While learning English at school I always wondered why these phrases sounded so off and seemingly grammatically incorrect, this makes a lot of sense lol
All languages do this, it's not just English. I love this guy and his videos, but it's not the full story. Other languages, cultures, and countries do this as well. Adopting language is not new in any way - in fact Enlgish is made up of several different languages (this is why our rules don't always make sense.) The easiest Example I can give is the term popularized by Kpop Idols - "Hwiting!" it's used as encouragement and to keep pushing forward, however this comes from the English word "Fighting!". It's not used to make fun of Westerners or Enlgish speakers nor is it said with an accent to insult the English word or Western accents - it's just THEIR accent when using the word. It's not done out of malace, but admiration. Language was meant to be shared and adopted, not gatekept and closed off. It wouldn't evolve otherwise.
@@divaofthedamned365I agree with your point but I think the creator of the video also said that. I may be wrong but I think he said it's okay to use foreign words, even with your own accent (like the example he gives: "Hasta la vista"), but it's kinda rude to use them with the intention of mocking how others speak, like in the first few examples which came from English speakers mocking how someone else, who is a foreigner, speaks English or their own language
@@divaofthedamned365You missed the whole point of the video. Obviously not all loan words happen from a point of malice. Etymology boy just pointed out some English phrases that specifically come from racist origins. You're right that that Kpop example doesn't come from racism or malice, but the words in this video did. You're also probably right that this isn't unique to English, as humans kind of have a tendency to mock and exclude those they deem part of the "other"
@@divaofthedamned365 I think although most words are coined from other cultures for inoffensive reasons, there are also words - like in English - which are made because the locals used it to mock the other culture. I am not even opposed to using these words, but the purpose of etymology is to understand their dubious origins and I reckon that’s what the creator is trying to do.
In the European Spanish dub (Latin America has their own), the Terminator actually does NOT say "Hasta la vista, baby" and instead says "Sayonara, baby"
Probably differs by region. I'm from Colombia and we usually watch mexican dubs. There was a time when Argentinian, Venezuelan and Panamanian dubs were very popular too, also there's Spain and they have their own dubbing industry which we latins don't fw. It would be interesting to see which versions exist and what each went with. @@fancifuldevices
When we say America is a melting pot, this is what we mean. Even when some people want to mock immigrants and their culture, the culture still makes an impact.
Agreed, when I think of someone saying bye-bye I typically think of scenes in movies or shows of little kids cutesy telling a relative or teacher bye-bye. :D
A lot of times they are, just like the Kpop Idol "Hwiting!" phrase. It's just people adapting language and not meant to poke fun at. There are some racist people, but most people no matter their culture or country aren't like this. Unforitunally America is just obsessed with race.
@@divaofthedamned365At the time when these phrases were formed they 100% were racist and meant to mock people who were immigrants. You don't need to be so offended by people correctly identifying racism in the English language. While racism against Chinese ofc still is prevalent today it used to be much more extreme and socially acceptable to be hostile and racist. Ofc this also influenced language. If you don't know anything about racism against Chinese ppl in the US just look up the Chinese exclusion act and go from there.
This is very interesting to me since when my mom was in high school learning English in Taiwan, she was taught that “long time no see” was incorrect. Maybe it was to make sure the students didn’t just translate everything word for word into English.
Honestly the "No can do" translation is so good, like its short, sweet, simple and it conveys the idea quickly. Chinese immigrants back in the day knew what was up, kudos to them.
The thing is mandarin is so different that translating it to a latin based language makes it a fair bit humorous For the others, 我是法国人 for example becomes "I be law country person" if you decide to translate it in it's most literal sense, which is so far removed from "I am french" it appears ridiculous to non mandarin speakers
@@LysergiaBandOfficiali mean its more complicated than that. Its not descended from latin but its certainly based partly on it - we literally use the latin/roman alphabet and when we adopt loan words from non-latin languages they are said to be 'romanized' ...even if English is not a romance language (and our grammar is more germanic i guess?) Id say saying its 'latin based' in this context is probably fair
@@rrat_dead_beat no you are just mistranslating sentences by ignoring context and ignoring the fact that words have different meaning. If you use your same method of translation a phrase in english such as "skirting around the law" could easily be translated into something completely different
@@obfuscatedchaos8115 it's not really latin based, grammar and most day-to-day words are still germanic. you can't judge a language by "wellll most of these words come from latin" you judge it by how words work together and where it came from.
The word “buckeroo” comes from the Spanish “vaquero” (cowboy) because American cowboys in the south either couldn’t pronounce the word or were making fun of Mexican cowboys
Western saddle is basically Mexican style saddle, which is Spanish in origin. English style saddle is completely different. ie, American Western style horsemanship is based on Mexican horsemanship, and not English horsemanship.
Maybe. At the same time, i’m guessing it was influenced by buck-Like a young buck, a deer or something. Or at least the connotation i see nowadays. Plus kangaroo, bouncing on its feet. Practically a bushytailed brighteyed cowboy raring to go
It’s not just English. The term Barbarian came from the Ancient Greeks mocking how non-Greeks spoke. “Bar bar bar” was how they described baby talk, and they thought other languages sounded like babbling babies. Edit: corrected from Romans to Ancient Greeks
@@icraveattn Agreed. It’s nice that these phrases are no longer used in mocking or discriminatory ways-not so much that this happened due to the fact that these phrases became widespread to such an extent that we forgot that they were ever used in this way, for the sole purpose of being discriminatory.
@@icraveattn it actually wasn’t racist to use pidgin forms of languages. A Pidgin is a valid form of a language. If you wish to be understood by someone who speaks a different language from you and there is a pidgin that you and they understand, the only polite and supportive language to speak would be the pidgin. It would be racist to assume because of somebody’s race that the only language they speak is another one and a Pidgin … For example, Pidgin English along the Chinese coast, to assume that a Chinese person could never speak English and is only able to speak Pidgin is rude and racist. Human beings make assumptions all the time. Sometimes it’s just stupidity. If they are told and cannot learn, then it’s racist.
I'd like to think that the fact that we use the phrases unironically now shows that they're very effective for communicating- and that's really the highest compliment you can give language
And they have also lost all if any racial ties in the process. Nobody uses them with the intention of mocking a language. This clip is a nothing burger
@@PlasmaOne😅 history repeats itself because of ignorant idiots like yourself choosing not to learn from this. Being aware of how things like this came to be is pivotal for not letting it happen again
There is an Irish news video in YT where it shows a famer in Ireland that spoke an accent that even native English speakers could not understand - and indeed it sounded like he had a shoe in his mouth...
just looked this up because ive only ever heard brogue used to refer to shoes and i wanted to know what the phrase meant in this context and according to wikipedia thats a false etymology and it might actually come from bróg or barróg as gaeilge
@@nataliegladkova2629I don’t think anyone perceives ppl who use these phrases as bad bc they’re literally apart of our language now 😭 the point of this video is to just be something to think about, how many of our phrases essentially evolved from bullying foreign people
I’m half chinese half american I’ll say westerners do it far worse because most chinese don’t use VPN to get access to the western media/ internet etc so most do not even know much about the west/ know about how western people talk and many look up to west or hate them but if it is hate it is often about war and military and less on language since most chinese do not know much english as of making phrases that copy the english language etc
Negative mocking phrases lost power when people forgot about the bad and embraced the new normal... The only thing I find alarming is that we aren't doing that more often
Yes! Everyone is up in arms for using the word "retard" wrong when it in fact replaced the old word for the same diagnosis "idiot". But no one is trying to cancel the word idiot.
