That post about "handies" reminded me: I have a question, yo.
Apologies if this topic has come up before. I'm new (ish).
In the US, there has been a trend over the past...mmm...ten years?...at least in some regions, of street slang or wannabe street slang using the particle "yo" at the end of a sentence to add emphasis. I think this may have started out as actual "gangsta" talk; by the time I encountered it in the summer of 2000, it was very, very much in vogue with the kids I was working with: mostly abused and neglected adolescent boys with too many behavioral problems to stay in foster care, living in institutional homes. Very few of them were actually streetwise or in any way dangerous, but oh, did they want to be. And, oh, did they use "yo."
Example, "That test was mad hard, yo."
Or, "I'm gonna mess you up, yo."
Or, because these were seriously institutionalized children, one of my favorites: "Staff! He's instigating me, yo!"
(In institutional life for children, as I've encountered it in Massachusetts at least, 'instigate' has been turned into a verb which takes a person as its direct object. So, if person A is deliberately acting in such a way as to provoke or otherwise set up person B to get into trouble, person A is "instigating" person B. The kids are fluent in this usage, which struck me as hysterically funny the first year or so I was working with them, and now seems so normal that I have a hard time recapturing what seemed so anomalous about it then.)
And now it seems to me that everyone knows it. I see it in LJ: "She's a total drama-queen, yo." This is at least part in thanks to the wonderful thing that is television.
The thing is, in Japanese, there's a particle 'yo' which can be added to sentences for emphasis - and not just in street-slangy contexts but in general speech, as far as I understand it: Mochi ga daisuki desu yo. (I learned that women sometimes use 'wa' in the same way, also for emphasis, but I never got taught how that actually works.)
Does anyone know if there's *any* connection? Does anyone know anything about the beginnings of the use of 'yo' for emphasis in the US? Are we looking at parallel evolution, or were the languages cross-pollinated in this case?
Inquiring minds want to know, yo.
In the US, there has been a trend over the past...mmm...ten years?...at least in some regions, of street slang or wannabe street slang using the particle "yo" at the end of a sentence to add emphasis. I think this may have started out as actual "gangsta" talk; by the time I encountered it in the summer of 2000, it was very, very much in vogue with the kids I was working with: mostly abused and neglected adolescent boys with too many behavioral problems to stay in foster care, living in institutional homes. Very few of them were actually streetwise or in any way dangerous, but oh, did they want to be. And, oh, did they use "yo."
Example, "That test was mad hard, yo."
Or, "I'm gonna mess you up, yo."
Or, because these were seriously institutionalized children, one of my favorites: "Staff! He's instigating me, yo!"
(In institutional life for children, as I've encountered it in Massachusetts at least, 'instigate' has been turned into a verb which takes a person as its direct object. So, if person A is deliberately acting in such a way as to provoke or otherwise set up person B to get into trouble, person A is "instigating" person B. The kids are fluent in this usage, which struck me as hysterically funny the first year or so I was working with them, and now seems so normal that I have a hard time recapturing what seemed so anomalous about it then.)
And now it seems to me that everyone knows it. I see it in LJ: "She's a total drama-queen, yo." This is at least part in thanks to the wonderful thing that is television.
The thing is, in Japanese, there's a particle 'yo' which can be added to sentences for emphasis - and not just in street-slangy contexts but in general speech, as far as I understand it: Mochi ga daisuki desu yo. (I learned that women sometimes use 'wa' in the same way, also for emphasis, but I never got taught how that actually works.)
Does anyone know if there's *any* connection? Does anyone know anything about the beginnings of the use of 'yo' for emphasis in the US? Are we looking at parallel evolution, or were the languages cross-pollinated in this case?
Inquiring minds want to know, yo.