Black Americans.....
 

...and the English language.

I live in Australia and as such am somewhat of a victim of whatever the USA decides to shove on TV (that is, on the odd occasion I decide to sit down and watch it).

What I am seeing with alarming frequency is TV shows "hosted" or based around "homies" talking absolute ***** about money, booty, cars and "cribs".

All good but only if I could understand 10% of WTF these fatties are talking about. It all sounds like "MuMble - YO! WHASSUPE? huh-duff-blingyo-pimp, biatch, yo-bang, busta bla bla bla Mumble"

Any answers here? I am seriously beginning to struggle with the projected American image over here.

WTF are you exporting?

Re: Black Americans.....
 

Liberalism

Oh and only because you are a liberal can you get away with what you said. The rest of us would be called racist.

Truth is it's just hiphop culture.....and people with everything claiming they have nothing. We (Americans) are particularly good at this.

Re: Black Americans.....
 

"Exporting" implies that it leaves here and goes somewhere else. We (in the US) should be so lucky. It never goes away.

I live in a part of the country where a large percentage of the population is black. I can't understand a word they say. Not a racist comment - I just can't understand them. I really can't.

Mike

Blah Blah Blah...

Shown in Australia huh? Well somebody is paying good money to buy this programming and put it on your TV. Don't worry, soon local teenagers will be dressing like and affecting similar mannerisms..

Outside of Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee - we dont get much of your stuff.

The "Black" American accent and mannerisms are no more incomprehensible than:

1. A Queens accent (Think Edith Bunker: AWWWWchie!!).
2. A Southern drawl (This rivah don't go to Aintree.)
3. A New England accent (Pep-ridge Fahhhhms Re-mem bahhhs.)
4. So-cal beach speak (Duuuude! You just, like, beat Death in twister. Gnarly!)
5. A Scottish brough (If it's not Scottish it's CRAP!)
6. or Aussielandish. (The Lord Humoungous will not be defied!!!)

Sorry, Victor. It's not all of us; really, it's not. Most of us are actually as befuddled by this as you are. For some reason, stupid, uneducated, (and sometimes even violent) = cool right now. I can't figure it out either.

Re: Black Americans.....
 

the black audience has become big with big spending dollars for those commercials. Most music channels I see around here is black besides the other black comedies. I try to stay focused on The Three Stooges.

follow the $

My receptionist is black. She is a 4.0 student with a full ride at the local college on an academic scholership.

She is very well spoken and very smart..... until one of her ghetto friends calls her on her cel phone, she starts speaking another language. We laugh at her sometimes and ask why she talks wrong to her friends. She has no answer except to respond thats they way they talk to each other.

Ghetto friends, huh? Talking Wrong?

Ghetto friends = Friends that are from the ghetto

Talking wrong = Speaking incorrectly, without proper pronunciation and/or structure.

At least that's my take, what do you think he meant?

I was having an alignment done one time, and there was this white woman at the counter. Sharply dressed, very articulate, I figured her for a lawyer/doctor/etc. Then her S/O shows up to pick her up. This guy could probably be best described as a black metrosexual with just a hint of hip-hop. What was interesting is the way she talked to him compared to the way she talked to the counter guy - it was two completely different languages, like the jive translation scene from the movie Airplane! Any guesses as to what their mission was at the tire shop? Yep - 22" spinners on their blinged-out Escalade.

I dated a chick for a while who was a speech therapist, and learned that the technical term for this is called code switching

Victor,

Not to feel alone, most of us cannot understand them either.

I feel your pain... have been all over the Far East and Africa this trip out and everyone here as well buys the crap TV shows from America and puts them on the tube.

Joe A

I have a friend who is homosexual. If you met him, you would never know. But in the company of another, its like an episode of "Are You being Served"

Cracks me up. Could it be a tribal affectation?

Maybe they don't want to be understood. Maybe they're simply having a private conversation. Possibly it is easier and more expedient to speak this way with each other, which in the end, does not include people who aren't members of their group.

There is nothing wrong with that as long as misuse or bastardization of language doesn't occur in mixed social events such as business meetings, retail transactions, etc., where there should be a standardized social code.

Otherwise, with themselves, they rely on any patois like Latinos, Koreans, Germans, etc.

I don't mind if black folks want to speak in some incomprehensible jibberish.

Just don't expect to get a job. It has nothing to do with racism. Its about economic reality. If our clients came in and were confronted with a person speaking 'ebonics' (or any other accent that made comprehension difficult), they would not come back. So we don't hire a person because of their language skills, are we racist, or simply dealing with reality? I vote the later.

I guess I should not shy away from being called a racist. I think I am. I view the mainstreaming of black American culture as an infection, one that has had horrible negative impacts on society.

See, the problem is you actually watched that crap. I make a point of changing the channel before I have to witness the further decline of our society.

The problem is, we're seeing the mainstreaming of a marginal black culture. Traditional black culture is pretty conservative, religious and stable. The new acceptance of illegitimacy, unemployment, incarceration and addiction are not traditional black values.

I agree. My speech therapist XGF mentioned that the more succesful of these demographics (it's not just black people) are the ones who can code-switch effectively, but it appears that a large percentage can't/dont' want to switch to 'white' in their roles as customer service reps, retail clerks, etc.

Going out further on the non-PC limb, the observation needs to be made that this 'dialect' is deliberate - it's one thing to be fresh off the boat from Elbonia with an accent nobody can understand, and quite another to conciously perpetuate it for several generations.

The are just competing with the illegal Hispanics to determine who will be the "true" minority culture. The Illegals have their own language....so the blacks need one too. The question I have is how they can wear trousers that come to the lower part of the buttocks...and have them stay up. Sort of defies the laws of physics (in addition to the laws of fashion and good taste).