← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Happy Hacker
Thread ID: 6645 | Posts: 21 | Started: 2003-05-14
2003-05-14 02:06 | User Profile
Often when I hear blacks talking on TV, they appear to be struggling. Instead of speaking fluently, their words are disjointed, almost as if they're reading a word list rather than speaking sentences. This is at least when they're speaking proper English, not when they're speaking Ebonics.
It reminds me of how I speak when I'm drunk (I generally don't drink much). To avoid slurring, I make a great effort to speak clearly which results in an unnatural delivery.
Is this my imagination or have any of you noticed it also?
2003-05-14 02:46 | User Profile
I can'd unnershan the queshteeon.
2003-05-14 07:27 | User Profile
I know what you are talking about. They do it real life too. I think it is because they usually speak in some form of dialect, they have to actually think about enunciation when they speak standard english. This causes akward, stilted delivery. Blacks that "talk white" in daily life don't do this. Even most educated and successful blacks speak a form of dialect among their peers, albeit neither ghettoese nor some kind of archaic pigdin, but a more subtle form of dialect.
2003-05-14 13:45 | User Profile
Yo meen lak dis?
[url=http://www.realskanky.com/shirley/jackson/]http://www.realskanky.com/shirley/jackson/[/url]
Every auto commercial uses them to sell cars.
2003-05-22 19:01 | User Profile
You're not the only one to notice it. I once interviewed an accent expert who described the phenomenon as "over-enunciation." James Earl Jones and Maya Angelou are good examples of over-enunciators. It's done to compensate. That said, blacks are often quite skilled at imitating, myna bird-style, White speech. Witness any number of black newscasters and their diction.
2003-05-28 18:13 | User Profile
I often wonder the same thing. Just today I got home and saw the message light on my answering machine blinking. So I hit the play button and an obviously black voice says "Hello? Hello? Lemme use the pen to light up!" No caller ID info so I wouldn't have answered even if I had been here, but I'm still curious what it means.
Gosh I love Ebonics. So clear and easy to understand.
2003-05-28 23:43 | User Profile
Originally posted by wintermute@May 28 2003, 15:31 ** > Is this my imagination or have any of you noticed it also?
No, but I've noticed something else, which I call "alleged perpetrator" syndrome.
A lot of blacks seems to live by the rule "never use a ten cent word when two twenty five cent ones will do", a habit that cops are pretty bad about, too. Unfortunately, a lot of blacks and a lot of cops are plainly out of their depth in lexical matters. The twenty five cent words they use are chosen and strung together with the same lack of comprehension that many Jewess shows towards jewelery, clothing, and furniture - elegance and taste being foreign concepts. The only goal is showing off.
Listen the next time a Black school administrator or Black social worker is on television, and you'll see what I mean. Whatever other faults Jesse Jackson may have, he's not afraid to used rhymed couplets in public, which I think is perfectly fine for Negro orators and audiences. No need to shake down the OED until it coughs up polysyllabic diction dollops - not when you have recourse to I'm a tree shaker, not a jelly maker. Even if you are more of a jelly maker, really.
Wintermute **
You bring up some hyperbolically contingent points! I'll have to consider them the next time I'm ostensibly predisposed. :th:
2003-05-29 00:45 | User Profile
Wintermute sounds as if he's had some problems with the police. I've never heard any white police officer put his foot in his mouth in the manner described - although many, many, many black and latino officers in Los Angeles do so. It's almost a regular feature on the evening news. If the police 'spokesperson' is 'of color', hit the record button on the VCR so you can play the malaprops back during a party.
2003-05-29 01:47 | User Profile
"Perp" sounds very East Coast. The police agencies in CA always seem to use the word 'suspect'. Excuse me, I mean 'alleged suspect', I mean ...
2003-05-29 06:34 | User Profile
I sho'ly do be amplified to makes yo acquaintanceship!
2003-05-29 11:45 | User Profile
Originally posted by Rumblestrip@May 28 2003, 13:13 ** So I hit the play button and an obviously black voice says "Hello? Hello? Lemme use the pen to light up!" No caller ID info so I wouldn't have answered even if I had been here, but I'm still curious what it means. **
Sounds like he was smoking ink--bwahahahah! :sm: :lol: :lol:
2003-05-29 15:13 | User Profile
Their mouths are not shaped correctly for white speech. Thick lips and the set of their jaws won't let them speak in human. Ever listen to what their native speech sounds like? Lots of grunts and clicks. You work with what you have.
