'My bluds say the skets round here are nuff deep' - the new inner city language

[Kaka Tim]

observe if you will, the middle class teenagers trying to do a naturally occurring linguistic drift by aping a fucking book. You cunts.

middle class? fuck you and your 'prole-lier than thou' bollocks. It was a shit comprehensive in essex. The kid who instigated it was from derry and his dad was inside for armed robbery. He was smart was all.

 

[andysays]

middle class? fuck you and your 'prole-lier than thou' bollocks. It was a shit comprehensive in essex. The kid who instigated it was from derry and his dad was inside for armed robbery. He was smart was all.

Shouldn't that be "prole-lier than thou yarbles", O my brother?

 

[sihhi]

But I don't think your examples are all Jamaican in origin (the rest of the Caribbean doesn't get much of a look in, to some resentment from others). Yard is derived from an Americanism (backyard) which has it's uses in the UK (nimby, for eg). Blud and safe have nothing to do with patois as far as I know, I think blud is from the US gang and blurs in meaning with bruv. I always thought butters derived from butt ugly, and again, I see no connection with patois.

I didn't write the words themselves were all direct borrowings from West Indian English, but their introduction into wider London talk has largely been from those cultures in Britain from sub-sections of those in Britain. Safe, blud and yard were West Indian speech in London from the 1990s, safe maybe the others even in the 1980s. Another origin of butters is but-er (but her), they were thing in speech in London specifically amongst people from Carribbean cultures. but now it's moved from there to others as well. Yard as urban youth slang in northern American cities means prison, I don't think it comes straight from America.

 

[existentialist]

I hope for their sakes that when they grow up, they'll be able to speak properly.

You need have no fear on that score. Their choice to speak in this patois is just that - a choice - to ensure that they stay "in" with their peers, and are unintelligible to people like you (and me). In between times, they'll be speaking the Queen's English (or some approximation of it), just as you like it, and when they're your age, they'll be harrumphing about how the "kids of today" don't speak proper.

 

[ymu]

They're not speaking patois. It's called British Black English.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I don't think it differs from most languages in that respect. It's just a feature of language in general, rather than something special about English.

Some cultures do attempt to "police" their languages more strenuously, though. The French have spent years fighting a losing battle against slang and Franglais.

 

[DotCommunist]

Some cultures do attempt to "police" their languages more strenuously, though. The French have spent years fighting a losing battle against slang and Franglais.

acadamie francaise
they even have their own uniform, which is not in the least hilarious

 

[ViolentPanda]

They're not speaking patois. It's called British Black English.

It's A patois, in the old sense of the word, that is a mash-up between conventional, international and local versions of the language. There's more than just Afro-Caribbean-derived patois, you know!

 

[andysays]

They're not speaking patois. It's called British Black English.

"Patois From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the general term. For the Jamaican creole language, see Jamaican Patois
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patois
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics."

So "this patois" doesn't refer to Jamaican patois

 

[andysays]

It's A patois, in the old sense of the word, that is a mash-up between conventional, international and local versions of the language. There's more than just Afro-Caribbean-derived patois, you know!

Snap!

 

[ymu]

It's A patois, in the old sense of the word, that is a mash-up between conventional, international and local versions of the language. There's more than just Afro-Caribbean-derived patois, you know!

You're thinking of a creole. There's are two entirely separate processes here:

Pidgin -> creole -> language

Language => dialects (many forking dialects)

BBE is a dialect, not a creole. Creoles are grammatical versions of pidgin languages which are developed by the first speakers' parents, usually slaves thrown together with no common language and broadly based on the imposed language of communication but speaken with no consistent grammar. Children brought up listening to a pidgin will develop a creole (this is the evidence base for Chomsky's linguistic theory).

Creole's sometimes develop into full languages, which Jamaican patois arguably is now. I believe it has just had its equivalent of the King James Bible moment (Bible in Patois).

Language gets formalised by dictionaries and grammars and style guides and Bibles, but it can never be contained. BBE is a dialect of English, with heavy influence from the earlier creole form of Patois.

 

[ViolentPanda]

argh! this is exactly what I was trying to illustrate. Using "you and I" or "you and me" is a classic example of something that's simple to do right and perfectly logical - UNLIKE many aspects of English grammar. You use "I" if you're the actor, the subject in the sentence, and "me" if you are the object ... and that doesn't change whether or not there is another person with you.

I went to buy a nice hot pie. You and I went to buy a nice hot pie.

