Changing skin color

[anatess2]

On 1/6/2019 at 6:03 PM, The Folk Prophet said:

In response I'd like to aks you a question.

This has always intrigued me.  I have heard of highly educated people still say this.  So, it makes me believe it is more of an accent than it is a word choice.  But I can't pinpoint to a speech pattern that precludes the use of "sk"  of black culture in the USA.

[anatess2]

2 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Out of curiosity, how did you reconcile that reaction with gaining a testimony?

Another intriguing thing.  Filipinos - who are dark skinned, especially compared to Koreans, even after 3 centuries of Spanish occupation - seem to not have any problems with it.  At all.

Edited January 14, 2019 by anatess2

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

This has always intrigued me.  I have heard of highly educated people still say this.  So, it makes me believe it is more of an accent than it is a word choice.

It's both. Uneducated people say it because it's an uneducated affectation. Educated people will say it as a sort of joke.

[Vort]

5 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

because it's an uneducated affectation

I don't think it's an affectation at all. I think it's just how they say the word "ask".

[anatess2]

3 minutes ago, Vort said:

I don't think it's an affectation at all. I think it's just how they say the word "ask".

So, like an accent?  Like how you can tell an American has Tagalog roots because they say "Pifty"?

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Vort said:

I don't think it's an affectation at all. I think it's just how they say the word "ask".

Hmmm.  I've been using the word "affectation" incorrectly for years now.  You're right.  It isn't an affectation.

I had assumed it was related to the word "affected".  And it is.  But the meaning I've been using for "affected" was the third definition of three.  So, much less used.  And that definition does not carry over to the word "affectation".

Third Definition:

Quote

disposed or inclined in a specified way.

also: influenced in a harmful way, impaired.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Guest

[anatess2]

But @Vort, what is the source of the accent, though?  Like, for Tagalogs, they say "Pifty" because the "F" sound is not in the Tagalog alphabet so they have to learn to produce that sound with the English language and it is difficult to start a word with a foreign sound.

[The Folk Prophet]

9 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

But @Vort, what is the source of the accent, though?  Like, for Tagalogs, they say "Pifty" because the "F" sound is not in the Tagalog alphabet so they have to learn to produce that sound with the English language and it is difficult to start a word with a foreign sound.

When you're raised with your parents/family/friends saying a word a certain way, you learn to say that word that way. "Education" may or may not alter that learned behavior.

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/19/opinion/la-oe-mcwhorter-black-speech-ax-20140119

[anatess2]

10 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

When you're raised with your parents/family/friends saying a word a certain way, you learn to say that word that way. "Education" may or may not alter that learned behavior.

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/19/opinion/la-oe-mcwhorter-black-speech-ax-20140119

That's what I'm saying.  When a person says Pifty, you know he has Tagalog roots (passed on from generation after generation of saying the same thing originating from a Tagalog ancestor).  Bisaya people don't have the same problem (because the street dialect have the F sound), so it's not applicable to any Filipino - has to be Tagalog.  When a person says Aks... what's the root?  If it's an African dialect, which one?  Can we then trace that if you say Aks you're from X African tribe?

I read the article by the way... it doesn't seem to compute for me (but that's probably because of my own experience in language that can't relate to what the article was proposing).

Edited January 15, 2019 by anatess2

[Vort]

41 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

But @Vort, what is the source of the accent, though?  Like, for Tagalogs, they say "Pifty" because the "F" sound is not in the Tagalog alphabet so they have to learn to produce that sound with the English language and it is difficult to start a word with a foreign sound.

It's an example of metathesis, the switching of sounds within a word. In English, the /sk/ sound is common at the beginning of a word (sky, skill, school, score, scheme), but less common at the end (ask, task, disc). The sound /ks/ is common enough in English, but never occurs at the beginning of a word. In the case of "ask", apparently, the African community had a metathetic switching to "aks".

There are literally dozens if not hundreds of examples of this in "proper" spoken English; it's just a feature of a living language. Those who speak Spanish and another Latin language (other than Portuguese, which is like Spanish Book 2) will recognize metathetic Spanish words: palabra (Latin parabola), milagro (Latin miraculum),  peligro (Latin periculum), as well as other words like cocodrilo (Latin crocodilus).

Prescriptive grammarians normally insist that "aks" is wrong. For many centuries, prescriptive grammarians ruled the English world, but today they're a bit out of style. The cool kids are the descriptive grammarians, who maintain that "correct" language is whatever people use, and that there is no Grammar God who sits on high and metes out grammatical rulings. (Unless you're French. Then, yeah, there's that.) This is one of the rare cases when I find myself sitting near the cool kids at lunch.

