# "comedians", some tips on the black "be" thing **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 5, 2005, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460 "2005-02-05T00:49:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/61 "2005-02-08T02:23:47Z")
> [@NattoGuy](#): > > Well, first and foremost, you can stop making analogies comparing black people to children whose “incorrect” AAVE needs correcting. huh? > [@](#): > > I would it the height of arrogance for a non-speaker to tell someone that they’re speaking their own language incorrectly, or to dispute someone else’s direct observations. And I gave you two examples, one of a very articulate 12 year old and one of a very articulate 34 year old who are native speakers of a dialect (SAE) who occasionally say things incorrectly within that dialect. Neither was comparing black people to children whose “incorrect” AAVE needs correcting. My entire point is that AAVE is a true dialect and that the speakers of it are not children getting English wrong. They are competent and intelligent adults who are speaking a competent and intelligent dialect of the English language. That doesn’t mean they can’t make mistakes in grammar within AAVE. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/62 "2005-02-08T02:43:43Z")
I invited **pizzabrat** because he’s black and it’s his thread, **Biggirl** because she’s black and cracked me up with the Haterade joke, and I invited you, **Aesiron** , because we talk all the time in the Cafe Society forum and your judgement seems… y’know … basically sound. Other than your Hoshi fixation. I should have invited \*\*case sensitive \*\* and a few others but I’m always leaving people off lists like this. Thanks for those who gave “annottase” a try. Deciphered: > [@](#): > > **CECE: Choo so pissed about, nigga?** TRANSLATION: _Why are you so angry, my friend?_ > > \*\*Peter: TRINA! Bitches blowinup muhcel, talkinoutthesidderer neck. Musbe ouddahuh goddamn MINE, talkinatshitta me. Ta ME! Fuckshethank sheis? \*\* TRANSLATION: _This horrid young lady is using up all my airtime minutes and making all sorts of wild accusations. Clearly, she’s unstable to speak to me so. She needs therapy._ > > **CECE: Damn, nigga, chill and shit.** TRANSLATION: _Oh. What is she – 14 with big titties?_ > > \*\*Peter: 'Moan poppercross da mouth sewhard shekinsuck muh dick annottase cum. \*\* TRANSLATION: (For real this time) _I’m going to pop her across the mouth so hard she can suck my dick and not taste cum._ The latter was me trying to make up a variation of “slap the taste out your mouth.” I don’t know any brothers who’d say “the” cum. Like saying eat “the” shit and die. You smell like “the” ass. I want “the” pussy. Must be some internalized unwritten rule about dropping definite articles when you’re making generalized statements and insults. Hey! Check me out, I’m a linguist. I’m definitely “the” shit! ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/63 "2005-02-08T06:11:54Z")
Hey, now… don’t go there. You can mock me \*and \*my mama but I’ll have to hurt you if you keep on after Hoshi. Aside from that, thanks for the props. I was just surprised to see my name in there with **Biggirl** ’s and **pizzabrat** ’s and considering the thread, I assumed there was more to my inclusion than just recognition and camaraderie. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/64 "2005-02-08T07:49:29Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > It has nothing to do with anything because my rant has everything to do with the “be” thing and how wannabe comedians get it consistently wrong, and nothing to do with redneck speak. I don’t know anything about that, so if you have a problem with that, why don’t you rant about it? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/65 "2005-02-08T13:07:25Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > 😕 **blowero** , I think **pizzabrat** ’s saying that s/he doesn’t know enough about redneck speak to rant about it; it was the be+verb conjuction that yanked his/her chain. If you’d like to rant about misspoken redneck speak, by all means proceed. \*\*pizzabrat \*\*wasn’t trying to make a larger social statement, just venting about this one topic that was annoying. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2005, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/66 "2005-02-08T14:31:49Z")
