0:00

Subtitle is made possible in part

0:02

by a major grant from the national endowment

0:04

for the humanities, exploring

0:06

the human endeavor, Hub

0:09

and

0:09

spoke. Audio collective.

0:15

Hey y'all. It's Chico Fiori,

0:17

and I'm back for our last installment

0:19

of our three part series on Black American

0:22

English. or African American

0:24

English, whatever you'd like to call it.

0:26

Two episodes ago, we explored where this

0:28

vernacular came from. Last time,

0:30

we examined how it evolved, especially

0:33

through music. But where

0:35

does it go from here? I'd

0:37

like to kick off our final inquiry

0:39

with the song, specifically Drake's

0:41

song too good featuring Rihanna.

0:44

I

0:44

mean, I just love this song.

0:46

Doesn't it make you wanna dance?

0:48

We gotta take time with this let

0:52

me see if this is so nice.

0:54

Did you catch that? Drake switched up

0:56

and went straight Jamaican papua.

0:59

It's an English based creole and

1:02

here it almost sounds like he's trying to imitate

1:05

Jamaican dance whole song. Right?

1:07

And what's interesting about Drake singing

1:09

in Patua is he's

1:11

not Jamaican. But

1:14

in interviews, he says he's paying tribute,

1:16

not appropriating. the

1:18

definition of appropriating a

1:20

culture is not supporting that

1:22

culture, doing songs with people who are

1:25

deeply rooted in that culture. That's not

1:27

appropriating. Appropriating is taking it for

1:29

your own personal game and denying

1:31

that it was ever inspired from

1:33

this. That's the true disservice

1:36

that somebody could do to dance hall,

1:38

to after beats. Me, I

1:40

am sure that I'm not

1:42

only paying all due respects

1:44

verbally, but like I make a point to

1:46

give opportunity to people that I respect.

1:48

That's

1:49

Drake talking on the rap radar podcast

1:51

back in twenty nineteen. Now

1:53

Drake is from Toronto, a very

1:55

diverse place, full of immigrants, where

1:58

he most likely absorbed accents in

1:59

lingo from around the world. As

2:01

one linguistics professor told me,

2:04

we are carrying around our personal

2:06

experiences in the languages that

2:08

we speak. And Drake seems to

2:10

be bridging his experiences of growing

2:12

up around Jamaicans to his songs.

2:15

Does immersion and a culture give

2:17

you licensed participate in it on your

2:19

own merits? Well, I don't

2:21

have the answer to that. But one thing

2:23

I can say is that the rate at which different

2:26

cultures are fusing these days is

2:28

happening at breakneck speed. It's

2:31

hard to keep up. And I think there's

2:33

a parallel that can be drawn here between

2:35

drakes use of patois and the way

2:37

black American English is changing

2:39

today. From

2:41

Quiet Juice and the Linguistics Society

2:44

of America, this is subtitle.

2:46

Stories about languages and the people

2:48

who speak them. I'm Sheiko Furi,

2:51

and in this episode, To help explain

2:53

how black American English is transforming,

2:56

I'd like you to meet Shantel Meural.

3:00

I was born and raised in Guyana,

3:03

which is on the coast of South America.

3:05

Guyana used to be a former

3:07

British colony. It's the only officially

3:10

English speaking country in mainland

3:12

South America. Shondel

3:14

is a professor of language education

3:16

at New York University. where she studies

3:18

the ebbs and flows of language. And

3:21

she says migration has always

3:23

been essential part of the story of black

3:25

American English. She knows this

3:27

firsthand as someone who immigrated

3:30

to the US.

3:31

Because Diana was a former colony

3:33

and a former plantation, all need.

3:36

We have a very diverse population of

3:38

black Indians

3:40

that were brought from India colleast

3:42

Indians. We have local

3:44

indigenous people, Chinese, small

3:47

Portuguese population, white, And

3:49

the English that developed there was

3:52

what we would call in the Caribbean region

3:54

a realized English. In Guyana specifically,

3:56

it's called Créllise.

3:58

Creeley's, which sounds

3:59

a lot like Creel, doesn't it? In

4:02

part one, we heard that Creel is

4:04

the result of two languages that mix.

4:06

Various creels are spoken in the Caribbean.

4:09

So

4:09

what does creely sound like?

4:11

I'll give

4:12

you an expression my mother would say. Like,

4:14

who is she when you do she down? Okay.

4:17

Who is she when you stoochie down?

4:19

So who is she

4:21

when you stoo her down? Who

4:24

is she when you bring

4:26

her down to low gravy? When you've

4:28

moved away all of the facade,

4:31

who is this real personality? below

4:34

the appearance. That's essentially what it

4:36

means.

4:36

Shondel's father was the complete opposite.