2003-05-29 23:45 | User Profile
There do exist right-of-the-bell-curve-peak blacks who manage to speak white English quite presentably. I've also met white people whose native language is not English, who deliver the same stilted speech because of their non-mastery of our language.
I don't think I've ever heard a white person speak the grunt-click language, though. The "amazing human beatboxes" you hear are always black, too.
2003-05-30 14:36 | User Profile
Originally posted by LA Refugee@May 29 2003, 09:13 ** Their mouths are not shaped correctly for white speech. Thick lips and the set of their jaws won't let them speak in human. Ever listen to what their native speech sounds like? Lots of grunts and clicks. You work with what you have. **
That is true. There are a lot of blacks who have very obviously black voices. I don't think I have ever heard a White with the same vocal characteristics. Even the most wiggerized White teenager doesn't have that black sound to his voice.
Of course not all blacks have it, but the ones who do can be detected after only a few words.
2003-05-30 15:29 | User Profile
Originally posted by Rumblestrip@May 30 2003, 07:36 ** That is true. There are a lot of blacks who have very obviously black voices. I don't think I have ever heard a White with the same vocal characteristics. Even the most wiggerized White teenager doesn't have that black sound to his voice.
Of course not all blacks have it, but the ones who do can be detected after only a few words. **
I'd be curious to send black speech through a spectrum analyzer -- I do hear some funny screeching and hissing sounds. It does seem they vocal cords are different -- perhaps curled like their hair? :D
2003-05-31 02:54 | User Profile
Originally posted by LA Refugee@May 29 2003, 09:13 ** Their mouths are not shaped correctly for white speech. Thick lips and the set of their jaws won't let them speak in human. Ever listen to what their native speech sounds like? Lots of grunts and clicks. You work with what you have. **
Congoids, both male and female also happen to have much higher levels of tesosterone than Europids, and even higher levels than Mongoloids. I can just as easily recongized the voice of a Northeast Asian as I can that of a Congoid-North East Asian voices are softer and higher than Europid voices. The opposite is true for Congoids, even females. Their moth structure (projecting jaws, much thicker lips) and their nasal structure may also impart a distinctive tonal quality to their voices. I have yet to meet a Congoid whose voice I would mistake for that of a Europid.
2003-05-31 03:23 | User Profile
but some people are so deaf they cant tell.
funny story... well to some anyway...
i attended college at ga tech.
early on in the dorms, most of the new frat boys hadnt managed to jump to the frat houses. few dorm rats did...
one aspiring frat boy, clyde, roomed with a buddy of ours, who altho also a frat boy, co-opped, so he was back every few months in the dorm. easier that way i guess. he got the job to mentor new frat boy clyde...
well, clyde was a particularly guileless sort. some idiot frat council function required him to call up some other frat/sor person and work out some details for some inane function. i bet they did this on purpose...
hell, all us dorm rats had to do on the weekends was... get lit. they had 'functions'. good. those trainer masons deserved them.
well dips##t clyde calls this sor chick up and starts talking... sooner or later he fails to get out a year book or do enough intelligence and then he starts talking about how he hates n_____s.
well guess what?
before long they all hang up and he is out in the hall screaming at the top of his limited vocal chords about how he hates n_s and how she was a f__n n____r... enough to make ya spit out a beer laughing...
even the black guys on the floor (like 3 out of 100) laughed themselves to sleep that night.
2003-05-31 03:28 | User Profile
Don King is a prime example of Wintermute's awkwardly polysyllabic Negro. In the interview below, he identifies himself as a Bush Republican.
[img]http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/06/cf.opinion.don.king/story.don.king.jpg[/img]
In the Crossfire
[url=http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/06/cf.opinion.don.king/]Don King sounds off on politics[/url]
Monday, January 6, 2003 Posted: 1:19 PM EST (1819 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Boxing promoter Don King is one of the most colorful figures in any sport. Why is the proposal of naming a stretch of road after him in Atlantic City, New Jersey, sparking so much controversy?
King, chairman and founder of Don King Productions, stepped into the "Crossfire" ring Friday with hosts Paul Begala and Robert Novak to discuss the controversy and his view of Bush and the Republican Party.
NOVAK: Mr. King, we're going to start with some gripping hot news about the attempt to change the name of Mississippi Avenue in Atlantic City to Don King Boulevard. A lot of people don't like it.
