Pants on the Ground

[Wilson Gray]

It's just the usual half-assed bullshit, Neal. Nothing there is true
of Black English as a whole, with the possible single exception that
_your_ is almost always pronounced [yo] by all speakers, at least when
not delivering the State of The Union address.

Why it is that white people are unable to hear the pronunciation of
the "l" in "cool," etc. is a mystery to me. I've seen "cool"
represented by "coo' " in literature written by whites since I was in
high school in the '50's. When I was in the Army and Greg asked me to
teach him to pronounce "cool" as we Negroes (in those days) did, when
I said "cool", he repeated it as "coo," despite the fact that he was
listening to a native speaker in real life in real time.

OTOH, why do whites choose to pronounce "-ool" as "-oowul"? You have
no idea how messed-up that sounds! ;-)

In a beer commercial of the '80's, this pronunciation was gently
mocked. A nouveau-riche black athlete has his boyz from the old 'hood
over to his new Bel-Air crib. When he invites them to see "the
poo-wul," filled with cans of the advertised brand of beer, his
friends recoil in horror, echoing, "The 'poo-wul'?!!!"

I wonder why it is that the BE "long T," as I call it, never makes the
various lists of reputed "features" of BE? I would have thought that,
like much else, the long T would be familiar from the old TV show, In
Living Color. Remember "Wanda" and her catchphrase, _I'm [rEt:@]
(ready to) go!_? I've heard it used by any number of people: my
father, a roommate, a broad selection of other family and friends,
random utter strangers on the street. When I think of my father,
"[pUt:] (Put it) on the table" pops into my mind. But, as In Living
Color's parody showed, the long T is "non-standard," or, as the fact
that I don't use it, though my father, who died seven years ago at 97,
did, old-fashioned or too "country." The former roommate who uses it
came to L.A. straight out of the tobacco [t at b&@k@] fields of North
Carolina. I, OTOH, spent almost the entirety of my
language-developmental years in urban, semi-Northern Saint Louis,
being embarrassed by my parents' Southern accents. (My father had
"wif, bofe," etc., but my mother, now 97, doesn't, having always used
the standard thorn.)

[BTW, even as I type, I'm watching a TV show on what's now known to
the greater world as "South-Central Los Angeles." The speech of
*every* black speaker is fully rhotic, with a single exception.
_Nigger_ always be pronounced only as "nigga." A major change, that.
When I moved to L.A. from Saint Louis in the '50's, it used to make my
flesh crawl to hear black Angeleños say r-ful "nigger," just like
white people. Fortunately, the mirror-image spelling-pronunciation,
"reggin," was hip, then, so that I didn't have to hear "nigger" even
from the bruz 'n' cuz, all the time. Unfortunately, the r-ful version
resurfaced, after "reggin" became stale. OTOH, according to the UD,
"reggin" is back, in white slang terms like _reggin weed_, meaning
something like "stale, low-THC, or otherwise worthless marijuana."]

-Wilson

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 10:26 AM, nwhitman at ameritech.net
<nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "nwhitman at ameritech.net" <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject:      Pants on the Ground
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> New blog post, on several features of AAVE present in "Pants on the Ground" -- and one that's not, although a lot of people seem to think it is.
> http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/witcha-pants-on-the-ground/
>
> Neal Whitman
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-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

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