This is my exact problem with the n-word, it's used so much just to refer to another person that it might as well have a new meaning, and I'm convinced the reason it wasn't is so some black americans can justify saying slurs to others
@@duckwrth4949 not really. Only if you believe in things like power structures. Like "black people cant be racist" while they beat up some Asian for being Asian. A slur can have different meaning but a word isnt mockning if it isnt a kind of slur. No one can say "you are a very smart and intriguing individual" in a way that is mocking unless it is sarcastic. Are you saying every use of the n word by black people are sarcastic?
@@flabbergast_seEvery use of the n-word by black people isn’t malicious. Yes indeed. The people who use the n-word as a slur instead of just referring to someone is most probably racists. Black or white. As it’s a derogatory term. But in most cases the n-word is not used as a slur. It’s used when a black person is simply referring to someone.
I personally don't see this as much of a problem as these phrases are no longer being used in those contexts anymore. I personally think these specific phrases only stuck because of their efficiency. As an example, saying "long time no see" is much easier to say compared to something like "It's been a long time since we last saw each other." Think of the many other phrases possibly made through the same process that didn't stick because they simply weren't as useful to pick up. That is what I love about language. It's ability to change based on interactions between cultures, even if problematic at first, into a debatably better version of itself.
@@LoafOfTurtle He did ask if others found it "alarming" as well as seemingly having a generally negative tone towards the subject but "rebutting" him was not my intention. I am merely stating my own insights on the subject and showing a different perspective.
@@ChorusierI agree with you completely, he did end the video with "perpetuating negative stereotypes" and that gave me the feeling that he has a negative view towards "long time no see" etc even tho its pretty obvious to everyone that it isnt racist in modern use.
@@xxBreakxxAwayxx3i understand this argument for things are actively being used harmfully. if something is no longer being used in racist connotation after catching on, there's no reason to drop it because it does no harm. it's like the argument that we should drop halloween because it's based off of irish pagan rituals that involve sacrifice.
@@xxBreakxxAwayxx3These are common English phrases now. You know what could cause racism and divide? Reinstating the idea of them being mockeries of other cultures. It’s not that we can’t discuss it’s past, but attempting to take a very used phrase and declare it racist is asking for more issues. Sometimes it’s worth considering the outcomes and not just what opinion sounds like it gives you a moral high ground.
I’d say that was more of a natural adoption of the word. Don’t remember making fun of anyone. It just sorta entered the lexicon and now I still use it to casually say excuse me or sorry.
@@stop.juststop probably not the only origin but it started with the GS Warriors copying/making fun of Manute Bol for saying “my bad” instead of “my fault”
哈囉 (which technically in pinyin is ha luo but everyone just says ha lo) is just a normal greeting in taiwan and i'd even say it's the most common! anything else feels just more formal? i'm not likely to use it at all to friends
interesting. my mandarin teacher would say it like that but i always figured it was just her accent (still could be idk). regardless i would sometimes parrot it because i found the pronunciation amusing.
Another interesting thing in American English is the saying uh-huh to mean yes, is a direct borrowing from Cherokee. In modern Cherokee the way of saying yes is spelled (using the romanization for Cherokee) v'v. The letter v in Cherokee is used to represent the vowel in sun but nasalized. In an older form of Cherokee the way of writing the word for yes was v'hv. There is documentation of this from around around the birth of the us as a country. There was someone who came over here from Britain (i do believe it was England specifically, but I don't remember for certain) and he wrote that the American, instead of stating yes would respond in a Cherokee grunt. I think its fascinating how much native american influence there is on american English and culture, even though the fact that it is native american influence has been suppressed
Whites loved (and in some cases still do love) to steal things from Black and Indigenous people. They'd been stealing Indigenous American land, food, traditions, and even people for centuries on end.
@@nvdawahyaify White Westerners (almost always Western Europeans in particular) have been stealing stuff from Black and Indigenous American people since the beginning of time, from their land to their traditions to their food to even their members. It's important to talk about these things so that we can stop and prevent other injustices. I appreciate you discussing the history of the use of "uh-huh" in American vernacular. I never would've known that had you not educated us ☺️
@@nvdawahyaify White Westerners (almost always Western Europeans in particular) have been stealing stuff from Black and Indigenous people since the beginning of time, from their land to their traditions to their food to even their individual members. It's important to talk about these things so that we can stop and prevent other injustices. I appreciate you discussing the history of the use of "uh-huh" in American vernacular. I never would've known that had you not educated us ☺️
@@nvdawahyaify White Westerners (almost always Western Europeans in particular) have been stealing stuff from Black and Indigenous American people since the beginning of time, from their land to their traditions to their food to even their individual members. It's important to talk about these things so that we can stop and prevent other injustices. I appreciate you discussing the history of the use of "uh-huh" in American vernacular. I never would've known that had you not educated us ☺️ thank you for spreading your knowledge
It’s so funny how the “long time no see” thing came from mocking a Cantonese phrase and now you see people in Hong Kong or Guangdong in general saying this as well
He is not offended by the phrases because yeah they aren’t really offensive anymore. He finds it alarming our culture has so much racism steeped in it that it drastically affects even the language we use in our day to day lives without us realizing.
He’s not “getting offended on their behalf” he’s acknowledging the objective fact that these phrases, while currently not harmful, had disrespectful origins. Not everything is about trying to appear morally superior, yk some people are just capable of empathy and showing emotion is a normal human thing, right?
It perpetuated those stereotypes until we forgot they were used to make fun. Now, if we learn those languages, some words will make more sense to us. Something used to make fun of a group can now be used to connect two groups. I'm gung ho about this. 😁
@@jumpingmoose5554 some day that will probably happen. I wonder how many derogatory racial words have already passed from existence or been changed by time and socio-cultural shifts into un-charged words.
Bro, savage AF, I'm here for it! Let's go! How about this British word mash, you know he's going to say the US stole from them too. skedaddle. Dude doesn't understand a melting pot society.
I’ve had my Chinese English students tell me, “That’s what we say in Mandarin!” Then I explain. I figured it out myself while studying in China. Gotta be from Chinese, I thought. A revelation many must have. These phrase really stand out. They are beautiful in their efficiency.
I used to work in tech support US based company with a lot of Indian customers and they like to use “kindly do the needful” to sign off their emails with. So we started using it in house too to describe problems with “it’s not doing the needful” and now it’s not even a joke anymore. We just have adopted their phrase into our parlance at this point.
That's a pretty standard Indian-ism that might have been maintained all the way from the Raj era. Formal letters (& emails by extension) often follow a set format that gets drilled into kids heads in school. Three paragraphs: first, introduce yourself & your reason for contacting the recipient in brief if just your self-introduction seems too small for an opening paragraph; second, details of the situation & how it is affecting you & other people etc; third, closing thoughts & your expectations about what the recipient is supposed to do. Choose the byline phrase based on the nature of the request & your relationship with the recipient. "Kindly do the needful" is just a wonderfully adaptive single line paragraph 3 by itself. There are similar stock phrases for ending letters in other local languages as well, which often come across as much more archaic & formal than the tone of the rest of the letter which needs to be generated by the writers themselves. Very cool how you can find such anachronistic nuggets maintained in formal settings.
