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New York Times
24-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
Yep. Right on. Forsooth. Word. Mm-Hmm. Shupp?
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!
Russia Today
20-04-2025
- General
- Russia Today
What it means to be White in America
To be White in America is to hold a name carved by wind and migration, shaped by soil and scripture, encoded in lullabies sung across centuries. This identity carries bodies across oceans, dreams across generations. It lives in cathedrals turned into cornfields, in the hush of forest chapels where ancestors still speak in the rustling of leaves. The word 'White' becomes a vessel when other names dissolve into static, when 'American' turns into a slogan sprayed on billboards without substance. In this name, something ancestral stirs — something neither ashamed nor aggressive, only awake. Multiculturalism, as it manifests now, behaves like a solvent. It dissolves the distinct, merges the sacred into sameness, smiles as it rubs out the texture of rooted lives. Within this flood, those who carry European memory find themselves drifting, searching for a foothold. The word 'White' is that foothold. It holds meaning through resistance, through memory, through the fierce dignity of cultural continuity. Identity, in this sense, becomes a form of love — love for origins, love for inherited stories, love for those yet to come. Supremacism speaks in the language of domination. Identity speaks in the language of presence. The White American who awakens to his name does not seek a throne. He seeks a hearth. He seeks a way to stay whole in a world that rewards fragmentation. This is a path of loyalty to one's kind, never hostility towards others. In the garden of peoples, each flower flourishes with its own fragrance. Ethnopluralism offers an architecture of difference, a choreography of coexistence, where each cultural rhythm retains its beat without drowning the others. The term 'White' in the American lexicon carries a unique frequency. It vibrates with Jefferson's quill and Bach's organ, with frontier hymns and Viennese waltzes, with cavalry horns and Celtic chants. To call oneself White in this context is to protect this frequency from dissonance disguised as 'inclusion.' It is to declare, without aggression, that the old songs deserve to be sung again. Memory deserves air. Tradition deserves breath. Identity deserves more than footnotes in someone else's anthology. European nationalists who peer across the Atlantic may see a racial label where a cultural signal flares. In America, this signal reaches through the noise, calling for cohesion in the absence of nationhood. The immigrant once became American through absorption into a defined mythos. That mythos no longer exists. 'White' now fills the vacuum with a new mode of belonging — fused from ancestral fragments, reconstructed into a postmodern tribe bound by shared affinities rather than state-sponsored creeds. This tribe seeks kinship, not conquest. The word itself — 'White' — is undergoing alchemy. Once used carelessly, once wielded cruelly, now reclaimed with care. It becomes a sanctuary word, a quiet defiance against vanishing. It shields neither empire nor empire-building. It cradles only memory. Those who say the word do so with reverence, tracing maps invisible to those who only see skin. Within this word lives the village, the chapel bell, the grandmother's eyes. To be White, then, is to feel time coiling through your veins, to hold the sacred burden of continuity with both hands. Identity here acts as a compass, never a cage. It points to something essential, never reductive. Within its frame, new expressions rise — art, ritual, story, space. The future emerges from the past, remixed through intention rather than accident. Each person who reclaims identity becomes a steward. Each community that honors its inheritance becomes a lighthouse. In the haze of cultural disintegration, the glow of remembrance shines stronger than shame. Authentic diversity, when anchored in respect, requires difference. And difference requires selfhood. To be pro-White is to be pro-identity. To affirm one's people is to affirm all peoples. The line between celebration and supremacism is one of spirit, not volume. This spirit seeks harmony, not hierarchy. A world without distinct identities offers only the cold hum of managed sameness. A world of living cultures brims with meaning. So let this be said clearly: the affirmation of White identity, grounded in respect, carried with humility, lit by ancestral fire, serves not as a threat — but as a promise. A promise to remain, to remember, to reimagine. This article was first published on Constantin von Hoffmeister's Substack,