None of this answers your question about the source of the metathesis. I don't know the source. I'm not sure anyone knows the source. It's a distinctively "black" (or "African-American") pronunciation, and thus has all sorts of social implications, in this case mostly negative. But I'll stay with Noam Chomsky on this particular issue and say that it's not "wrong", any more than my wife's eastern Pennsylvanian expression "run the sweeper" (meaning "vacuum the floor") is wrong. It's not wrong; it's just the regional variant. Such things make language endlessly fascinating and beautiful.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Vort

[The Folk Prophet]

8 minutes ago, Vort said:

But I'll stay with Noam Chomsky on this particular issue and say that it's not "wrong", any more than my wife's eastern Pennsylvanian expression "run the sweeper" (meaning "vacuum the floor") is wrong. It's not wrong; it's just the regional variant. Such things make language endlessly fascinating and beautiful.

Since "wrong" outside of God's morality, is a subjective thing itself, I'll have to begrudgingly agree with you.

[anatess2]

10 minutes ago, Vort said:

It's an example of metathesis, the switching of sounds within a word. In English, the /sk/ sound is common at the beginning of a word (sky, skill, school, score, scheme), but less common at the end (ask, task, disc). The sound /ks/ is common enough in English, but never occurs at the beginning of a word. In the case of "ask", apparently, the African community had a metathetic switching to "aks".

There are literally dozens if not hundreds of examples of this in "proper" spoken English; it's just a feature of a living language. Those who speak Spanish and another Latin language (other than Portuguese, which is like Spanish Book 2) will recognize metathetic Spanish words: palabra (Latin parabola), milagro (Latin miraculum),  peligro (Latin periculum), as well as other words like cocodrilo (Latin crocodilus).

Prescriptive grammarians normally insist that "aks" is wrong. For many centuries, prescriptive grammarians ruled the English world, but today they're a bit out of style. The cool kids are the descriptive grammarians, who maintain that "correct" language is whatever people use, and that there is no Grammar God who sits on high and metes out grammatical rulings. (Unless you're French. Then, yeah, there's that.) This is one of the rare cases when I find myself sitting near the cool kids at lunch.

None of this answers your question about the source of the metathesis. I don't know the source. I'm not sure anyone knows the source. It's a distinctively "black" (or "African-American") pronunciation, and thus has all sorts of social implications, in this case mostly negative. But I'll stay with Noam Chomsky on this particular issue and say that it's not "wrong", any more than my wife's eastern Pennsylvanian expression "run the sweeper" (meaning "vacuum the floor") is wrong. It's not wrong; it's just the regional variant. Such things make language endlessly fascinating and beautiful.

Ok, this makes sense to me.

It's really fascinating to me and if I had nothing but time in my hands, I'd go digging into how these all came about... like how "Idea-r" is spoken in New England and "Ga-w-age" is spoken in New Je-w-sey.

[askandanswer]

My understanding of Genesis 4:12 is that in this verse, God cursed Cain, the curse being “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” That seems to be the whole extent of the curse. My understanding of Genesis 4:15 is that God placed a mark on Cain. I’m not sure why this mark is interpreted as being a curse. Looking at verse 15, where it says “the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him” it seems to be an act of mercy/kindness from God in response to the concern expressed by Cain in verse 14 that “it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.”

It may be that when Cain's skin colour was changed, from whatever it was, to black, initially this may have been a value neutral change. I suspect it is only we humans who later came to add negative connotations to black skin colour. Perhaps God had nothing to do with black skin coming to be seen as a bad thing and this error/prejudice/bias/alternative viewpoint may have been picked up and perpetuated by (amongst others) the various writers of the Book of Mormon. 

[dahlia]

On 1/14/2019 at 9:41 AM, Carborendum said:

Out of curiosity, how did you reconcile that reaction with gaining a testimony?

My concern was with what Mormons think now. I can let history go and let people be of the times in which they lived. I also understand literary license. I was more concerned with whether the Mormons I was going to church with are racists (which I'm sure some are, but most aren't). 

[Guest MormonGator]

28 minutes ago, dahlia said:

My concern was with what Mormons think now. I can let history go and let people be of the times in which they lived. I also understand literary license. I was more concerned with whether the Mormons I was going to church with are racists (which I'm sure some are, but most aren't). 

Have you ever experienced any racist behavior from members in the church? 

[person0]

45 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Have you ever experienced any racist behavior from members in the church? 

There was a time when all of the active male youth in our ward were black.  During the yearly basketball tournament, when our team was up, the main coach of the opposing team came to ask us how many non-members we had in the game; as per the normal agreed upon rules, there was only one.  His assumption was clear.  Aside from that one time, the answer would be never.  That said, we are an outlier in the Stake, our city alone has 6 wards and only 1 other ward has any black youth at all.