Literally same. I'm in a government office in Ireland and the first time I saw 'kindly do the needful' I thought it was one person who didn't have great english but I get emails saying that from different customers every day and we've started saying it in the office too. It's a nice phrase.
I wish every human being was like this instead of getting sensitive when they acquire more knowledge or context on the origins of words. Thank you for being normal
In some cases, foreign countries will adopt foreign phrases because they have diminished power compared to native ones. For example, in many East Asian countries, direct expressions of emotion are considered super powerful. So, they might not say their country’s equivalent to “I love you” unless they’re on their deathbed. But they may use the English phrase. In Japan, you might hear someone go through an entire phone conversation in Japanese and then end it with the English “love you. Bye-bye.”. Because “love you” isn’t considered as super-heavy as the Japanese equivalent. (Funny thing, in English-speaking countries we don’t consider “I love you” less powerful because of how often we say it. Its power is determined by the context of when it’s said and how it’s said).
No no, didn’t you know only white Americans are the bad guys? And by bad guys, I mean only the men. Becaust women are innocent flowers and only men are evil
In Indonesian slang, there's word 'cingcong', meaning "nonsense talk". It comes from the word "ching chong", which was how Westerners imitate Chinese talking with derogatory intention.
Yet you would probably vote against any regulation to ensure tap water is drinkable because it's probably going to cost billions to make tap water clean.
@@speedy01247 My Tap water is clean...I use a well and filter my water.. Government didn't have anything to do with it. Pro tip..you can filter your own water, hell you can distill your own water. Eff the government as if it's some panacea to all our problems when it is the cause of them.
@@user-wn6pb3tu6x where does he tell you to “focus” on it? 💀 it’s just another sad fact about america not a state of emergency, get over urself “there’s literally war and govt corruption 🤓” right let’s all just pretend y’all actually care abt those topics
My Thai coworker has me saying these cute phrases like "Im sleepy so bad" and I'll never get over her telling me how she was eating peanuts but you couldn't hear the T in her pronunciation. I love the way she speaks
Irrelevant but did anybody else notice he started getting louder, faster, and more aggressive as the video went on. He seems to be very passionate about the subject. I like it.
I’m Chinese. It’s not alarming. It’s weird that a linguistics major would use emotionally charged language like that when you guys value descriptivism over prescriptivism. Edit for doubters: He has a short titled “Can we stop this already?” is straight up prescriptivism. Another close one is his “unc status” short.
There's a current problem in linguistics in that linguists skew very heavily left. The same is especially true in sociology and to a lesser extent psychology. They have a problem separating their personal beliefs from the fields in which they work.
I'd never seen "gung ho" written out before, I always thought it was "gun ho" and that it came from an old term similar to "trigger happy" and then evolved into a general term for being enthusiastic
It was picked up by USMC general Evans Carlson to use as a motto for his command group. He had spent time in China in the 30s and was impressed by the dedication they could have towards a single objective and wanted to transmit that to his troops.
Do you guys ever get exhausted trying to find things to be upset about? Will there ever be a point where we can just acknowledge not everything needs to be be negative?
There are die hard Trump supporters out there who spend sleepless nights filled with feelings of inadequacy knowing that the bullshit they make up will never make the Left look half as bad and petty as things some of us unironically post of our own free will.
i don’t think he said this to make anyone upset, he was just stating facts even they’re “negative”. we can’t deny how things were and it’s important to talk about it because it’s history
@@thisthatgirl let me ask you something, when Asian people use English words or phrases are they mocking us? Why is this content creator framing this from the prospective that Americans are “mocking” Asians instead of the rational point of view that so many Asians have migrated to America that that they have had significant impact on our language? Asian aren’t even the first group to do this, it happened with the polish, Italians, Irish, Hispanic, Africans, whatever you wanna name. Why couldn’t he highlight that aspect about our culture and history? Why is that Americans are mocking everyone else but it’s never the other way around? You wanna know why. These people think that America is some sort of boogeyman, that all we do is oppress and bully when that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you made this far I just wanna ask one thing from you, even if you agree with someone’s message or prospective; do yourself the favor and still question it. You might end up peeling back layers you never even would have thought of and potentially see their bias.
@@halogod0298nobody's upset, babe. there's a difference between being upset and pointing out that racism is so deeply set into western society that it affects the way we speak without even realising. 100% guarantee you're gonna reply some dumb shit like "yeah nobody cares"
I love his videos ^-^ I just wished he'd show how other languages do this as well and how it's not as negative as people make it seem. English is one of the most popular languages and everyone wants to incorporate English words into their vocabulary even if it's not properly used or pronounced correctly. In Korea the term "Hwaiting!!" is used as encouragement and to keep pushing forward, but it actually comes from the English word "Fighting!" It is never meant as an insult or to make fun of Westerners, they just have an accent and adopted the word. There's nothing wrong with it. Language is meant to be shared.
@@divaofthedamned365the examples he showed are not sharing but racism, as someone from latin america I get when ppl use english terms since theyre kinda popular but those examples are mostly NOT sharing
@@divaofthedamned365he literally covered that tho. “Hasta la vista” can be fine and fun. The specific examples of “no can do” or “gung ho” etc ARE racist tho. Also, English is spoken on so many continents because of colonization and imperialism. Colonization is the reason it’s even spoken in North America at all. We should keep that in mind. IMO, English has been forced onto so many cultures and peoples in the world that it should be up for grabsies for anyone internationally to make fun of it (as long as they’re not mocking Englishes spoken by marginalized people in English-speaking countries like AAVE/BVE)
Taiwanese here to share some of my thoughts In Taiwan, we actually use some of the phrases ironically (eg. long time no see) to mock those with poor English or simply as a joke. But it has become so prevalent that some people actually believe it’s a legit English phrase lmao Another example would be using “People mountain people sea”（literal translation of人山人海） to describe an enormous crowd. P.S good vid btw keep it up ❤
“好久不见” (hăo jǐu bu jiàn) is literally “long time no see” in Mandarin. The first two characters mean “quite a while” and the second two mean “to not see.” This is an example of an idiom, which are super common in Mandarin, and is meant to be understood as a concept not literally word for word. English is also expressing the concept not the literal translation. Calling this racist is a misunderstanding of how Mandarin idioms work. Calm down. 😂
No, the context of how the saying is used is what made it racist. The English speakers weren’t saying ‘no can do’ because they had respect for the language, they wanted to mock Chinese speakers. That’s just history, I don’t know why everybody is so sensitive in the comments 😂
The phrase was literally originally to mock Chinese immigrants not respect how our language worked stupid, he literally says that in the video how dense are yall💀
I'ma native spanish speaker and i have "en esta economia?!" in my daily vocab bc if there's one thing my country can do is make inflation reach triple digits
Is it alarming that a language with the most intercultural reach in history has a handful of phrases that are mean against other cultures...? Only as alarming as the fact that Coke was once made with cocaine, or that people cheat sometimes
I would argue that they're not "mean against other cultures" because they've become idiomatic and have lost the original mocking connotations, and now they're just expressions we use all the time with no ill will whatsoever. The people who used them that way are long dead. (Like, "long time no see" is first attested in English in 1843.)