> [@violacrane](#): > > The only thing is that being from the UK when I hear (read) “I be doing something or other” what I hear is my Wiltshire Nana speaking “Now where’s my 'at – he be on the table.” The English language is a wonderful thing innit. Irish (not the Gaelic language but English as spoken in Ireland) which has to be one of the accents most often gotten wrong by comics/actors etc will use “be” in some parts of the country. Curiously, imitators rarely use it when trying to sounds Irish. Local people here would say things like “I do be going there”, which means something like “I often go there” or “I have a tendency to go there”. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/67 "2005-02-09T14:15:32Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > It’s these rules that are noted and codified and writen down in textbooks by linguists. They’re not making the rules up - the speakers are doing that. They’re simply writing them down. Which does mean, sooner or later, they’ll be out of date. If not, we’d all still be speaking Middle English. Perhaps the better question (and Great Debate territory) is if AAVE is changing so rapidly that the “be + verb = continous state of being” rule is becomeing outdated already. Or perhaps it’s not a distinction that exists in every AAVE-speaking community. There is a great deal of regional variation in AAVE (moreso than in standard English, since there aren’t schools teaching a particular form of it as “correct”, and I imagine that usage in the media is probably spotty enough that it doesn’t work as a strong standardizing force. Or maybe NattoGuy’s observations are just incorrect. It’s far harder to correctly observe and document language use that NattoGuy acknowledges - but I understand that lay people who think that they’re experts in linguistics on account of being able to speak a language will be offended at this notion. (What if other fields worked this way? Should I be able to claim that biologists don’t know what their talking about because, as a biological being, I’m naturally an expert at biology?) > [@NattoGuy](#): > > Are you somehow startled by the suggestion that a native speaker knows more about his own language than someone who paid $50,000 to study it out of a book for a few semesters? I know it horrifies academic linguistics, but I think it happens to be true. Are _you_ startled by the suggestion that you may have either made incorrect observations (again, it’s something linguists have considerably more experience and knowledge of than you) or incorrectly understood the context of the speech? The question on my mind is why you feel that you have the knowledge to dismiss an entire field of study. Most laypeople don’t have much knowledge of linguistics at all, even in regard to the language they speak natively. “Competence” to use a language is one thing, and it’s certainly the case that linguistics can’t model language so precisely as to be able to predict the way a speaker will respond or clearly understand every grammatical principle at work, any more than a biologist can explain everything about the human body. However, the metaknowledge underlying linguistics is something most people don’t have. It seems unlikely, at best, that you could have made enough correct observations to support your assertion here - and since you haven’t documented them, it’s useless to the rest of us anyway. > [@WhyNot](#): > > Perhaps it’s already going the way of the “never end a sentance with a preposition” rule or the “ain’t ain’t a word” rule. Neither of those “rules” was ever really a rule. “Ain’t” has been pretty well removed from dialects associated with education, but that’s a recent development, and “ain’t” existed in all registers and sociolects until relatively recently. And the rule about preposition stranding is another rule that comes from the misapplication of Latin grammar to English, much like the split infinitive rule. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/68 "2005-02-09T20:57:00Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > **blowero** , I think **pizzabrat** ’s saying that s/he doesn’t know enough about redneck speak to rant about it; it was the be+verb conjuction that yanked his/her chain. If you’d like to rant about misspoken redneck speak, by all means proceed. \*\*pizzabrat \*\*wasn’t trying to make a larger social statement, just venting about this one topic that was annoying. That would have been a much better answer than, “it has nothing to do with anything”. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/69 "2005-02-09T22:24:34Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > **pizzabrat** is black. NO he BE black! And he be trippin ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/70 "2005-02-09T22:35:51Z")
For all intents and purposes, the present tense in SAE functions as an AAVE habitual, with very few exceptions. (verbs indication current emotional state are one exception: “To think”, “to feel”.) Consider this hypothetical: I am watching a movie which uses Early Modern English, which is a different dialect from SAE. A conversation becomes heated, at which point one conversant accuses the other of untruths by saying “You lie!” If I wasn’t already in the EME context, it would take me a second to “translate” that phrase into SAE, since I don’t know anyone who uses the present tense as a present tense rather than a habitual. Instead, if someone speaking SAE said “You lie!” I would take that as an accusation that the subject lies a lot rather than an accusation that the subject _is_ lying. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/71 "2005-02-09T22:54:44Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > That would have been a much better answer than, “it has nothing to do with anything”. Why? You deserved a glib, derisive, response - you said “Of course, black comedians are always 100% accurate when they talk like a redneck” as if I started some racial competetion claiming that white comedians can’t talk like black people right in general, rather than expressed a peeve about a very specific and consistent phenomenon. It’s like you were trying to start some off-the-topic fight. Plus, you completely missed the point of my OP. Let me explain comedy to you. A parody or impression is funny when it exaggerates a truth. Having a modern day black person forget to conjugate “be” only exaggerates the comedian’s ignorance, since it isn’t based on any truth whatsoever, and ends up at best being unfunny, and at worst painful and irritating. I tried to sum up that idea with my bad British impression example; maybe it was too foriegn for you to get. Imagine if I did a New Yorker impression ALL THE TIME where I just added “t” to the beginning of every other word. Would that be funny, or would that be stupid and annoying? > [@msmith537](#): > > NO he BE black! > > And he be trippin ::shrug:: I knew there’d be lost causes… ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/72 "2005-02-09T23:13:02Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Why? You deserved a glib, derisive, response - you said “Of course, black comedians are always 100% accurate when they talk like a redneck” as if I started some racial competetion claiming that white comedians can’t talk like black people right in general, rather than expressed a peeve about a very specific and consistent phenomenon. It’s like you were trying to start some off-the-topic fight. Plus, you completely missed the point of my OP. No I didn’t miss the point; you missed MY point. My point was, that your rant is silly and picayune. And as EVIDENCE of that, I pointed out that nobody has ever complained about the CONVERSE, i.e., black comedians making inaccurate imitations of white people. > [@](#): > > Let me explain comedy to you. A parody or impression is funny when it exaggerates a truth. Having a modern day black person forget to conjugate “be” only exaggerates the comedian’s ignorance, since it isn’t based on any truth whatsoever, and ends up at best being unfunny, and at worst painful and irritating. I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. People from Brooklyn don’t just put “s” on the end of every word, but comedians still get laughs saying things like, “Why donts youse guys get outta heres?”, and I never hear anyone bitch about it. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ea5d25/32.png) [@Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Scrappy_Hero_Pup)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/73 "2005-02-09T23:18:30Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Let me explain comedy to you. A parody or impression is funny when it exaggerates a truth. No, comedy is subjective. And not conjugating “to be” continues to create the ghetto impression that the comedian is trying to make, and people laugh. Making it funny. You can’t argue for the purity of an evolving form when it stops at the point at which you are comfortable. You can’t really argue for the purity of an evolving form at all. If your wishes were enforced across the board, there would be no ebonics, because nobody would have mangled SAE badly enough, and in great enough numbers, to be able to slap the “dialect” label on it. And, call it a dialect all you want, but the only thing ebonics means to me is you don’t be hired, even if the job is as simple as asking if the customers be wanting fries with that. (and I know that I misconjugated my ebonics, but it was still pretty damn funny) ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/74 "2005-02-09T23:23:33Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. People from Brooklyn don’t just put “s” on the end of every word, but comedians still get laughs saying things like, “Why donts youse guys get outta heres?”, and I never hear anyone bitch about it. Because it’s a freaking EXAGGERATION of a REAL PHENOMENON! THAT’S COMEDY! WHAT DID I JUST SAY? ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/75 "2005-02-09T23:31:56Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > No I didn’t miss the point; you missed MY point. My point was, that your rant is silly and picayune. And as EVIDENCE of that, I pointed out that nobody has ever complained about the CONVERSE, i.e., black comedians making inaccurate imitations of white people. Again, what did that point have to do with anything? I wasn’t complaining about whites imitating blacks poorly in general. I had a peeve with a specific phenomenon, a consistently invoked myth that’s not based on anything. And what does it matter that nobody has ever complained about the converse (as if you’re so sure)? I have to wait for a white person to make an opposite rant before my rant is valid? Maybe there isn’t a parallel, mythical phenomonen that black comedians contribute to whites that isn’t based on reality in any way. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2005, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/76 "2005-02-10T02:11:36Z")
One thing I forgot is the “story” use of the present tense of SAE. And despite my previous claim about the analogy between the practical use of SAE’s present tense and the AAVE habitual, I can’t really claim to know from AAVE.\* So it annoys me as well when I see people in the media(i.e. ads and entertainment) apparently misusing what I understand to be AAVE: I am not sure if: – It is a dialect of AAVE different from that which I understand – The writers wrote the lines to intentionally misuse/idiosyncratically use AAVE – The writers just don’t know AAVE. For instance, the recent Pizza Hut commercial for pizzas you can “rip n dip”. At one point a woman says something like “You be rippin’ n dippin.” I can’t tell if it’s that or “You’ll be rippin n dippin.” Now, is it: – “You be” as a statement. That makes no sense: why would she tell someone they habitually rip n dip? – “You be” as a promissary statement: i.e. once you see how good they are, you WILL habitually rip n dip. This seems incorrect to me, but then again I can’t say for sure. – “You’ll be” as a promissary statement. This seems correct to me, but it didn’t seem like it said that in the ad, it sounded more like “You be”. \*Or from JAE ;j ---
**Author:** ![Nightime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Nightime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightime)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2005, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/77 "2005-02-10T02:28:58Z")
This is a misguided rant. You are just assuming that the intent of the comedian is to “ridicule” black people, when in reality the comedy comes from the spectacle of an obviously “not with it” white person trying to imitate the “hip” way of speaking. The mistakes are part of that. If you had directed your rant at television shows or commercials which have black people misusing the language, then you might have had a point. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2005, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/78 "2005-02-10T09:15:35Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Because it’s a freaking EXAGGERATION of a REAL PHENOMENON! THAT’S COMEDY! WHAT DID I JUST SAY? Oh, so getting it wrong when imitating white people’s language is funny because it’s an exaggeration, but getting it wrong when imitating black people’s language is irritating and makes you look stupid. Glad we cleared that up. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2005, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/79 "2005-02-10T11:04:57Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > Oh, so getting it wrong when imitating white people’s language is funny because it’s an exaggeration, but getting it wrong when imitating black people’s language is irritating and makes you look stupid. Glad we cleared that up. Looks like we’re just talking past each other…but I’ll try one more time. Black people don’t say “be” where they should say “am”, “are”, or “is”. We don’t do anything like that at all. So having a black person not conjugate “be” would not be an exaggeration of anything, since there’s no original reference point in the first place. Some people in that North East area of the country say “youse” instead of “you”. Making a charicature of a North Easterner who then not only adds an “s” to the end of “you”, but to everything else as well would be an exaggeration of something that actually happens; something that the audience would recognize, thus creating an actual, competent joke. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2005, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460/80 "2005-02-10T12:27:26Z")
\*\*pizzabrat. \*\* You’re right, I know it, you know it, intellectually honest people know it. **blowero.** Firstly, “reverse” not “converse.” Secondly, African-American comedians by and large don’t quibble with white folks’ grammar, chiefly because nobody black at a comedy club on a Friday night ever found that shit funny. They mock inflections, tones; nervousness when desperately trying to appear cool; predjudices and bigotries; white men’s obsessions with black men’s penis size and they stupid things they say about it; and whitebread verbal expressions (“Gosh darn it all! Heck. Fooey.”) Those are _accurate_ exaggerations with regard to things you say. **Nightime** , Pease. So all along, the DELTA EBONICS FLASH CARTOON was meant to mock… _the white announcer_. **Happy Scrappy Hero Pup.** Describing it terms of “mangled Standard American English,” etc, betrays your cultural ignorance and vernacular bigotry. It is a dialect. “… you don’t be hired, not even to serve fries.” Son, be cool. Nobody wants your job. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comedians-some-tips-on-the-black-be-thing/288460.md?page=5)