Edited January 16, 2019 by person0

[anatess2]

37 minutes ago, person0 said:

There was a time when all of the active male youth in our ward were black.  During the yearly basketball tournament, when our team was up, the main coach of the opposing team came to ask us how many non-members we had in the game; as per the normal agreed upon rules, there was only one.  His assumption was clear.  Aside from that one time, the answer would be never.  That said, we are an outlier in the Stake, our city alone has 6 wards and only 1 other ward has any black youth at all.

A sister missionary who served in our ward is Tongan and after her mission she married another Tongan and moved to Michigan (I'm not 100% certain it is Michigan but I'm fairly certain it's correct).  During Stake Basketball, he was told by the other team from the other ward "your kind is not welcome here".  I kid you not.

[Maureen]

11 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

A sister missionary who served in our ward is Tongan and after her mission she married another Tongan and moved to Michigan (I'm not 100% certain it is Michigan but I'm fairly certain it's correct).  During Stake Basketball, he was told by the other team from the other ward "your kind is not welcome here".  I kid you not.

There should be a Wow icon to choose when reacting to posts.

M.

[Guest MormonGator]

13 minutes ago, Maureen said:

There should be a Wow icon to choose when reacting to posts.

M.

It's very sad, that's for sure. 

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

It's very sad, that's for sure. 

It has happened.  I've had my share of it.  But to be honest, I don't think I've had racist confrontations at church for about 10 years.  I have had a couple away from church since then.

While it's not gone to zero, it has certainly gotten better within my lifetime.  So, be grateful for the progress.

[Guest MormonGator]

5 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

It has happened.  I've had my share of it.  But to be honest, I don't think I've had racist confrontations at church for about 10 years.  I have had a couple away from church since then.

While it's not gone to zero, it has certainly gotten better within my lifetime.  So, be grateful for the progress.

I'm sorry it happened to you too my friend. Sickening. 

But I agree, it's gotten much, much better as time as progressed. Another indicator that it's a great time to be alive. 

[Guest Scott]

5 hours ago, MormonGator said:

Have you ever experienced any racist behavior from members in the church? 

I have and it was very common in the 70's and 80's (and certainly before that, but I wasn't alive then).   My old Sunday School teacher was definitely a racists.  She was always making racist comments in our Sunday school class and telling racist jokes at Church activities.

I hate to say this, but my mom was also a racist, but I don't think she is anymore.  My grandmother was also racist.   My mom seemed to change her tune when an African American became the bishop.  

The scout master in our ward before we just moved said his grandfather was both an active church member and the head of the KKK in his town where he lived (I don't remember the town, but I think it was in Tennessee?).  Today it would be surprising to learn that anyone connected with the KKK could be a church member.

Things have gotten much better.  We as Church members have gotten better as well.

Perhaps it can be said, the Church is true, but that's not always true about the members.  

 

Edited January 17, 2019 by Scott

[Guest MormonGator]

6 minutes ago, Scott said:

I have and it was very common in the 70's and 80's (and certainly before that, but I wasn't alive then).   My old Sunday School teacher was definitely a racists.  She was always making racist comments in our Sunday school class and telling racist jokes at Church activities.

I hate to say this, but my mom was also a racist, but I don't think she is anymore.  My grandmother was also racist.   

The scout master in our ward before we just moved said his grandfather was both an active church member and the head of the KKK in his town where he lived (I don't remember the town, but I think it was in Tennessee?).  Today it would be surprising to learn that anyone connected with the KKK could be a church member.

Things have gotten much better.  We as Church members have gotten better as well.

Perhaps it can be said, the Church is true, but that's not always true about the members.  

 

I am humiliated and mortified that racism seems to have been common in our church.  I am hopeful that if you (generic!) expressed such opinions now you'd be correctly mocked, ridiculed, and moved the trash heap where you belong. 

One of my ex girlfriends was black. I am not. We never, ever got anything said to us in public. No sneers, no comments, nothing. If anyone did say anything to us, well, God help them-living with that kind of hate and anger will eventually destroy yourself.

Edited January 17, 2019 by MormonGator

[Guest Scott]

1 minute ago, MormonGator said:

One of my ex girlfriends was black. I am not. We never, ever got anything said to us in public. No sneers, no comments, nothing. If anyone did say anything to us, well, God help them-living with that kind of hate and anger will eventually destroy yourself.

It seems to have mostly gone away since the early 80's.  I haven't heard anything racist at all from Church members since then (which isn't to say that it hasn't happened).  I guess it still happens occasionally since we were warned by the prophet not to do it.  

[Guest MormonGator]

Just now, Scott said:

It seems to have mostly gone away since the early 80's.  I haven't heard anything racist at all from Church members since then (which isn't to say that it hasn't happened).  I guess it still happens occasionally since we were warned by the prophet not to do it.  

Agree. I refuse to believe that the average LDS still holds racist beliefs. If they do , then God help them.And I mean that sincerely. Like I said above, living what that kind of hate will eventually lead to your destruction.