@@Eyedunno I agree, which is why I used the Coke thing. The idea of things were once not great and now have lost any of the original meanity can hardly be alarming to normal people. Old phrases sometimes being distasteful has as much relevance as Coke long ago, but not any time recently, having cocaine in it "Alarming" also implies that the subject is unexpected. Did this guy find it surprising that people do bad things sometimes, and sometimes those bad things are taught to others? Somebody needs to tell him that sometimes kids cheat on tests, and sometimes they tell other kids how to do it successfully. Really alarming stuff, a small population of a massive culture choosing to do bad or mean things sometimes
@@luzifershadres Just yesterday I watched a video about how different humor is between countries and it's just now that I actually get it. I don't exactly know how to explain the joke, just know that it's some kind of German humor.
OMG this helps so much, thank you! I'm a non-native speaker, currently studying Chinese, and I was wracking my brains over "long time no see" perfectly matching 好久不见, but not appearing grammatically correct in English.
Well im from Argentina and let me tell you our most fanous sauce name "chimichurri" is actually a word we invented to mock and make fun of the English asking "give me curry" when asking for sauce, which is not a curry at all lol. That's why its always funny to me when an English speaking person says that they love chimichurri
@@Natasha___. I know. That's the thing, those English people had the habit of calling every sauce a curry even when it was not though that's why the name chimichurri was born, mocking the English for calling everything a curry.
It's the origin of them that he finds alarming, not the phrases themselves. Like he says, the phrase "long time no see" in English came to be because of racists in the past mocking Chinese. Its modern day usage has no connection to this but the fact that it and many other phrases started that way is what he finds weird/alarming :)
@@CrazyJay1301it's pretty ambiguous, i conspiracize intentionally for the sake of engagement bait, whether he's saying we should stop saying them or not
@@yukari_katsuragiYou're somewhat correct, but the main reason is his cultural heritage. The guy is ✡️ and as such comes from more academic/woke/metropolitan backgrounds
@@scottanno8861 that clarifies nothing and doesn't contradict me in any way his stance is ambiguous. the rage-baitiest possible take is implied but not said outright. his background doesn't explain that
the difference is that white people haven't been opporessed for 90% of western civilisation. it's okay to take the piss out of a white american because of historical context, meanwhile it's unacceptable to do the same to a black or asian person, because both of those groups have been and still are systematically oppressed
@@10054 if you actually look at how China runs things, it's actually more capitalist than America lol. China declaring itself as communist is only political.
One of my coworkers recently told me that at her new job, she's not allowed to say things like, "Long time, no see" because it "makes fun" of people like Native Americans... I was shook lol
Huh. I WAS wondering why, despite Mandarin Chinese and English having very different grammar structures, 好久不见 translated perfectly to English, without any need for rephrasing. I just thought it was a coincidence.
My assumption is that non-Yiddish speakers used Yiddish words as slang-like replacers for English words that would have been considered situationally inappropriate. Like how someone might say a booty or bum hole instead of ass or anus. Since Yiddish was generally a lesser-known language, it could function as a “silly” sound that could get the point across in a more subtle way. My assumption is that Yiddish simply fell out of popularity and/or common knowledge with younger generations who have different sources for slang and replacer words. I guess the age of the proud Jewish New Yorker comedian is over, with the sea of vaguely Californian TH-camr/tiktokers taking over the airwaves lol
It’s true, I saw these phrases as harmless but after this vid I can’t unlearn the origins. I can never say “eeny meeny miny moe catch a tiger by the toe” without feeling like a racist capitalist pig
Etymology and idioms are fascinating. The "English" we use today has morphed countless times and is filled with culture slang , especially in America. There are wordsmiths like Shakespeare who created and documented nearly 2000 words and contemporaries like snoop dog who now how to bridge the gap between the past and the present.
There's also convergent evolution in English. "Holmes" (yes, before Doyle) Was a real Surname, and surnames were used as a sign of deference and respect. That got combined with 20th century "Homie," As in someone from your home, you share roots and have a bond there. But now instead of "Homes," It's often spelled as "Holmes," but still refers to both "I'm respecting you" and "We share experiences"
Bruh stop capping. Sure "Gung Ho" was based on a Chinese term meaning "work together". But it was introduced as a slogan in the Marines during WW2 by Lt Cl Evans Carlson, who has been impressed by the way Chinese troops he had observed worked together during the 2nd Sino-Japanese war. It didn't become a popular term in American households until the 1943 movie "Gung Ho" starring Randolph Scott as a marine popularized it. Now you can have criticisms of films from that era. But its intellectually dishonest to say these terms are a result of Americans making fun of the way immigrants say things. If you do any actually research I'm sure you'll find that the case for most of the terms you mention, and more.
@@giby8866"its so alarming guys, americans are so racist!! We need to do something about it immediately, stop using these phrases or you're racist!!" that's the vibe he gives off. Seems soft.
“ Hey long time no see”
“ you need to stop using that negative language “
“ No can do”
😂
I prefer "Eat shit." **finger-guns**
Chop chop, let's get going!
@@LeandroRiveroskittles sayonara
Solly
While learning English at school I always wondered why these phrases sounded so off and seemingly grammatically incorrect, this makes a lot of sense lol
All languages do this, it's not just English. I love this guy and his videos, but it's not the full story. Other languages, cultures, and countries do this as well. Adopting language is not new in any way - in fact Enlgish is made up of several different languages (this is why our rules don't always make sense.)
The easiest Example I can give is the term popularized by Kpop Idols - "Hwiting!" it's used as encouragement and to keep pushing forward, however this comes from the English word "Fighting!". It's not used to make fun of Westerners or Enlgish speakers nor is it said with an accent to insult the English word or Western accents - it's just THEIR accent when using the word. It's not done out of malace, but admiration. Language was meant to be shared and adopted, not gatekept and closed off. It wouldn't evolve otherwise.
@etymology_nerd Your videos are really awesome, none of this is hate
@@divaofthedamned365I agree with your point but I think the creator of the video also said that. I may be wrong but I think he said it's okay to use foreign words, even with your own accent (like the example he gives: "Hasta la vista"), but it's kinda rude to use them with the intention of mocking how others speak, like in the first few examples which came from English speakers mocking how someone else, who is a foreigner, speaks English or their own language
@@divaofthedamned365You missed the whole point of the video. Obviously not all loan words happen from a point of malice. Etymology boy just pointed out some English phrases that specifically come from racist origins. You're right that that Kpop example doesn't come from racism or malice, but the words in this video did.
You're also probably right that this isn't unique to English, as humans kind of have a tendency to mock and exclude those they deem part of the "other"
@@divaofthedamned365 I think although most words are coined from other cultures for inoffensive reasons, there are also words - like in English - which are made because the locals used it to mock the other culture. I am not even opposed to using these words, but the purpose of etymology is to understand their dubious origins and I reckon that’s what the creator is trying to do.
In the European Spanish dub (Latin America has their own), the Terminator actually does NOT say "Hasta la vista, baby" and instead says "Sayonara, baby"
to keep with him saying something foreign?
Yep @@NIDELLANEUM
But my South American cousins were always saying hasta la vista baby. And for them the humorous partway “baby” 🤔
Spanish translations always fuck it up. The latin american dubbing is always closer to the source material.
Probably differs by region. I'm from Colombia and we usually watch mexican dubs. There was a time when Argentinian, Venezuelan and Panamanian dubs were very popular too, also there's Spain and they have their own dubbing industry which we latins don't fw. It would be interesting to see which versions exist and what each went with. @@fancifuldevices
When we say America is a melting pot, this is what we mean. Even when some people want to mock immigrants and their culture, the culture still makes an impact.
And the immigrants get the last laugh beacuse now it's part of the culture unironically and without any ill-will!
It is the culture, hatred breeds love and hatred
As a native English speaker I also find “bye-bye” cute.
I can't read it without hearing the backstreet boys 😅
Agreed, when I think of someone saying bye-bye I typically think of scenes in movies or shows of little kids cutesy telling a relative or teacher bye-bye. :D
Wait what? I thought everyone used "bye-bye"
@@ClobberClubbersYea me too
@@ClobberClubbersi know i do and im a native british english speaker
As a Chinese person, I take pride in this as it's just a more efficient way of getting the message across.
same
Mandarin learner, and yeah. It's just efficient
k
same
And I have to imagine the Chinese have jokes about how Americans sound too.
Im bilingual in english and chinese and i always thought those were just convenient coincidences lol
A lot of times they are, just like the Kpop Idol "Hwiting!" phrase. It's just people adapting language and not meant to poke fun at. There are some racist people, but most people no matter their culture or country aren't like this.
Unforitunally America is just obsessed with race.
This. I also speak both languages and still, without looking it up, I would never have expected them to be related.
@@divaofthedamned365At the time when these phrases were formed they 100% were racist and meant to mock people who were immigrants. You don't need to be so offended by people correctly identifying racism in the English language.
While racism against Chinese ofc still is prevalent today it used to be much more extreme and socially acceptable to be hostile and racist. Ofc this also influenced language. If you don't know anything about racism against Chinese ppl in the US just look up the Chinese exclusion act and go from there.
This is very interesting to me since when my mom was in high school learning English in Taiwan, she was taught that “long time no see” was incorrect. Maybe it was to make sure the students didn’t just translate everything word for word into English.
me too but i never noticed LOL
"Long time no see, buddy"
"Why are you racist"
"What"
you're telling me a pigeon was able to speak chinese AND english? and we proceeded to mock the guy?
Typical Americans never accepting the pigeon overlords
Us humans aren't well-versed in bird language.
This might be the funniest linguistics joke I've ever heard
I would've given him my _best_ bread crumbs, fam.
Birds aren't real
Damn even our phrases were 'made in china' LMAO
Nasty bro😭😭
LMFAOO THAT IS DIABOLICALL
DAMN!!!
We can't make shit, bro
lmao
Honestly the "No can do" translation is so good, like its short, sweet, simple and it conveys the idea quickly. Chinese immigrants back in the day knew what was up, kudos to them.
Having done mandarin in school, can confirm it is a very straight to the point language.
@@DaisyZhangAIit’s greek
@@viebs_chiev It'a all chinese to me
Right. Much faster and direct than saying “no, I cannot do that.”
In japanese they say the exact same thing and the exact same meaning. The pronunciation is even the same. You hear it in anime sometimes.
Linguistics when Europe: 😊👏🙌
Linguistics when US:
😡😤✋
Haven't you heard, Europe is the star child of the world and has never done anything wrong! Don't mind those pesky world wars though.
ah yes, my fave european Country.
China.
i speak mandarin and i always wonder how such phrases emerged, thats so interesting
The thing is mandarin is so different that translating it to a latin based language makes it a fair bit humorous
For the others, 我是法国人 for example becomes "I be law country person" if you decide to translate it in it's most literal sense, which is so far removed from "I am french" it appears ridiculous to non mandarin speakers
@@rrat_dead_beatenglish isn't latin based, just borrows from french a lot and biblical/scientific words usually come from latin or greek
@@LysergiaBandOfficiali mean its more complicated than that. Its not descended from latin but its certainly based partly on it - we literally use the latin/roman alphabet and when we adopt loan words from non-latin languages they are said to be 'romanized' ...even if English is not a romance language (and our grammar is more germanic i guess?) Id say saying its 'latin based' in this context is probably fair
@@rrat_dead_beat no you are just mistranslating sentences by ignoring context and ignoring the fact that words have different meaning. If you use your same method of translation a phrase in english such as "skirting around the law" could easily be translated into something completely different
@@obfuscatedchaos8115 it's not really latin based, grammar and most day-to-day words are still germanic. you can't judge a language by "wellll most of these words come from latin" you judge it by how words work together and where it came from.
It's nice that we have turned those phrases from once negative things into endearing or commonly used and ingrained into our culture phrases.
maybe it helps deconstruct the language a bit into something which can allow forefinger and native speakers to better understand each other.
I agree. Everybody is so negative. The ugliness of the past can be changed into something new
i really hope this guy wasnt insinuating we need to stop using these phrases.
@@the0n3buc5ucit’s meant to be a think piece, he’s a linguist iirc. Just something to ponder, not something to squander
@@BunnyGxre what a great line! ima steal that
Another one, “head honcho” is directly from the Japanese 班長 (read: hanchou) meaning “squad leader,” which most likely entered English during WWII.
Huh. I always thought they sounded a bit similar, but figured it's a coincidence cuz "honcho" sounds like some kind of Spanish word or something.
Japanese jumpscare where I thought Spanish would be (really? honcho doesn't have like Mexican roots or something?? etymology is a joak)
So you don’t know you’re just guess
The word Tycoon comes from the Japanese word 大君(or Taikun) which means "great lord" or "prince".
@@HasbullasBurnerthey do know where came from and what it means, but not exactly when
honestly I wouldn't worry too much I'm pretty sure other languages do the exact samething anyway lol
Exactly
mabye, but that doesn't make it less wrong
Nah yt people are just the worst
I don't think I've ever heard of em. Most people get pissy when you speak their own language wrong.
@@RadicalAntifa Nah, you're just racist and won't admit it.
The word “buckeroo” comes from the Spanish “vaquero” (cowboy) because American cowboys in the south either couldn’t pronounce the word or were making fun of Mexican cowboys
Western saddle is basically Mexican style saddle, which is Spanish in origin.
English style saddle is completely different.
ie, American Western style horsemanship is based on Mexican horsemanship, and not English horsemanship.
Maybe. At the same time, i’m guessing it was influenced by buck-Like a young buck, a deer or something. Or at least the connotation i see nowadays. Plus kangaroo, bouncing on its feet. Practically a bushytailed brighteyed cowboy raring to go
People want to find negative intentions for all kinds of dumb things that never had any. I wouldnt believe any of this drivel.
It wasn't to make fun of mexican cowboys, it was a direct loan word. American cowboys descend from mexican cowboys
@@NoTimeForThatNowkinda like how you're finding negative intent for their comment when there wasn't any.
I love that fact that they find bye bye cute
Well- as a native English speaker, isn't it??
It's like "sucky sucky longtime".
Silly, funny and cute
Me too! I thought that in of itself was cute.
I think a lot of countries do that I'm from the middle east .we say"bye_bye" and "hi" coz it's funny and cute
I don't think those are the same.@@tobias4283
It’s not just English. The term Barbarian came from the Ancient Greeks mocking how non-Greeks spoke. “Bar bar bar” was how they described baby talk, and they thought other languages sounded like babbling babies.
Edit: corrected from Romans to Ancient Greeks
and i can bet money the “ian” was added through persian / caucasian languages after they heard the romans using it
Yep, it was basically the equivalent of us calling them blahblahbians
@@JoylessBurrito new D&D class, the "Blahblahrians"
The description barbarian is ancient Greek and includes everyone non greek and the Romans
@@mechena Maybe I got my ancient snooty civilization wrong. I’ll have to ask my classicist mom.
