A Korean student is amassing a huge online following by decrypting British slang into plain English in amusing tutorial-style videos.
Seong-Jae Kong, whose styles himself as ‘Korean Billy’ in his Facebook dispatches, has broken down regional dialects in Glasgow, Yorkshire, Liverpool and Manchester and in his most recent post deciphers London street chat, or as he puts it, ‘Roadman’ dialect.
Fittingly, he does while wearing an Adidas hoodie and cocking his upper lip and eyebrows with angsty displeasure, something that struck a cord with viewers.
“Ha, ha, ha when he does the comparison he puts on an Adidas jumper to look more like a chav ha, ha, ha, ha,” one person wrote on Facebook.
Billy’s latest video, which has been viewed over 760,000 times since Wednesday, sees him explain popular terms such as “mandem” (mate), “bare” (very/a lot), “creps” (trainers) and “dry” (boring).
The South Korean begins his educational video by using some of the terms in a sentence.
“Gonna get a cheeky Nandos with the mandem.”
“That was bare jokes, blud!”
“Your creps are safe, fam!”
“You’re so bait, fam! You are my chicken nuggets, innit?”
“Allow it! That joke was bare dry, fam!”
The Facebook star then explains the purpose of his clip, saying that London is a multicultural city, meaning that it has “quite a few dialect words”, or “so-called roadman dialect words”.
Words covered in the three-and-a-half minute video include popular terms “mandem”, “bare” and “safe”, many of which are often used by London chicken shop reviewer, the Chicken Connoisseur, in his series The Pengest Munch.
Billy begins with “mandem”: “This word looks a bit strange, right? ‘Mandem’ means ‘mate’ and it usually means ‘male friend’.
“Mandem sometimes means ‘a group of friends’, as well. So when someone says like, ‘Oi, mandem!’ That means that person is calling a friend.”
Billy adds that the word is used interchangeable with “blud” and “fam”.
From there Billy explains that “bare” is used as an adjective to mean “very/a lot”, “creps” is a slang word for trainers and when the word “safe” is used it has a very different meaning.
Billy: “Safe normally means ‘not in danger’, right? But in roadman dialect ‘safe’ means cool.
“So when you went to say that something is cool, you’ll say ‘that’s safe, fam’”.
He ends the video by saying: “Now we now some roadman dialect words in London. I know my accent is not perfect but I hope this helps you understand some roadman dialect.”
Billy’s videos have prompted thousands to comment, many having seemingly picked up the a few ‘roadman’ words themselves.
“I fucking love this guy blud ur safe,” one commenter wrote.
Billy reportedly became interested in British dialects while studying at the University of Central Lancashire as an exchange student in 2015.
Watch some of Billy’s other dispatches below: