Leading tours round Greece I was always being asked what species of trees and plants were. I would say “I don’t know in English, but in Greek it’s called a ‘den xero’ tree”. Translates as a “I don’t know” tree. People would ask me to spell it so they could note it down . . .
As for Trevor Noah: I don’t speak Xhosa, but had a good guess at the translation before I saw it - very funny.
You’re kidding, right?
Not really. Frankly, your “Yeah, racism is taking a dig at apartheid. Keep digging that hole.” comment seems completely out of left field. Did I miss something? Unless, you think the joke was a direct jab at Apartheid? Seems unlikely as he’s playing more for an American audience nowadays.
But if your meaning is Noah can make white jokes because Apartheid then, yeah I obviously get that. But it’s not like you would condemn a black American for saying a similar joke.
…and the reasoning would be “Because of slavery and Jim crow and ongoing racism”
Right. Can you think of a single nationality a black person could possess that you would condemn for that joke? I’m guessing no. Therefore, I see little need to discuss the intricacies of the repeal of Apartheid and its lingering effects to decide the appropriateness of an Oscar joke.
Wakandan?
I am curious, MrDibble, both you and LHoD both thought the joke was hilarious. Did you also think it was two separate jokes? “People bug me about Wakanda” and “White people don’t understand Xhosa”?
Eta: lol. Checkmate.
No, I think the Wakandan bit was just setup for the actual joke, it wasn’t much of a joke in-and-of itself.
And the joke wasn’t even for the Oscars audience. It was for his fans back home.
It’s a fair bet that in the internet age, one could expect the true nature of the joke to get around soon enough: too late for the live audience, but a delayed action talking point (and possibly all the more pointed for that) for the following days. Very clever.
Exactly. And for his fans back home, of all colours, the joke is funny and not offensive.
He could of course have said that ‘*Americans *don’t know what I’m saying’ but that would have given the game away since people would know he said something about Americans.
Is the Xhosa word for “Americans” recognizable? The language is so different from English that I imagine that even if it was almost a pure loanword it would sound pretty different.
My interpretation was that he was saying, “White people don’t know that I’m lying [about the translation of this sentence],” not, “White people don’t know that I’m lying [about Wakanda].” The latter interpretation makes it a lot less funny, because it’s not as tightly structured–but it seems that some folks arrived at that interpretation.
Right. He has a mild set up that is accessible to everyone, about people coming up to him going all Wakanda this, Wakanda that, Wakanda etc., which one imagines may make him roll his eyes about their becoming enamored of a fictional Africa, and then he turns to an in-the-know segment of the audience and says “Now watch me make up something African-sounding and they’ll also buy it”.
Now, another kind of comedian would have kept it referent to the set-up, and said a phrase in Xhosa, then made a pause, and explained “meaning: what are you talking about, man, it’s a movie”. But that would be another kind of comedian.
I suppose he could have said “these guys in the room don’t know I’m lying” and folks would be less ticklish about the “white people” bit, but come on, how snowflaky are we gonna get?
I think so but I will admit that as a loan word it is modified a bit more than others I’m familiar with. So it probably would have gone unnoticed on first hearing.
Now if he had said Canadians everybody would have spotted that 
Dig up, stupid!
(Obligatory reference complete, return to thread)
Since you clearly understood it, could you write out what he said in the actual written form of the language? I’d like to see what it looks like.
I did not understand it, I only heard about it the next day. You couldn’t pay me to watch the Oscars.
But the transcript I’ve seen says “Abelungu abazi uba ndiyaxoka”
The thing is, your version is a pretty childish joke, even if more tightly structured, whatever that is supposed to mean. As demonstrated in this very thread:
It’s not really good or bad - just sort of ignorant in the way people use the term ‘darkie’ sometimes.
I myself don’t find it offensive, just sort of silly. I’ve heard the theory that the way to solve the race problem is to take this sort of attitude towards white people and somehow it will have an enlightening effect. I’ve seen no evidence of this enlightening effect and don’t know of any historical example of such a thing occurring with any race or group of people.
I’d explain this basic concept of humor to you, but, y’know.