flyting and rap

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jan 16 01:46:44 UTC 2009


Well, "toastisses" would predate the Wayans Brothers' "breastisses."
IAC, they probably just made that one up. But, one never knows, do
one?

Sleepy-eyed-ed & four-eyed-ed Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: flyting and rap
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> He's quoting Bruce Jackson,
> _Get Your Ass in the Water & Swim Like Me: African-American Narrative
> Poetry from the Oral Tradition_
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415969972/cracksandshar-20
> Here's the paragraph, pasted from John-Patrick's post:
>
>> Another such
>>    reduplicative or interruptive syllable still in use among American
>>    Negro reciters today --- who do not say "toastisses," so far as I
>>    know --- is "two-faceted," meaning having two faces, not two facets;
>>    as quoted in Bruce Jackson's /Get Your Ass In the Water /(1974) p.
>>    101: "But it's hell to learn when you have to burn for some
>>    two-faceted cocaine broad."
>
> Mark Mandel
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> And I punted the old uncle when I couldn't figure out what "sezee,"
>> which I read as [si zi], meant. In an earlier thread WRT to this item,
>> someone provided "says he" as though that were obvious. As I tumble
>> through my seventh decade of soul, I'm still waiting to hear anyone of
>> *any* race, creed, color, or sexual orientation use "says he" in real
>> life. Perhaps Uncle R. could use some editing to make him easier for
>> the less metropolitan of us to read.
>>
>> I got the old uncle's meisterstueck as a Christmas gift when I was
>> about eight. When my grandmother was likewise unable to read it, I put
>> the book aside and would have forgotten about it by now, were it not
>> so popular among those sometimes referred to as "the other group."
>>
>> It's clear that "two-faceted" means "having two facets," as any fool
>> can plainly see. Is this Legman's eye-dialect or someone else's? Or a
>> semi-literate misspelling?
>>
>> -Wilson
>
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