*Nicked off of Dubway's forum*
Black slang in the pink
By Mian Ridge
Published: October 21 2005 11:58 | Last updated: October 21 2005 11:58
The crashing thump of drums in the South London music school suddenly ceases and for a moment the road outside is silent. Then the door swings open and teenagers tumble down the building’s steps, shouting a volley of words that would be unfathomable to any passing foreign tourist and, indeed, are unfathomable to me, a Londoner, come to meet my 15-year-old cousin, Joseph.
“Naes, ma, dat is sick” (”Nice man, that is cool”), one boy says admiringly, as he watches his friend take the flight of steps in one go, bouncing deftly to the pavement in his Adidas trainers. “Can’t be on de long ting, bwoy” (”Can’t be wasting time, boy”), his friend replies. “Bare tings to do innit” (”I’ve a lot to do”). As they say their goodbyes (”bae”) and head off in different directions, Joseph comes over to greet me. “Wha’ g’wan on, man?” he asks, as he gives me a hug.
Only a year ago he would have shyly kissed me and greeted me by my name; but in the past few months Joseph has turned from a quiet and bookish child into something different altogether: a cool, apparently streetwise youth who, while still studious - he is already wondering whether to apply to Oxford University - might appear more at home on the rough-and-tough streets of Brixton than in the all-white classroom of his expensive school, the City of London School for Boys. Most striking is his new style of speech, which is indebted to what linguists have dubbed London Jamaican English.
A combination of slang and accent, this combines features of estuary English (a sort of diluted Cockney, relentlessly glottal-stopped) with elements of Caribbean Creoles, particularly the Jamaican patois used by the West Indian immigrants who settled in London in the 1950s and 1960s.
As a community - at least compared with many South Asian immigrants - British West Indians have not prospered, but their language has. White London teenagers borrow heavily from their way of speaking: they use T and D for “TH”, so that “thing” becomes “ting” and “this” and “that” are pronounced “dis” and “dat”. They also tend to open up and elongate vowel sounds: “why” becomes “wae”; “like” “laek”. Joseph is not alone among his classmates in speaking in this way. Like him, white and middle class, many talk much the same way. As Joseph and I head off to a cafe, a friend of Joseph’s - similarly pale and posh - shouts to him, “In da hours, man” (”See you soon”). “Deep, bruv,” Joseph replies (”Great, brother”).
David Crystal, author of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, is an avid listener to the speech of young Londoners. He describes this trend as “absolutely bloody fascinating”, especially the change it has made to the rhythm of spoken English. Historically, spoken English demonstrated what linguists call a stress-timed rhythm, with stresses recurring at equal intervals of time - as in the measure of Shakespearean verse (”To be, or not to be... “).
The new accent instead borrows the machine-gun beat of West African or West Indian English, what linguists call a syllable-timed rhythm, in which each spoken syllable is afforded roughly the same amount of time and stress. “Before people spoke in the rhythms of Shakespeare: tum te tum te tum,” he says. “The new accent goes rat tat tat tat tat.”
What has wrought this change? For Crystal, the answer is hip-hop, the most influential musical genre since rock ‘n’ roll, born in New York in the 1970s out of disco, with a heavy Jamaican influence. Although West Indian migration to London is several decades old, Crystal argues, the phenomenon of white teenagers speaking in this way only appeared with hip-hop’s ascendancy.
This theory sounds reasonable to Joseph, and, indeed, when I ask him for examples of new slang-words, unprompted, he starts talking about music. “People get a lot of their words from songs,” he says. “They are saying ‘get me’ a lot at the moment, from the track by Bruza [a London hip-hop artist].” And as new words find favour, old ones are abandoned: “One of last year’s biggest tracks, by Lethal B, is full of words that people aren’t using now.” Joseph also cites Dizzee Rascal and Kano - both east Londoners - as linguistic innovators.
No doubt they are. But Tony Thorne, head of the language centre at King’s College, University of London, and author of The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, says the effect of hip-hop on this linguistic shift should not be overstated: he tracks it back further. He first noticed Afro-Caribbean words entering young white Londoners’ speech in the 1970s - long before hip-hop’s rise. Gradually since then, he says, this influence has deepened and spread, to the point where it recently conquered the mainstream, becoming the biggest single influence on youth slang and, increasingly, accents.