Ngl, I'm European and for years I thought it was "gun ho" not gung and it was called that because Americans are so enthusiastic about guns.. xD
Its nice to see these words have completly lost their negative connotations over time
This really goes to show how people give power to words
@blitzuser8074 no. Time just marches along and as contexts change the meanings of words change as well. It's the natural progression if language.
@@icraveattn Agreed. It’s nice that these phrases are no longer used in mocking or discriminatory ways-not so much that this happened due to the fact that these phrases became widespread to such an extent that we forgot that they were ever used in this way, for the sole purpose of being discriminatory.
@@icraveattn it actually wasn’t racist to use pidgin forms of languages. A Pidgin is a valid form of a language.
If you wish to be understood by someone who speaks a different language from you and there is a pidgin that you and they understand, the only polite and supportive language to speak would be the pidgin.
It would be racist to assume because of somebody’s race that the only language they speak is another one and a Pidgin … For example, Pidgin English along the Chinese coast, to assume that a Chinese person could never speak English and is only able to speak Pidgin is rude and racist. Human beings make assumptions all the time. Sometimes it’s just stupidity. If they are told and cannot learn, then it’s racist.
@@blitzuser8074the most effective way to say “Im a white guy who says the n word”
I'd like to think that the fact that we use the phrases unironically now shows that they're very effective for communicating- and that's really the highest compliment you can give language
And they have also lost all if any racial ties in the process. Nobody uses them with the intention of mocking a language. This clip is a nothing burger
@@PlasmaOneI wouldn’t say it’s a nothing burger, it’s still good to know the origin of those phrases
@@PlasmaOne It's still interesting to hear about the origins of phrases, even if the connotations aren't there anymore
@@PlasmaOneit’s not a nothing burger, but it’s also not “alarming” as he claims at the beginning of the video.
@@PlasmaOne😅 history repeats itself because of ignorant idiots like yourself choosing not to learn from this. Being aware of how things like this came to be is pivotal for not letting it happen again
you're telling me sonic was making fun of minorities all along?
That racist Japanese hedgehog needs to be cancelled
Can't believe he actually like oppression
"Disgusting black creatures. Get out of my sight." - shadow the hedgehog
There are a billion Chinese people. Not really a minority
@@HasbullasBurnerminority in America, ya space cadet
I love how he cites his sources
the term "irish brogue" came from the idea that irish ppl sounded like we spoke with a shoe (bróga) in our mouth :)
There is an Irish news video in YT where it shows a famer in Ireland that spoke an accent that even native English speakers could not understand - and indeed it sounded like he had a shoe in his mouth...
Ok, and does that offend you? Or is it just a fun fact now that has no affect whatsoever on how people using this term are perceived?
and english people sound like a squeaky door hinge.
just looked this up because ive only ever heard brogue used to refer to shoes and i wanted to know what the phrase meant in this context and according to wikipedia thats a false etymology and it might actually come from bróg or barróg as gaeilge
@@nataliegladkova2629I don’t think anyone perceives ppl who use these phrases as bad bc they’re literally apart of our language now 😭 the point of this video is to just be something to think about, how many of our phrases essentially evolved from bullying foreign people
I can't tell you how many times Chinese people have made fun of the way westerners speak. Its universal
"bye bye"
I’m half chinese half american I’ll say westerners do it far worse because most chinese don’t use VPN to get access to the western media/ internet etc so most do not even know much about the west/ know about how western people talk and many look up to west or hate them but if it is hate it is often about war and military and less on language since most chinese do not know much english as of making phrases that copy the english language etc
@@lightningboatNOOO!!🤬🤬😡😡 Grrrr we are coming for your oil right now
"Hey Bobby! Look, rook! I'm an American!"
"I think I'll use my credit card 🗿. Do you have anything non-dairy🗿? Anything gluten-free🗿?"
@@atroposV Omg that was the funniest thing
He wants me to stop saying "Long time no see"?
Sorry, buddy, no can do.
he does not, he is just pointing out the etymology of the phrase, and how its nice that they have lost the negative connotation
@@lalalalala7779 I was making a joke lol
@@seth9820 and it was funny too
you mean soy buddy, no can do
😂😂😂😂
Final reddit boss
Negative mocking phrases lost power when people forgot about the bad and embraced the new normal...
The only thing I find alarming is that we aren't doing that more often
Yes!
Everyone is up in arms for using the word "retard" wrong when it in fact replaced the old word for the same diagnosis "idiot". But no one is trying to cancel the word idiot.
This is my exact problem with the n-word, it's used so much just to refer to another person that it might as well have a new meaning, and I'm convinced the reason it wasn't is so some black americans can justify saying slurs to others
@@AHappyCubYou do realize there’s a difference between a mocking phrase and a slur, right? They aren’t comparable.
@@duckwrth4949 not really. Only if you believe in things like power structures. Like "black people cant be racist" while they beat up some Asian for being Asian. A slur can have different meaning but a word isnt mockning if it isnt a kind of slur.
No one can say "you are a very smart and intriguing individual" in a way that is mocking unless it is sarcastic. Are you saying every use of the n word by black people are sarcastic?
@@flabbergast_seEvery use of the n-word by black people isn’t malicious. Yes indeed. The people who use the n-word as a slur instead of just referring to someone is most probably racists. Black or white. As it’s a derogatory term. But in most cases the n-word is not used as a slur. It’s used when a black person is simply referring to someone.
I personally don't see this as much of a problem as these phrases are no longer being used in those contexts anymore. I personally think these specific phrases only stuck because of their efficiency. As an example, saying "long time no see" is much easier to say compared to something like "It's been a long time since we last saw each other." Think of the many other phrases possibly made through the same process that didn't stick because they simply weren't as useful to pick up. That is what I love about language. It's ability to change based on interactions between cultures, even if problematic at first, into a debatably better version of itself.
he didnt say that we should stop saying them all together. just the history behind it
@@LoafOfTurtle He did ask if others found it "alarming" as well as seemingly having a generally negative tone towards the subject but "rebutting" him was not my intention. I am merely stating my own insights on the subject and showing a different perspective.
@@ChorusierI agree with you completely, he did end the video with "perpetuating negative stereotypes" and that gave me the feeling that he has a negative view towards "long time no see" etc even tho its pretty obvious to everyone that it isnt racist in modern use.
@@xxBreakxxAwayxx3i understand this argument for things are actively being used harmfully. if something is no longer being used in racist connotation after catching on, there's no reason to drop it because it does no harm. it's like the argument that we should drop halloween because it's based off of irish pagan rituals that involve sacrifice.
@@xxBreakxxAwayxx3These are common English phrases now. You know what could cause racism and divide? Reinstating the idea of them being mockeries of other cultures. It’s not that we can’t discuss it’s past, but attempting to take a very used phrase and declare it racist is asking for more issues. Sometimes it’s worth considering the outcomes and not just what opinion sounds like it gives you a moral high ground.
Happened with “my bad” as well
I’d say that was more of a natural adoption of the word. Don’t remember making fun of anyone. It just sorta entered the lexicon and now I still use it to casually say excuse me or sorry.
I thought it was because it's easier to say, and sounds more clear than fault
Do english people say my fault, or it just makes sense for me as a direct translation to "culpa meva"?
@@stop.juststop probably not the only origin but it started with the GS Warriors copying/making fun of Manute Bol for saying “my bad” instead of “my fault”
@@Lallunalapruna123 we say both
that’s awesome, negative stereotypes are some of my favorites
While you’re in Taiwan, you might hear people say “Ha-Lo” rather than “hello” or just “hi”, it’s used casually not surprisingly
like “Hallo” in german?