4:39

He didn't speak to her in Creeley's but

4:41

in a very formal standard English.

4:43

My father used words

4:46

like Adam Brake and My

4:51

father was very formal.

4:52

Adam Breit.

4:54

Yeah. Can't say that's a word I've

4:56

heard before. Marian Webster

4:58

defines it as to suggest

5:01

or outline partially.

5:03

Shondel says her father's vocabulary was

5:05

filled with words like this.

5:07

The type of words you would use that you would

5:09

see in the dictionary now and it would say

5:11

in parenthesis obsolete. you know.

5:14

Words like, you know, eighteenth

5:16

or nineteenth century, British English

5:19

that nobody in the UK would even use today.

5:21

So when Chondal communicated with her

5:23

mom, she spoke more creases, and

5:25

with her father, more antiquated English.

5:28

And then at school, she was taught to

5:30

speak standard British English, switching

5:32

back and forth became so natural

5:35

that she still does it.

5:36

My husband now says that mine

5:38

and my husband is American. He can tell who

5:40

I'm talking to on the phone by how my English

5:43

if I'm talking to my mother or if I'm

5:45

talking to a Guyanese friend. So

5:47

even among Guyanese, I

5:49

sound different to different types of

5:51

Guyanese. I

5:51

can totally relate to this. Some

5:54

of you might be familiar with my story, which

5:56

I've shared in previous episodes. I'm

5:58

a first generation american who grew

6:00

up speaking a mix English and

6:02

Kikuu with my Kenyan parents.

6:04

But I spoke formal English at

6:06

school, and as I grew up Black

6:08

American English started to become part

6:10

of my everyday speech, especially with

6:13

my friends. As a kid,

6:15

Shondal wasn't exposed to it the

6:17

way that I was.

6:18

when I was growing up in Guyana, we had no television.

6:20

When I say, we, I don't mean my family. I mean, there was

6:22

no television in the country. Television did

6:24

not arrive in Guyana until nineteen eighty.

6:27

and I grew up in the seventies. So

6:30

black American English exposure was

6:32

in two ways music because

6:35

we were listening to mode. town and all

6:37

that stuff.

6:49

We did have the cinemas that we went to

6:51

movies and there was that that

6:53

whole age of all of the black exploitation

6:55

movies and the black films of the

6:57

seventies.

6:59

shafts his name

7:02

or shafts his game. I can't

7:04

say you're gonna be here.

7:06

any game.

7:08

Shondel started reading Ebony

7:10

and Jet magazines. She also encountered

7:12

black American English in novels, but

7:15

not through school assignments. One

7:17

day she just happened to find the work of a particular

7:20

author in her school library. I

7:21

stumble literally. I remember

7:24

in my high school

7:27

on James Baldwin, and I

7:29

remember walking down the dark tropical

7:30

in streets, with

7:33

heat coming up from the pavement and banging

7:35

from the walls of houses and then left forced to

7:37

kill a man.

7:38

Literally, this was my first

7:41

time at supposed to because all of our curriculum was

7:43

British, and all

7:44

of the world's children on the sidewalks, or

7:46

in the gutters, hanging and fire

7:48

escapes, and my arm around

7:50

Joey children.

7:51

In nineteen eighty four, Shondel

7:53

moved to the birthplace of James Baldwin,

7:56

New York City. And, naturally,

7:58

She expected to hit the streets of the big apple

8:01

and hear black American English.

8:03

The version of it that she knew from

8:05

music and movies and literature but

8:08

what does she hear instead? More

8:10

on that after the break.

8:15

Hi, Patrick Cox here. rudly

8:17

interrupting to tell you about another

8:20

podcast I love and I think you

8:22

will too. It's called the

8:24

vocal fry. And as part of recommending

8:26

the vocal rise to you, I'm gonna make an

8:28

admission. I am guilty

8:31

of judging other people's language,

8:33

misplaced epastrophes, use of the

8:35

word irregardless, American

8:37

use of the word entree to

8:40

mean main course.

8:42

I mean, come on.

8:44

But as the wise people at the

8:46

vocal fryers point out, there's no point in

8:48

me or you getting riled up. It's

8:50

not gonna make anything better.

8:52

If anything, it'll make

8:54

things worse. Here's an

8:56

example. The thing the podcast is named

8:58

after, vocal something for the record

9:00

that I have no problem with.

9:02

But a lot of people do. Some

9:04

people even believe vocal

9:06

fry, harms, the

9:08

vocal cords. It doesn't. If

9:10

you wanna know more much more than I can

9:12

tell you, you must listen to

9:14

the vocal cries. In each episode,

9:16

host linguist Carrie Gillan and

9:18

Meghan Figueroa. They make you laugh,

9:20

but they also take on some

9:22

aspect of speech or language, but

9:24

some people are just repelled

9:26

by They find out why the

9:28

repulsion came into being and

9:30

no spoilers. Why it's misplaced?

