Do you know what a gyat is? What about a rizzler? And how, precisely, does one pay a Fanum tax?
Do you know the answers to these questions? Have you seen or heard any of these words on TikTok or other social media platforms? Do you use any of them in your everyday life? Or do they all sound like a foreign language to you?
Welcome to the language of Gen Alpha, the cohort coming up right behind Gen Z. These children of millennials have begun a generational rite of passage — employing their own slang terms and memes, and befuddling their elders in the process.
Which brings us back to gyat (rhymes with “yacht,” with a hard “g” and a firm emphasis on “yat”).
“There’s no cute way to say it — it’s just a word for a big butt,” said Alta, a 13-year-old eighth grader in Pennsylvania. “If someone has a big butt, someone will say ‘gyat’ to it.”
Alta and her brother Kai, an 11-year-old sixth grader, said they had learned the word on TikTok and that it had suddenly become popular among their classmates. The internet encyclopedia Know Your Meme credits the sudden popularity of “gyat” to the Twitch livestreamer Kai Cenat. (In August, Mr. Cenat made headlines when his fans swarmed Union Square Park in Manhattan after he promised to give away gaming consoles at no cost.)
“I don’t say ‘gyat’ to people, though, unless they’re my friend,” Alta said. “And we say it to our mom.”
Several other new words have become part of this generation’s vernacular, and six members of Gen Alpha offered their decoding services for this article. (Their parents gave permission for them to be interviewed, with the agreement that their last names would not be used.) Many of the children cited a catchy parody song making the rounds on TikTok as a key to the slang’s rising popularity. The lyrics go like this:
Sticking out your gyat for the rizzler
You’re so skibidi
You’re so Fanum tax
I just wanna be your sigma
A rizzler is a “good person,” according to Malcolm, a 10-year-old in Washington State.
“Having rizz is when you have good game,” Alta said. “Being a rizzler is like when you’re a pro at flirting with people.” (Rizz is short for charisma.)
The word can be used as a compliment or a joke, according to Jaedyn, 12. She said that the boys at her school in New Jersey had been singing the song lately, adding that it gave her a headache.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
