Northern California English is not a thicker version of Los Angeles English. It has its own intensifier, its own city nicknames, and a mid-2000s musical movement that put a dozen words into national circulation. If you want to understand Bay Area rap — or a conversation in Oakland — this is the set.
3 lessons · 18 words
- Intermediate30 min
SoCal and the coast
Surf talk, LA shorthand, and the food you will be offered
Southern California gave English “dude”, “stoked”, and “gnarly”, then layered Los Angeles freeway culture and a Mexican-American food vocabulary on top. You do not have to surf to need these words — they leaked into everyday speech decades ago.
3 lessons · 20 words
- Intermediate30 min
Spanish you already hear
Four centuries of Spanish, folded into California English
California was Spanish-speaking long before it was English-speaking. The words in this course are in daily use, but many of them belong to specific communities. They are documented so you can understand them. Using them of yourself if you are not part of that community is a different decision, and the usage notes say so.
3 lessons · 19 words
- Specialist15 min
Silicon Valley
The jargon that leaked out of the tech industry
A handful of workplace words from Bay Area tech companies are now used far outside the industry. They are a small set, and they are worth learning as a set — they tell you how a powerful local culture talks about building things, hiding things, and getting rich.
1 lesson · 8 words
Word of the day
ArchiveHow it works
- 1
Take a lesson
Each lesson is a handful of words with the cultural context a dictionary line cannot give you — who says it, where, and whether you should.
- 2
Hear it out loud
Every headword has a phonetic respelling and a speak button. Listening practice is there when you want to train by ear.
- 3
Keep it
Flashcards use spaced repetition so hard words come back sooner. 228 entries are quiz-ready. No signup.