Reminds me of the German greeting Hallo but that probably has no connection
哈囉 (which technically in pinyin is ha luo but everyone just says ha lo) is just a normal greeting in taiwan and i'd even say it's the most common!
anything else feels just more formal? i'm not likely to use it at all to friends
@@Canary_PrismI hear ha lou more than ha luo
interesting. my mandarin teacher would say it like that but i always figured it was just her accent (still could be idk). regardless i would sometimes parrot it because i found the pronunciation amusing.
Jokes becoming culture is a natural part of being human
Yeah people get offended to easily these days
Yeah that’s the point of the video try watching it next time
@@Dokataa you must be fun at parties
jokes are not the same thing as racistly mocking people
@@Ralzone I am actually, I pay enough attention to know peoples names and I can even tell what song is playing
Another interesting thing in American English is the saying uh-huh to mean yes, is a direct borrowing from Cherokee. In modern Cherokee the way of saying yes is spelled (using the romanization for Cherokee) v'v. The letter v in Cherokee is used to represent the vowel in sun but nasalized.
In an older form of Cherokee the way of writing the word for yes was v'hv.
There is documentation of this from around around the birth of the us as a country. There was someone who came over here from Britain (i do believe it was England specifically, but I don't remember for certain) and he wrote that the American, instead of stating yes would respond in a Cherokee grunt.
I think its fascinating how much native american influence there is on american English and culture, even though the fact that it is native american influence has been suppressed
Whites loved (and in some cases still do love) to steal things from Black and Indigenous people. They'd been stealing Indigenous American land, food, traditions, and even people for centuries on end.
U taught me s new word "nasalized" and a lot of interesting stuff. Thank you ♡
@@nvdawahyaify White Westerners (almost always Western Europeans in particular) have been stealing stuff from Black and Indigenous American people since the beginning of time, from their land to their traditions to their food to even their members. It's important to talk about these things so that we can stop and prevent other injustices. I appreciate you discussing the history of the use of "uh-huh" in American vernacular. I never would've known that had you not educated us ☺️
@@nvdawahyaify White Westerners (almost always Western Europeans in particular) have been stealing stuff from Black and Indigenous people since the beginning of time, from their land to their traditions to their food to even their individual members. It's important to talk about these things so that we can stop and prevent other injustices. I appreciate you discussing the history of the use of "uh-huh" in American vernacular. I never would've known that had you not educated us ☺️
@@nvdawahyaify White Westerners (almost always Western Europeans in particular) have been stealing stuff from Black and Indigenous American people since the beginning of time, from their land to their traditions to their food to even their individual members. It's important to talk about these things so that we can stop and prevent other injustices. I appreciate you discussing the history of the use of "uh-huh" in American vernacular. I never would've known that had you not educated us ☺️ thank you for spreading your knowledge
I often think about how it's funny that 'Chinaman' is just a literal translation of the Chinese word for 'Chinese person'
Yup. He would be an “Americaman” (美国人) and his parents would be “Serbiaman”. That’s just how Chinese does nationalities.
It’s so funny how the “long time no see” thing came from mocking a Cantonese phrase and now you see people in Hong Kong or Guangdong in general saying this as well
Thanks for letting us know these phrases originated from Chinese, but please don’t get offended on behalf of the Chinese because we are not.
thanks for speaking for all 2 billion chinese and implying a lack of individuality, mate.
He is not offended by the phrases because yeah they aren’t really offensive anymore. He finds it alarming our culture has so much racism steeped in it that it drastically affects even the language we use in our day to day lives without us realizing.
oh, didn't know you were the chinese spokesperson
He’s not “getting offended on their behalf” he’s acknowledging the objective fact that these phrases, while currently not harmful, had disrespectful origins. Not everything is about trying to appear morally superior, yk some people are just capable of empathy and showing emotion is a normal human thing, right?
@@bingbong-yn6yg”you shouldn’t care about anything cause worse things are happening” is a shitty mindset
It perpetuated those stereotypes until we forgot they were used to make fun. Now, if we learn those languages, some words will make more sense to us. Something used to make fun of a group can now be used to connect two groups. I'm gung ho about this. 😁
You lookin at the bright side unlike him ❤
I wish we could do that with the n word too, instead of being divided over it
@@jumpingmoose5554 some day that will probably happen. I wonder how many derogatory racial words have already passed from existence or been changed by time and socio-cultural shifts into un-charged words.
@@jumpingmoose5554"i wanna say racial slurs without consequence"
don’t forget how gen Z made “mashallah” a part of slang 😂
No, I don't find it alarming at all.
Now vamoose.
Chop chop!
100% Agree! Seems pretty normal to borrow.
Excuse my French but I would have just said “oh fuck off”
-not alarmed
For real, alarming? This is the kind of guy the lecture you about “cultural appropriation”. F outa here
The phrase chop chop comes from the famous song lyrics “chop chop chop chow down, take chow down to china town”
Bro, savage AF, I'm here for it! Let's go! How about this British word mash, you know he's going to say the US stole from them too. skedaddle. Dude doesn't understand a melting pot society.
I’ve had my Chinese English students tell me, “That’s what we say in Mandarin!” Then I explain. I figured it out myself while studying in China. Gotta be from Chinese, I thought. A revelation many must have. These phrase really stand out. They are beautiful in their efficiency.
I used to work in tech support US based company with a lot of Indian customers and they like to use “kindly do the needful” to sign off their emails with. So we started using it in house too to describe problems with “it’s not doing the needful” and now it’s not even a joke anymore. We just have adopted their phrase into our parlance at this point.
That's a pretty standard Indian-ism that might have been maintained all the way from the Raj era. Formal letters (& emails by extension) often follow a set format that gets drilled into kids heads in school. Three paragraphs: first, introduce yourself & your reason for contacting the recipient in brief if just your self-introduction seems too small for an opening paragraph; second, details of the situation & how it is affecting you & other people etc; third, closing thoughts & your expectations about what the recipient is supposed to do. Choose the byline phrase based on the nature of the request & your relationship with the recipient. "Kindly do the needful" is just a wonderfully adaptive single line paragraph 3 by itself. There are similar stock phrases for ending letters in other local languages as well, which often come across as much more archaic & formal than the tone of the rest of the letter which needs to be generated by the writers themselves. Very cool how you can find such anachronistic nuggets maintained in formal settings.
Literally same. I'm in a government office in Ireland and the first time I saw 'kindly do the needful' I thought it was one person who didn't have great english but I get emails saying that from different customers every day and we've started saying it in the office too. It's a nice phrase.
Same thing happened with me and my husband living in China - we now seriously ask each other 'please timely complete'
Thanks for posting this, I appreciate knowing better now
I wish every human being was like this instead of getting sensitive when they acquire more knowledge or context on the origins of words. Thank you for being normal
In some cases, foreign countries will adopt foreign phrases because they have diminished power compared to native ones. For example, in many East Asian countries, direct expressions of emotion are considered super powerful. So, they might not say their country’s equivalent to “I love you” unless they’re on their deathbed. But they may use the English phrase. In Japan, you might hear someone go through an entire phone conversation in Japanese and then end it with the English “love you. Bye-bye.”. Because “love you” isn’t considered as super-heavy as the Japanese equivalent. (Funny thing, in English-speaking countries we don’t consider “I love you” less powerful because of how often we say it. Its power is determined by the context of when it’s said and how it’s said).