The baker was pleased to see me. The baker was pleased to see you and me.

dammit, want a pie now.

Just pray that John Prescott doesn't visit the baker before you get there!

 

[ViolentPanda]

observe if you will, the middle class teenagers trying to do a naturally occurring linguistic drift by aping a fucking book. You cunts.

I think you'll find it's a function of Tim's age, not his class. "A Clockwork Orange" was a set text in many schools between the mid-'70s and mid-'80s, droog.

 

[Blagsta]

Yard is Jamaican.

"Remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown"

 

[spring-peeper]

Some cultures do attempt to "police" their languages more strenuously, though. The French have spent years fighting a losing battle against slang and Franglais.

In Quebec, they have a special police force that goes around fining people and business that do not use French in the correct way - Office de la langue francais, they call themselves. They spend their time making sure that business phones are answered in French, French signs are at least twice the size of other ethnic languages, and conversations inside of businesses with less than 10 employees is always conducted in French.

Recently, they fined an Italian restaurant for using the word "pasta" without using the French equivalent. "Pasta gate", as the media dubbed it, resulted in the officer loosing his job for being overly aggressive.

Combine that with the province's addiction for patrolling school playgrounds and chastising five and six years for using ethnic languages, and I think they are doing a good job at attempting to preserve their language.

 

[ymu]

Yard is Jamaican.

"Remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trenchtown"

They both originate from the English word "yard".

 

[ViolentPanda]

There is a disproportionate West Indian influence because West Indians are often the coolest kids (see Gus in the OP) because, you know, they're only any good at being cool, so a disproportionate number of black kids try to be cool:



But I don't think your examples are all Jamaican in origin (the rest of the Caribbean doesn't get much of a look in, to some resentment from others). Yard is derived from an Americanism (backyard

Nah, I've had mates calling their home or their area their "yard" since the early '80s. heard plenty of 1st-generation Jamaican immigrants in the '60s and '70s use it, too. It's from 18th-century British English (which, of course, the Americanism also is), not derived from American English, and means more or less the same, but just happens to have long been appropriated to mean your home or the immediate area of your home (as opposed to giving your location as a particular village or part of a town).

which has it's uses in the UK (nimby, for eg). Blud and safe have nothing to do with patois as far as I know, I think blud is from the US gang and blurs in meaning with bruv. I always thought butters derived from butt ugly, and again, I see no connection with patois.

"Safe" is 1980s Black British, meaning "things are safe here". Just taken up into wider everyday use (first as a significator of approval), and now having more of a nominal than literal meaning, given its' use almost as a "filler" (alongside "you get me") sometimes..

 

[ViolentPanda]

They both originate from the English word "yard".

The same roots, different meanings generated by different routes of use, though.

 

[eatmorecheese]

No to everyone's taste, but English Frank is a master of urban slang expressiveness. There's surely whole philology dissertations that can be written in this area?

 

[sihhi]

Nah, I've had mates calling their home or their area their "yard" since the early '80s. heard plenty of 1st-generation Jamaican immigrants in the '60s and '70s use it, too. It's from 18th-century British English (which, of course, the Americanism also is), not derived from American English, and means more or less the same, but just happens to have long been appropriated to mean your home or the immediate area of your home (as opposed to giving your location as a particular village or part of a town).

I had no idea it was here in the 1960s.
Yard from Jamaica, it was explained to me, was something to do with a shortened version of government yard - the closest thing to a council home in Jamaica (simple bungalows around a courtyard not backyard - replacing pulled down shacks) - but that even in Jamaica it was wider used than that.

 

[sihhi]

Not saying that that version of origins is all there is to it, btw.
Something obviously happened for it to become very widely used - West Africans as well as English as Turks - here.
Off out for rainy protest.

 

[andysays]

You're thinking of a creole. There's are two entirely separate processes here:
Pidgin -> creole -> language
Language => dialects (many forking dialects)
BBE is a dialect, not a creole. Creoles are grammatical versions of pidgin languages which are developed by the first speakers' parents, usually slaves thrown together with no common language and broadly based on the imposed language of communication but speaken with no consistent grammar. Children brought up listening to a pidgin will develop a creole (this is the evidence base for Chomsky's linguistic theory).
Creole's sometimes develop into full languages, which Jamaican patois arguably is now. I believe it has just had its equivalent of the King James Bible moment (Bible in Patois).
Language gets formalised by dictionaries and grammars and style guides and Bibles, but it can never be contained. BBE is a dialect of English, with heavy influence from the earlier creole form of Patois.

