During a recent session at a professional college, I asked a girl a perfectly innocent question: “Are you enjoying the session?”She looked at me, smiled and said, “It’s giving.”I waited.“Giving what?”She looked slightly amused by my confusion. “It’s giving… good vibes.”“Oh!” I said, pretending I had understood all along. I hadn’t.And that little exchange got me thinking about a new kind of communication gap between generations. It is not a language gap. It is a vocabulary gap.I call it the Vocab Gap.Gen Z has a dictionary of its own, complete with abbreviations, shortened words, borrowed expressions and phrases whose literal meaning is often only the beginning of the story.The interesting part is that these words are not merely shortcuts. They often carry an emotional meaning that does not appear in any dictionary.“Fine” may mean fine. Or it may mean, “Please stop asking.”“Okay” may mean agreement, resignation or irritation, depending on the tone. “Bro” can express affection, disbelief, amusement or mild exasperation. “Sure” can sometimes mean almost anything but sure.And then there are the abbreviations. The moment a parent or teacher finally figures out one, another seems to appear.At times, decoding Gen Z conversations can be tougher than solving the cryptic clues in the Sunday crossword. At least the crossword eventually gives you an answer.But perhaps the bigger issue is not the vocabulary itself. It is what these words are doing.They have become social shorthand, expressing an emotion, an attitude or an inside understanding without spelling everything out. Sometimes, quite deliberately, they also create a private space that parents, teachers and elder siblings cannot easily enter.Every generation has created its own expressions. What is different today is the speed at which the vocabulary evolves. Learn one code and the code changes.This also challenges one of the basic principles of communication: if the receiver has not understood the message, the sender should make it clearer.Gen Z seems to have quietly added another possibility: perhaps the receiver needs to learn the language.And maybe they have a point.Adults expect young people to understand our expressions, our silences, our sarcasm and our social codes. We teach them how to communicate with us. Perhaps understanding their vocabulary is also part of the job.This matters because these words can carry emotional signals adults may completely miss. A teacher may hear an ordinary expression while students hear sarcasm, affection, mockery or even a warning. A parent may casually use a word picked up from a child, unaware that its emotional implication among young people is quite different.So, parents and teachers need not memorise every abbreviation. The more useful response is curiosity.“What does that mean?”“Is there more to it?”Those questions can open a conversation rather than close it.But Gen Z has a responsibility too. A private vocabulary can be fun, expressive and even protective. It becomes a problem when being understood is treated entirely as someone else’s responsibility. If something genuinely matters, three letters and a tone of voice may not be enough.Perhaps that is where the generations need to meet: not by speaking exactly the same way, but by being willing to translate when necessary.After all, language is not a test of which generation you belong to.(The writer is a behavioural scientist, leadership coach and a relationship counsellor)