“It’s got to the point now where you can go into a playground anywhere in the UK, even where there are no black children, and everyone is using black street speech,” says Thorne. “Black North American, Jamaican, even what I call black British - words that have been invented on the streets of Britain - have all come together to make this variety. It’s too complex to separate out all the influences.”
What is certain is that white usage of black street speech, and the fashions that attend it - in Joseph’s case, baggy jeans and a habit of wearing two baseball caps at once - tends to be limited to the young - those aged 15-24 years, according to Thorne. But there is the odd exception, notably the fortysomething Radio 1 hip-hop DJ, Tim Westwood. He grew up in Lowestoft, is the son of the Bishop of Peterborough, and speaks with a robust Jamaican accent.
Joseph, at least, does seem aware of the paradoxical nature of his new speech - and its potential for ridicule. He was issued with fair warning by Ali G, the hugely successful alter-ego of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, a brilliant spoof of a white youth (and committed member of the “Staines Massive”) pretending to be black. “It’s about choosing words,” Joseph says. “My school friends use ‘bruv’ - white people can say that without eyebrows being raised - but they have to be a bit careful about saying ‘blood’ [a word meaning ‘brother’] unless they use it really well.” He knows people who, in his opinion, overdo it and speak “proper fake Jamaican”. He also concedes that there are times when he is careful to tone things down a bit, such as when he is speaking to his elderly Jewish grandfather.
Still, Ali G notwithstanding, Joseph’s new accent is unlikely to be mocked on London’s streets - as the plummier original perhaps would have been. A decade ago, members of the pop group East 17 were derided for imitating black hip-hop artists; they would be less likely to be so today. Once a cult exercise that invariably invited parody, white usage of black street speech has entered mainstream youth culture to such an extent it is hard to imagine Joseph and his peers shaking off all vestiges of it at university and beyond. Where might it end? If Britain is perhaps not to have a black prime minister any time soon, we may at least hope for one with a Jamaican accent.
Mian Ridge is a freelance writer based in London.
GLOSSARY:
Yard - home
Choong - good looking
Bun dat - forget it
Mad-up - annoyed
Fo shizzle - for sure
Nang - very good
Ill - good / cool
Standard - end of discussion
Flex - style Hater - envious person
Wuk up - dance
Dem menz - those people
On a hype - energetic
Bounce - go / leave
Black slang in the pink
By Mian Ridge
Published: October 21 2005 11:58 | Last updated: October 21 2005 11:58
The crashing thump of drums in the South London music school suddenly ceases and for a moment the road outside is silent. Then the door swings open and teenagers tumble down the building’s steps, shouting a volley of words that would be unfathomable to any passing foreign tourist and, indeed, are unfathomable to me, a Londoner, come to meet my 15-year-old cousin, Joseph.
“Naes, ma, dat is sick” (”Nice man, that is cool”), one boy says admiringly, as he watches his friend take the flight of steps in one go, bouncing deftly to the pavement in his Adidas trainers. “Can’t be on de long ting, bwoy” (”Can’t be wasting time, boy”), his friend replies. “Bare tings to do innit” (”I’ve a lot to do”). As they say their goodbyes (”bae”) and head off in different directions, Joseph comes over to greet me. “Wha’ g’wan on, man?” he asks, as he gives me a hug.
Only a year ago he would have shyly kissed me and greeted me by my name; but in the past few months Joseph has turned from a quiet and bookish child into something different altogether: a cool, apparently streetwise youth who, while still studious - he is already wondering whether to apply to Oxford University - might appear more at home on the rough-and-tough streets of Brixton than in the all-white classroom of his expensive school, the City of London School for Boys. Most striking is his new style of speech, which is indebted to what linguists have dubbed London Jamaican English.
A combination of slang and accent, this combines features of estuary English (a sort of diluted Cockney, relentlessly glottal-stopped) with elements of Caribbean Creoles, particularly the Jamaican patois used by the West Indian immigrants who settled in London in the 1950s and 1960s.
As a community - at least compared with many South Asian immigrants - British West Indians have not prospered, but their language has. White London teenagers borrow heavily from their way of speaking: they use T and D for “TH”, so that “thing” becomes “ting” and “this” and “that” are pronounced “dis” and “dat”. They also tend to open up and elongate vowel sounds: “why” becomes “wae”; “like” “laek”. Joseph is not alone among his classmates in speaking in this way. Like him, white and middle class, many talk much the same way. As Joseph and I head off to a cafe, a friend of Joseph’s - similarly pale and posh - shouts to him, “In da hours, man” (”See you soon”). “Deep, bruv,” Joseph replies (”Great, brother”).