No, you're still wrong in your "correction" of existentialist's use of the phrase "this patois".

The word "patois" (small p) has a much wider meaning than Patois (capital P), which refers to one in particular (usually but not exclusively Jamaican).

This thread is specifically not about Jamaican patois or British Black English; it's about the relatively new phenomenon of a multicultural slang, patois or argot developing amongst inner-city youth of many backgrounds, which draws on many different languages and cultures, Jamaican and/or BBE is a significant part of this, but not the whole story.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I had no idea it was here in the 1960s.

That's when my childhood best mate's mum came over, and I can't remember her not using it when talking about the bit of Kingston she came from.

Yard from Jamaica, it was explained to me, was something to do with a shortened version of government yard - the closest thing to a council home in Jamaica (simple bungalows around a courtyard not backyard - replacing pulled down shacks) - but that even in Jamaica it was wider used than that.

yep, a simple neutral way of referring to your home/"hometown", too, without setting off territorial issues.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not saying that that version of origins is all there is to it, btw.
Something obviously happened for it to become very widely used - West Africans as well as English as Turks - here.
Off out for rainy protest.

It's become popular (IMO) because it became appropriate, just like "safe" did.

 

[Favelado]

Some cultures do attempt to "police" their languages more strenuously, though. The French have spent years fighting a losing battle against slang and Franglais.

A fair point but as you say it tends to be a losing battle. There is a similar academy here and they drag behind reality somewhat but end up absorbing new vocab and deviations from standard grammar eventually.

Paris is an interesting example actually. With comparable levels of immigration from various countries over an extended period of time, does anyone know if Parisian banlieues French has undergone an equivalent MLE evolution process? Although, with many immigrants to Paris speaking different forms of French rather than foreign languages at home its effects might not be as pronounced as in the case of London.

 

[Frances Lengel]

It's young-person slang, not prison slang.

These days though, a lot more young people seem to be getting locked up than in years gone by which has IMO resulted in prison slang (and to a lesser extent prison culture) spreading it's influence far beyond the prison walls.

 

[existentialist]

Has anyone posited why this is? Is it that negative adjectives are more powerful then their positive counterparts - so their greater intensity gets borrowed? Its interesting that the reverse process doesn't seem to happen - good meaning bad and so on.

I think you answered your own question - if you are trying to create a language that is opaque to outsiders, what better way to confuse and alienate them than by reversing the meanings of "their" words for your purposes!

I still use that "like a bastard" construction quite a lot - I hadn't even thought of it as a hangover from some adolescent lingua franca

 

[cantsin]

Problem is, talking like this will prevent kids from getting or keeping jobs.

At least it will if they don't also know how to talk and write properly.

I deal with one particular 18 yr old via work at the moment, who switches effortlessly between yoot-yard speak and straight ahead stuff with total ease, an intelligent, bright kid who enjoys the language, and is happy to have a laugh with it / at it / and openly enjoys my occassional "wtf is that sposed to mean " , and having to talk me thru a phrase.

Due to what he does ( semi professionally for now, doubt it will be for long ) he has to talk techy stuff sometimes, then he sounds like he's swallowed a manual, again losing me along the way, but he makes no attempt to intro slang into that context, and you know that if has to go to interviews etc, he will have zero problem adopting the right tone.

So his use of inner city dialect is no hindrance for him. For any one his mates, who hasnt' got where he has education/skills-wise, their problems wont be the lingo either, but all the other (traditional)factors affecting working class kids chances.

 

[existentialist]

No, you're still wrong in your "correction" of existentialist's use of the phrase "this patois".

The word "patois" (small p) has a much wider meaning than Patois (capital P), which refers to one in particular (usually but not exclusively Jamaican).

This thread is specifically not about Jamaican patois or British Black English; it's about the relatively new phenomenon of a multicultural slang, patois or argot developing amongst inner-city youth of many backgrounds, which draws on many different languages and cultures, Jamaican and/or BBE is a significant part of this, but not the whole story.

I should make a confession here - I used the word "patois" merely as a casual reference to a different style of speaking. It was never my intention to spark an intense etymological debate. Should I go back and edit my post, or would that cause the Internet to suddenly disappear up its own arse?

 

[DotCommunist]

middle class? fuck you and your 'prole-lier than thou' bollocks. It was a shit comprehensive in essex. The kid who instigated it was from derry and his dad was inside for armed robbery. He was smart was all.

yeah I was just being a cunt for the sake of it, apols.