Talking differently to black people

[jdl22]

I do this sort of thing a bit. On a similar note I have the habit of picking up speech patterns from people I'm frequently around and continuing to use them even when I'm not around the person.

Here are some:
- my fiance is from Hawaii. My standard greeting when I see people I know has somehow become "how's it?" I don't know exactly how when or why this happened because my fiance doesn't say it much. I also throw some hawaiian words in while speaking english.

- when I was in high school we had an english foreign exchange student living with us. That was 7 years ago. I still ask "have you got any ..." instead of "do you have any..." I also use other expressions such as loads and some things I'm not coming up with at the moment.

- in my grad program most people are not native speakers of english. My current circle of friends consists of two americans, two catalans, a chilean, an uruguayan, a jamaican, and several chinese. I'm around Chinese people particularly a lot recently, my closest friend other than my roommate is from Shanghai and I frequently play basketball and volleyball in games where I'm the only non-Chinese person there. From talking with all these nonnative speakers I have managed to pick up a variety of grammar mistakes or phrases that I wouldn't normally use. That last sentence is a good example, saying talking with instead of talking to. I also often use the word so instead of that. When I'm talking to the Jamaican guy I often pronounce th like t and use man a hell of a lot more often than I would otherwise ("how you doin' man, everyting ok?").

- I studied in Spain and can (or at least could awhile ago) speak Spanish. This and talking with spanish speaking people in english has done well to mess up my syntax. For example, instead of saying "this hand is good" I will say "it's good, this hand." This has improved somewhat as I've spent less time with the spanish speakers than last year, but I still do it when I'm around them.

[chaas4747]

One of my best friends is from Mexico, when I am around that guy I find myself throwing the spanish accent on words that I would never speaking to anyone else.

[xadrez]

My girlfriend is latina, when I watch the Yankee game with her family I sometimes find myself yelling out "CARAJO, CONO, PENDEJOS, and HOMMM RON!!".

[stankybank]

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I'll speak broken english to fobbish people at the poker table, esp w/ the accent and all. To white people, I try to speak clear, standard english. To black people, I might throw in some slang here and there but nothing like what you hear E-40 or Notorious B.I.G. might say. To old people, I speak boring. To girls, I speak politely. To guys, I'm a cussing machine sometimes.

Depends, you know?

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Do you think most foreigners can tell when you're mimicking their accents? Especially ones that speak really bad English.

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Well, at the poker table, I say comments in jest that are obviously comical and hardly rude at all. For example, I might say something like 'Ni-han Suh' instead of 'Nice hand, sir' or 'You no good, play like that you no win from me, okay?' It's all fun and games when I say it and the way I say it makes that obvious, 'they' recognize that and don't take it personally. I wouldn't say that to someone who looks like they can't take it so I only say it to people who are talking at the table and/or seem to be non-uptight.

When I speak to other races, I don't spit out slang or crazy ESPN Spelling Bee words to impress them, I just say words that come right out of my mouth at the moment.

[FouTight]

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My girlfriend is Jewish and I always yell "Schnell, schnell!" when I want her to hurry up. She doesn't like it.

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This reminds me of when I was in school a few years ago and working on a group project. I hadn't spoken to any of my group members before. One of the guys in my group was Jewish. Whenever he'd offer up an opinion of how the project should proceed, I'd immediately respond with "That's Kosher with me". I must have said it a half dozen times during our meeting.

Prior to that meeting, I'd never used the phrase "That's Kosher" in my life. I actually didn't realize I'd said it so often until he finally gave me a dirty look the 5th or 6th time it came out of my mouth.

Needless to say, I didn't make a good first impression on my team members.

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Why? Kosher is perfectly acceptable in that situation, not offensive, and you should not feel bad for using it. If people take offense to THAT then they have some misunderstandings.

[hoopsie44]

Tim Legler on ESPN NBA coverage tries to become an honorary 'bro when he's talking to Steven Smith and Greg Anthony. He sounds very phony and contrived. Too bad, because he knows his hoops.

[youtalkfunny]

Hope this isn't straying too far off topic, but I found this interesting:

I went to the army's foreign language school to learn Korean. I was 25 years old.

The first week of class, all the French that I had learned in high school, long forgotten, came flooding back to me.

I later learned that it's because there's a part of your brain where you store your foreign language learning, and now that I was again using that part of my brain, it "woke up".

[HopeydaFish]

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Why? Kosher is perfectly acceptable in that situation, not offensive, and you should not feel bad for using it. If people take offense to THAT then they have some misunderstandings.

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Oh, and I kept referring to him as "Jew-Boy". I forgot to mention that part.

[NiceCatch]

This thread made me think of another issue that's been on my mind recently.

Isn't adaptability the key to:
A) Being a good poker player
B) Being successful in relationships
C) Being successful in... life?

Seems like talking differently to different people is a case of adapting to the situation to make communication and relating easier.

Not a bad thing.

[NiceCatch]

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Tim Legler on ESPN NBA coverage tries to become an honorary 'bro when he's talking to Steven Smith and Greg Anthony. He sounds very phony and contrived. Too bad, because he knows his hoops.

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