David Crystal, author of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, is an avid listener to the speech of young Londoners. He describes this trend as “absolutely bloody fascinating”, especially the change it has made to the rhythm of spoken English. Historically, spoken English demonstrated what linguists call a stress-timed rhythm, with stresses recurring at equal intervals of time - as in the measure of Shakespearean verse (”To be, or not to be... “).
The new accent instead borrows the machine-gun beat of West African or West Indian English, what linguists call a syllable-timed rhythm, in which each spoken syllable is afforded roughly the same amount of time and stress. “Before people spoke in the rhythms of Shakespeare: tum te tum te tum,” he says. “The new accent goes rat tat tat tat tat.”
What has wrought this change? For Crystal, the answer is hip-hop, the most influential musical genre since rock ‘n’ roll, born in New York in the 1970s out of disco, with a heavy Jamaican influence. Although West Indian migration to London is several decades old, Crystal argues, the phenomenon of white teenagers speaking in this way only appeared with hip-hop’s ascendancy.
This theory sounds reasonable to Joseph, and, indeed, when I ask him for examples of new slang-words, unprompted, he starts talking about music. “People get a lot of their words from songs,” he says. “They are saying ‘get me’ a lot at the moment, from the track by Bruza [a London hip-hop artist].” And as new words find favour, old ones are abandoned: “One of last year’s biggest tracks, by Lethal B, is full of words that people aren’t using now.” Joseph also cites Dizzee Rascal and Kano - both east Londoners - as linguistic innovators.
No doubt they are. But Tony Thorne, head of the language centre at King’s College, University of London, and author of The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, says the effect of hip-hop on this linguistic shift should not be overstated: he tracks it back further. He first noticed Afro-Caribbean words entering young white Londoners’ speech in the 1970s - long before hip-hop’s rise. Gradually since then, he says, this influence has deepened and spread, to the point where it recently conquered the mainstream, becoming the biggest single influence on youth slang and, increasingly, accents.
“It’s got to the point now where you can go into a playground anywhere in the UK, even where there are no black children, and everyone is using black street speech,” says Thorne. “Black North American, Jamaican, even what I call black British - words that have been invented on the streets of Britain - have all come together to make this variety. It’s too complex to separate out all the influences.”
What is certain is that white usage of black street speech, and the fashions that attend it - in Joseph’s case, baggy jeans and a habit of wearing two baseball caps at once - tends to be limited to the young - those aged 15-24 years, according to Thorne. But there is the odd exception, notably the fortysomething Radio 1 hip-hop DJ, Tim Westwood. He grew up in Lowestoft, is the son of the Bishop of Peterborough, and speaks with a robust Jamaican accent.
Joseph, at least, does seem aware of the paradoxical nature of his new speech - and its potential for ridicule. He was issued with fair warning by Ali G, the hugely successful alter-ego of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, a brilliant spoof of a white youth (and committed member of the “Staines Massive”) pretending to be black. “It’s about choosing words,” Joseph says. “My school friends use ‘bruv’ - white people can say that without eyebrows being raised - but they have to be a bit careful about saying ‘blood’ [a word meaning ‘brother’] unless they use it really well.” He knows people who, in his opinion, overdo it and speak “proper fake Jamaican”. He also concedes that there are times when he is careful to tone things down a bit, such as when he is speaking to his elderly Jewish grandfather.
Still, Ali G notwithstanding, Joseph’s new accent is unlikely to be mocked on London’s streets - as the plummier original perhaps would have been. A decade ago, members of the pop group East 17 were derided for imitating black hip-hop artists; they would be less likely to be so today. Once a cult exercise that invariably invited parody, white usage of black street speech has entered mainstream youth culture to such an extent it is hard to imagine Joseph and his peers shaking off all vestiges of it at university and beyond. Where might it end? If Britain is perhaps not to have a black prime minister any time soon, we may at least hope for one with a Jamaican accent.
Mian Ridge is a freelance writer based in London.
GLOSSARY:
Yard - home
Choong - good looking
Bun dat - forget it
Mad-up - annoyed
Fo shizzle - for sure
Nang - very good
Ill - good / cool
Standard - end of discussion
Flex - style Hater - envious person
Wuk up - dance
Dem menz - those people
On a hype - energetic
Bounce - go / leave
