"You can tell by"

[Wilson Gray]

"You can tell by the way I use my wok,
I'm a Chinese cook, no time to talk."

>From a 'nineties indie movie about Chinese-American life in Frisco's
Chinatown, in which the token-black-guy part was played by a
*Japanese*-American guy. Very funny concept, actually. It was only his
pseudo-black body language and hip conversation that distinguished him
from the the other actors.

-Wilson

On 7/11/06, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: "You can tell by"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > > Am I nuts to believe that she said she used X as a
> > criterion, when she
> > > used the construction, "You can tell by X whether a student
> > belongs in Comp I?"
> > >
> >
>
>
> "You can tell by the way I use my walk,
> I'm a woman's man: no time to talk. "
>
> The Bee Gees, 1977
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
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imposed upon them.

Frederick Douglass

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