9:34

Listen to the vocal phrase at

9:36

Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening

9:38

to this.

9:38

In New

9:40

York, everybody picks up everybody's

9:43

parts of their speech.

9:44

When Chandelle moved to New York,

9:46

she expected to hear and speak black American

9:48

English. But what she heard

9:50

instead surprised her.

9:52

She heard a lot of Caribbean influenced

9:55

English, which made her feel at

9:57

home. Well, sort of.

9:59

It wasn't just spoken

9:59

by Caribbean immigrants, but

10:02

Chandelle says other black Americans were

10:03

speaking at too. It's a good chance that if you

10:06

run into a black person living in New

10:08

York, they probably have

10:10

Caribbean routes so they might be born here and

10:12

even their parents might be born here, but their

10:14

grandparents might be. And because

10:16

people continue to migrate,

10:18

you still have fresh groups of urban coming

10:21

in even as you

10:23

have three or four generations

10:25

already here. So

10:27

you always get that influence

10:29

It's what Chondele and other linguist

10:32

call transnationalism. Remember

10:35

Drake singing in Popois? a

10:37

tardonian whose language reflects his experiences.

10:40

Transnationalism is changing

10:42

black

10:42

American speech. there's a

10:44

kind of nice fluidity in which people are

10:46

picking up each language

10:48

so that you hear African American

10:50

phrases and Caribbean phrases very

10:53

easily, even from people that are not even

10:55

Caribbean. People from other immigrant

10:57

groups, whites. In New

10:59

York, language is very fluid.

11:01

So

11:02

there is a continuous stream of

11:04

influence that naturally comes from migration

11:06

and immigration pouring into

11:08

the larger pool of black American

11:11

English. and it's not just

11:13

Caribbean influence.

11:14

I think as

11:16

people move to different states,

11:19

that's going to be an

11:21

influence as well, but then you have

11:23

blacks now from African

11:25

countries. Countries

11:26

like Nigeria. which has

11:28

the largest African immigrant population

11:30

in the US. But in

11:33

addition to migration, Shondel says

11:35

another big factor changing black American

11:37

speech is movement in another

11:39

space

11:40

online.

11:41

Social media and online chat

11:43

services are making it easier than

11:45

ever before. for expressions to

11:47

travel and language to

11:49

transform.

11:50

And that's like an unfiltered space.

11:53

something like WhatsApp because you

11:56

you're texting anybody anywhere.

11:58

So you might be physically in,

12:00

let's say, Boston, but

12:02

you know, you're texting your friend who's in the Caribbean

12:05

or texting somebody who's in LA.

12:07

And in that response

12:09

to that message might be

12:11

some black American

12:13

language from LA.

12:14

One example of how speech is

12:17

influenced by technology, is with the

12:19

growing popularity of the phrase,

12:21

pushing

12:21

p. Are you pushing p? Is

12:24

pushing p? Yeah. p. The

12:26

expression has long been native to people in

12:28

Texas and the Bay Area. But

12:30

this year, it exploded on social

12:32

media all over the world.

12:34

Back in January, Atlanta rapper Ghana

12:37

released a song called Push and P featuring

12:40

young

12:40

folk. And the phrase Push

12:41

and P is is mentioned

12:44

in this song a lot.

12:46

First cream

12:47

of pearson paper. First cream

12:49

of pearson paper. Top

12:52

of This

12:52

term perplexed a lot of

12:55

people. And there were a lot of

12:57

discussions about what it meant. What does

12:59

p actually stand for?

13:01

Here's gonna breaking it down on the breakfast club

13:03

with radio host Charlemagne the God.

13:05

If I wake

13:06

up and and

13:07

my backyard the beach, That's

13:09

pee. That's pee. Okay. So you walk up earlier

13:11

than morning to a beach. That was pee.

13:13

Okay. It's simply plural, but

13:15

you also can just, like, using

13:17

in the other ways, like, I

13:20

mean, I I ain't

13:21

like how he did it. That one that one p.

13:23

Mhmm. Also,

13:24

p as a show for player, it

13:25

could be.

13:26

Play a

13:27

piece,

13:28

positivity, productivity?

13:31

I think the jury is still out

13:33

on the exact meaning and appropriate use

13:35

of the phrase. but the

13:37

ambiguity of it didn't hinder it from

13:39

becoming a viral international sensation

13:41

on TikTok. You see

13:42

a little sister struggling over homework, and you go

13:45

help her? That's

13:45

keeping a p. That's pushing a p.

