Ender and the other children usually speak like the adults of the story, but when they choose to, especially when they are amongst their peers, and they want to bond, they speak the slang of children, slang that relies on rhyming cadences and curse words much like the normal speech that one would expect from children of any age. Ender nor any of the other genetically modified children speak like normal children. When they do speak in slang, they do so not because it is the only way that they know how to speak, but because it helps them hold on to the childhood that they have been forced to given up, to protect a world that they are to young to really know.
Ender's sister Valerie and his brother Peter share the genius of Ender and are as potent in politics and public opinion as he is as a battle fleet commander. Even when Valerie and Peter have begun their journey to becoming the most influential political agitators of their time, Valerie is asked to help the government convince her brother that he is not becoming like his sadistic brother and that he should continue in his studies. She does this by writing a letter to him using, not formal English, but their own childhood slang and codes. This use of colloquialism shows the power of familiar language to connect people even throughout the years and the many miles apart. This is the same technique that the battle school children use to reconnect with the earth. The letter has a profound effect on Ender; it helps him to face the challenges that he is facing in Battle School because he now has a part of his childhood sent to him.
One of the main types of slang used by the students has a very west Indian Creole sound to it. This type is the furthest from normal speech and the students sometimes speak to Ender in it, but he never uses this type of slang. When Rosen introduces himself to Ender, he says: "We doing OK, Ender Bender. I Rose de Nose, Jewboy extraordinaire, and you ain't nothin but a pinheaded pinprick of a goy. Don't you forget it." Also, when Dink opens himself up to Ender by explaining to him his method of coping with the stress of battle school, Ender understands but does not respond in kind. “I be crazy too, little buddy, but at least when I be craziest, I be floating all alone in space and the crazy, she float out of me, she soak into the walls, and she don't come out till there be battles and little boy's bump into the walls and squish out de crazy", says Dink. Petra also use a similar speech pattern when she shows her displeasure with the commander. “She lapsed into giria, the slangy talk that imitated the pidgin English of uneducated people; "Bonzo, he pre-cise. He so careful, he piss on a plate and never splash." The officers behave much like Ender in their minimalistic use of slang.