Now, one of your admirers, Sam Donnellon of the Philadelphia Daily News, he's a columnist ... let me read to you what he said about you in today's paper. He said, "What better place to honor a man who has fleeced so many naive and trusting boxers of their hard-earned money than a city that has built and rebuilt tall buildings by doing the same to its many customers? What better place to honor a man known far more for his nonsense than substance than a place that looks far prettier at night than it does in the day? So let's build Don King Boulevard in Atlantic City."
NOVAK: Do you have any response to that, sir?
KING: That is what makes America so great. The opportunity, the privilege that you have in this country is far beyond anything and anywhere else in the world. And to have a difference of opinion, to have that freedom of speech -- I mean, everyone should have the right to be able to speak, as long as they don't encroach, you know, on you and take anything from you. So that's his opinion. Listen, I respect that.
NOVAK: Does that mean a lot to you, to get that street named for you there?
KING: Yes, I think it's quite an honor. I didn't ask for it, but since they did decided to do it, I think it's something that's worthwhile, and I think it really humbles me that they would even choose to select to name a street after me. But I am a true American, you know, the living attestation to the American dream, you know, not the proud boy that was a Horatio Alger that could marry the boss' daughter. There's no boss' daughter here. You have to come in here and deal with life as it is in this great nation called America. God bless America.
BEGALA: Well, I join you in that salute. Mr. King, I love the outfit, but I've got to ask you about these buttons. I'm counting one, two, three, four, five different Bush buttons there now. Are you a Bush Republican?
KING: I am a Bush Republican because I think that Bush is a dynamic leader. He is decisive.
BEGALA: You do?
KING: Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
You must understand something about America. He rose to the occasion. When he won the election, it was not by the electorate, it was by the court. But then he said, "I promise you one thing, I will earn the respect of the American people. And I will appoint people around me that [will] give me their opinion. I will make the decision, but at least I'm going to have it and not going to be where they [have] to be yes men." That he has done. He got one of the greatest, tightest teams in history, you know, with Karl Rove and Andy Card. And they are really playing very meticulously, tenaciously, and they patiently carried out a plan that swept the nation. So now the man is making decisions.
Then comes that terrible, despicable act of terrorism on 9/11. The man rose to the occasion. He didn't know it was going to happen, but since it did happen, he rose. And every American should thank God that they do have a man in the White House that makes decisions that everyone respects. Niccolo Machiavelli said it's better to be feared than to be loved but if you could have both, great. I think Bush has them both because when he speaks, they listen. That means friend and foe. They have to understand when George W. Bush says something, he means it. You better listen to what he says. So that gives us the respect to hold us in what we're going to do.
NOVAK: You know, Mr. King, you, I think, are known as what we in politics call a switch-hitter. And that's a good thing in baseball. It's not so good in politics. That means you give to both sides. You were a big Bill Clinton man, too, aren't you?
KING: Yes ... I'm an American man, you know what I mean? I'm a Republicrat. I want to do whatever it is going to be good for my people, the American people. That's what really counts. It's what's best for this country. And when you're dealing with what's best for this country, neither color, race, religion or creed has got to be played in the foreground of that. You got to deal with what's going to be better for the country itself. That means every race, color, creed and religion inclusively.
NOVAK: Could it be you're for whoever is in the White House?
KING: You know, I can say this: You ain't going to do too much unless you have access to power. If you have no access to power, you can't help the loser, if you ain't got the winner.
BEGALA: There you go. Those who come early get good access. Those who come late get good government, right?
KING: But you got to be able to work with it. There's a thing about this country, you know, one land, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We got to work toward that. But at least we have a profound direction, one land, indivisible, under God with liberty and justice for all. Now we got to make that come true, you know what I mean? That's the premise of our great nation called America.
:afro:
2003-05-31 03:39 | User Profile
if he didnt exist, i wouldnt have had to invent him.
2003-05-31 06:14 | User Profile
Originally posted by Rumblestrip@May 28 2003, 12:13 ** I often wonder the same thing. Just today I got home and saw the message light on my answering machine blinking. So I hit the play button and an obviously black voice says "Hello? Hello? Lemme use the pen to light up!" No caller ID info so I wouldn't have answered even if I had been here, but I'm still curious what it means.
Gosh I love Ebonics. So clear and easy to understand. **
It sounds like some sort of code. Had you ordered drugs from this man?
2003-05-31 16:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by jjbrouwer@May 31 2003, 00:14 ** It sounds like some sort of code. Had you ordered drugs from this man? **
I just write it off as one of many wrong number calls I get. One of these days I'll have some fun with one of these idiots... now if only they'll call when I'm home.