13:48

Okay. But you're still not explaining

13:50

what that means. It was understood. Don't

13:52

gotta be explained. If you don't understand

13:54

UAP, Now, while

13:55

this term is new to millions of

13:57

social media users, it's long been

13:59

a

13:59

regional term. Its meteoric

14:01

rise speaks to the point that

14:03

Chondelez is making about transnationalism

14:06

and how language, especially

14:08

black American English, is moving

14:10

and evolving today. both on

14:12

big platforms like TikTok and

14:14

even smaller WhatsApp groups between

14:16

friends. Chondal has her own

14:18

anecdote about teaching the Caribbean

14:20

expression, stoops. to her

14:22

American husband. It's a noisy

14:24

make with your mouth.

14:25

Sucking your teeth. It goes, like, sounds

14:28

like that. Yeah. I've heard that. Right.

14:31

Right. And it it signals a sort of mild

14:33

dismissal of someone. This

14:35

is funny

14:35

because my husband's American. He teaches him Brooklyn.

14:37

He has a lot of Caribbean students. And one

14:40

day, his student did

14:42

that and she because he was American, she think he

14:44

didn't understand. He goes, don't do

14:46

that. I knew exactly what you're doing.

14:49

It's like dutch tips at me, you know. I know

14:51

I know what that means. Okay. Yeah.

14:54

Okay.

14:56

So Shondel's husband learned about the

14:58

stoops sound because, well,

15:00

that's what happens when you're married to someone.

15:02

But even when you don't have a

15:04

personal connection like that, there are plenty

15:06

of pathways to pick up new expressions

15:08

and phrases. Most of those

15:10

pathways involve some combination

15:12

of migration and social media.

15:15

There's no question that this

15:17

is helping set the future course

15:19

for black American English.

15:21

It's hard to predict. It's

15:23

very fluid, but I would say technology

15:26

and just population

15:28

movement is the

15:30

ease at which this generation

15:32

it's just broken down physical boundaries

15:35

in terms of borders. I mean

15:37

borders are just virtual really.

15:42

There's

15:44

one common undercurrent throughout

15:46

our series that has played a major

15:48

role in the evolution of black

15:50

American English, and that is

15:53

movement. African American

15:55

English has and always

15:57

is in a state of

15:58

flux. That's

15:59

just the byproduct of the journey of those

16:02

who speak it. From the perils

16:04

of slavery, to their

16:06

earliest attempts to escape north

16:08

from the great migration

16:10

to the current waves of

16:12

immigration. Black

16:13

American English has been a

16:15

mirror of this movement. And

16:17

today, the movement includes

16:19

Shondel and others from the

16:21

Caribbean. and also me,

16:24

born to parents from Kenya.

16:26

All of us are following a

16:28

linguistic tradition that began when

16:30

first enslaved Africans arrived in North

16:32

America four hundred years ago.

16:34

We are building on that

16:36

tradition and sometimes breaking

16:39

with it. so that the thing we currently

16:41

call African American English

16:43

the way we speak, it's

16:45

reenergized and

16:47

reinvented with

16:48

every generation.

17:01

This episode is reported and produced by

17:04

me, Shiko theuri. Special

17:06

thanks to Alua Chemi, Aledesui,

17:09

Patrick Cox, and

17:10

Nina Porzuki.

17:11

Also thanks to everyone at the

17:14

Linguistics Society of America.

17:15

Tina Toby is our sound designer,

17:18

Alison Shao manages social

17:20

media and newsletter. And if you

17:22

haven't subscribed yet, go to

17:24

subtitled pod dot com slash

17:26

newsletter. One more time, subtitle

17:28

pod dot com newsletter.

17:30

Subtitle is a member of the hub and

17:32

spoke collective. We're a bunch of podcasters

17:35

dedicated to telling stories about stuff that you're

17:37

not gonna come across anywhere else.

17:39

Here's one of the other hub and spoke

17:42

podcasts, iconography. This is a podcast

17:44

about icons, things with meaning

17:46

on our wives, meanings that we don't

17:48

fully understand. This

17:50

fall, iconography is returning with the

17:52

new mini series, looking at the

17:54

movie jaws through the lens of its

17:56

most iconic character. The

17:58

Salting Chopping Shark Hunter

18:00

Quint. Check out

18:01

iconography and all of the other hub and

18:03

spoke shows at hubspokeaudio dot

18:06

org. Thanks

18:07

for listening. It's been a

18:09

pleasure hosting these three past episodes, and

18:11

thanks for joining me on this journey. I hope

18:13

you learned as much as I did. We'll be back with

18:15

a new episode in a couple

18:18

of weeks.

18:18

Subtitle is made possible

18:20

in part by a major grant from

18:22

the national endowment for the humanities,

18:25

exploring the human endeavor,

18:26

hub and

18:28

spoke. Audio

18:31

collective.