We may be a polarized nation, but on a verbal level we are witnessing an explosion of ways to agree. Even a professional observer of linguistic change struggles to keep up with the variety of ways that the younger folk have to say “yep!” This fecundity is evidence not only of how language evolves but also of how dialects mix. And it’s fun.
Back in the days of Middle English, the way to communicate agreement was “yea verily.” Also “forsooth” — “sooth” meant “truth,” now perceivable only in “soothsayer.” Today our default affirmation marker is “yeah.” Not “yes”: In most circumstances, “yes” has a distinctly chilly ring, a hint of displeasure with whoever is asking the question. Or it can sound socially awkward, as when Miss Prissy, a chicken in the Looney Tunes Foghorn Leghorn series, intones her flutily schoolmarmish “yeh-ess!” “Yeah” drafts an “ah” on to “yes” that softens it up, just as it does with “nah,” conveying negation in a “no offense” way. “Yep” subs in a p, which when attached to the end of a word can make it seem more amiable, as it does for “nope” or “welp.”
All fine options, but nothing compared to the cornucopia that Black English produced. The hip and jolly “right on!” was probably the first affirmation to gain national attention in the late 1960s. By the late 1970s it was starting to sound dated. Before long, one was more likely to say “word” (or the slightly more embroidered “word up”), based ultimately on a medieval proverb that “one’s word is one’s bond.” Also, we got the similarly flavored “mos def” and “true dat.”
These affirmation words have been key markers in the influence of Black English on the language as a whole. Beyond individual words, they have contributed a sense, now commonplace, of language as a creative and kinetic zone. Young speakers of all shades now expect a constant turnover in ways of saying “yep.”
White American dialects have been fertile ground as well. I remember a spirited conversation I once had when a white friend of mine suddenly erupted with “primo!” It sounded so strange to the rest of us that we laughed, a lot. That was decades ago but I still chuckle when I think of how the word took us all by surprise. My friend said “primo” was a cherished word of assent among young folk in the Massachusetts area she came from. “Totes” originated in white dialects, as did “totally.” Remember Valley Girls?
More typical is the Black slang import “bet,” which is opaque to the untrained ear but just a shortened and melodically flattened version of the longstanding “you bet.” Someone says “The show wasn’t even that good, anyway”; his friend answers, “Bet.” Similarly incomprehensible to the uninitiated is “no cap.” Its basic meaning is “no kidding” — in Black English, one meaning of “capping” is lying — but it’s now also used as a marker of agreement. Also on the smorgasbord these days is “say that,” a descendant of “you can say that again” and “you said it” with the flavor of the Black “preach it!”
A West Coast friend reports that her (white) teenage boys’ versions of assent are currently “peak,” “fire” and “facts.” On the East Coast I recently encountered a (white) 20-something whose preferred affirmation marker was “period,” which threw me the first couple of times. One can only begin to imagine all the variations to be found between.
Another affirmation marker is “mm-HMM.” One theory is that it was brought into English by enslaved people, most of whose West African languages are tonal, like Mandarin. That makes for a great story, but I’m not convinced. For one thing, “mm-HMM” is not especially associated with Black people or even the South. For another, there is a more economical explanation available if we pull the camera back a little.
“Mm-HMM” is what linguists call a melodic expression. In English, others include “MM-mm” to mean “nope,” “mm-MM-mm” to mean “I don’t know,” and “hm-M” to mean “What?” The melodies of the latter two seem to be based on the way we say “I don’t know” and “What?” “Mm-HMM” most likely derived from the way we say “OK” or “That’s right.”
The impulse to reach for sounds instead of words to mean “yep” and “nope” crosses cultural boundaries. Swedes can agree by just inhaling while saying something like “shupp.” In Italian, “bo” is a way of saying you don’t know. Most of our idiomatic ways to agree come from Black English, but some transcend dialect entirely.
Thus we can even count a kind of singing among our efflorescence of ways to convey warm agreement, much of it driven by Black English seasoning the general American vernacular. Language changes, dialects mix — even in how we say “yeah!”
By the way, I recently did an interview with Bari Weiss of The Free Press about my new book, “Pronoun Trouble.” If you watch it, you will see me assert — with a certain take-a-stab confidence — that there are no languages in which words for men and women are based on body parts, along the lines of recent proposals like “people with uteruses.” I must eat crow. Mark Post, a linguist at the University of Sydney, informs me that in Galo, an Indigenous language of India, the word for son-in-law translates as something like “mister penis” (i.e., the source of future offspring), and names and nicknames of daughters often refer to birth order along the lines of “first vagina” and “last vagina.” To use another melodic expression the youngs are using these days, “womp womp.” Now I know!
John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” @JohnHMcWhorter
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