We took those offensive phrases, mainstreamed them, and stripped them of their sting. We did it people, we beat racism.
Literally every language has phrases from mocking other language
No no, didn’t you know only white Americans are the bad guys? And by bad guys, I mean only the men. Becaust women are innocent flowers and only men are evil
In Indonesian slang, there's word 'cingcong', meaning "nonsense talk". It comes from the word "ching chong", which was how Westerners imitate Chinese talking with derogatory intention.
Similar to barbar in greek that became barbarian and blah-blah in English.
Nah they talk like that only
Bro said ‘alarming’ like he was talking about chemicals in the drinking water
Bro said alarming when there is war and government corruption and we are told to focus on ancient ‘racism’
Yet you would probably vote against any regulation to ensure tap water is drinkable because it's probably going to cost billions to make tap water clean.
@@speedy01247 My Tap water is clean...I use a well and filter my water.. Government didn't have anything to do with it. Pro tip..you can filter your own water, hell you can distill your own water. Eff the government as if it's some panacea to all our problems when it is the cause of them.
Smiles in European
@@user-wn6pb3tu6x where does he tell you to “focus” on it? 💀 it’s just another sad fact about america not a state of emergency, get over urself
“there’s literally war and govt corruption 🤓” right let’s all just pretend y’all actually care abt those topics
Plz make long form videos, I would love to watch them!!!
My Thai coworker has me saying these cute phrases like "Im sleepy so bad" and I'll never get over her telling me how she was eating peanuts but you couldn't hear the T in her pronunciation. I love the way she speaks
NAHHH THATS WILD
i’m sleepy so bad is something i would say as a native english speaker considering i say things like uncomfy and sitted
"So knowing how all these phrases are rooted in racism, will you now change the way you speak?"
*no can do*
That’s not even what he said yall just wanna be offended
He didn’t say that actually
Irrelevant but did anybody else notice he started getting louder, faster, and more aggressive as the video went on. He seems to be very passionate about the subject. I like it.
Yea his estrogen was flaring up
@@baddog6003 he's been watching to many rage/race grifter tiktoks.
@@baddog6003what?
@@baddog6003LMFAO
@@baddog6003 😂😂
Oh so that’s why Rock Paper Scissors is sometimes called a derogatory term to mock Mandarin Chinese and other Asian language
"cute and funny" 😭😭😭
😭😭😭😭😭😭
Holy shit, how did this get here out of all places lmao
💢 💢💢 😭
Please get therapy, this is not normal
bratty linguist correction 💢💢💢
I’m Chinese. It’s not alarming.
It’s weird that a linguistics major would use emotionally charged language like that when you guys value descriptivism over prescriptivism.
Edit for doubters:
He has a short titled “Can we stop this already?” is straight up prescriptivism. Another close one is his “unc status” short.
hes not saying its alarming because the language is "wrong". its alarming because of how it reflects deeply embedded racism.
There's a current problem in linguistics in that linguists skew very heavily left. The same is especially true in sociology and to a lesser extent psychology. They have a problem separating their personal beliefs from the fields in which they work.
@@annieevie9607cringe take, find something important to care about instead of whining.
@@Squang.No I am good thanks you
@@mohammzahamza3148 you don't have tangible goals, just complaining about imagined racism? Suit yourself.
That makes so much sense. I’ve always wondered why there’s so many phrases that don’t make grammatical sense
True, but I think there are also plenty of "folk phrases" that are grammatically incorrect without any foreign influence
As part of the "other groups of people", you should chill, we don't care that much lol
*Bro is getting agitated* 😂
It’s his estrogen levels
Yep soyboy looking guy
Yep soyboy looking guy 😂
@@erogereviewer7781 i bet it turns you on "erogereviewer" 💀
@@erogereviewer7781it’s always 2 dumb bitches telling each other “exactlyyyyy”
I'd never seen "gung ho" written out before, I always thought it was "gun ho" and that it came from an old term similar to "trigger happy" and then evolved into a general term for being enthusiastic
Same
I mean that's kind of obvious
New eggcorn just dropped
It was picked up by USMC general Evans Carlson to use as a motto for his command group. He had spent time in China in the 30s and was impressed by the dedication they could have towards a single objective and wanted to transmit that to his troops.
"Does anyone else find it a little alarming"
Not particularly, to be honest.
Right? Like it ain't that deep
Me discovering where "sichinenza" comes from.
It comes from americans saying "second hands"
Do you guys ever get exhausted trying to find things to be upset about? Will there ever be a point where we can just acknowledge not everything needs to be be negative?
I was thinking the same damn thing
There are die hard Trump supporters out there who spend sleepless nights filled with feelings of inadequacy knowing that the bullshit they make up will never make the Left look half as bad and petty as things some of us unironically post of our own free will.
I love this comment
i don’t think he said this to make anyone upset, he was just stating facts even they’re “negative”. we can’t deny how things were and it’s important to talk about it because it’s history
@@thisthatgirl let me ask you something, when Asian people use English words or phrases are they mocking us? Why is this content creator framing this from the prospective that Americans are “mocking” Asians instead of the rational point of view that so many Asians have migrated to America that that they have had significant impact on our language? Asian aren’t even the first group to do this, it happened with the polish, Italians, Irish, Hispanic, Africans, whatever you wanna name. Why couldn’t he highlight that aspect about our culture and history? Why is that Americans are mocking everyone else but it’s never the other way around? You wanna know why. These people think that America is some sort of boogeyman, that all we do is oppress and bully when that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you made this far I just wanna ask one thing from you, even if you agree with someone’s message or prospective; do yourself the favor and still question it. You might end up peeling back layers you never even would have thought of and potentially see their bias.
I don't find it alarming. I find it hilarious.
You just wanna be different
@@S5S5066 it’s kind of funny though, only reason did people get upset about stupid shit like this
@@halogod0298nobody's upset, babe. there's a difference between being upset and pointing out that racism is so deeply set into western society that it affects the way we speak without even realising.
100% guarantee you're gonna reply some dumb shit like "yeah nobody cares"
do u want a cookie
@@S5S5066 ???
This man is a professional yapper, and I’m here for it.😂
I love his videos ^-^ I just wished he'd show how other languages do this as well and how it's not as negative as people make it seem. English is one of the most popular languages and everyone wants to incorporate English words into their vocabulary even if it's not properly used or pronounced correctly. In Korea the term "Hwaiting!!" is used as encouragement and to keep pushing forward, but it actually comes from the English word "Fighting!" It is never meant as an insult or to make fun of Westerners, they just have an accent and adopted the word. There's nothing wrong with it. Language is meant to be shared.
And he yaps about yapping which is even better
Thats...a pretty accurate description
@@divaofthedamned365the examples he showed are not sharing but racism, as someone from latin america I get when ppl use english terms since theyre kinda popular but those examples are mostly NOT sharing
@@divaofthedamned365he literally covered that tho. “Hasta la vista” can be fine and fun. The specific examples of “no can do” or “gung ho” etc ARE racist tho.
Also, English is spoken on so many continents because of colonization and imperialism. Colonization is the reason it’s even spoken in North America at all. We should keep that in mind. IMO, English has been forced onto so many cultures and peoples in the world that it should be up for grabsies for anyone internationally to make fun of it (as long as they’re not mocking Englishes spoken by marginalized people in English-speaking countries like AAVE/BVE)
Gung ho is the opposite of reductive, it was introduced to Americans by a marine officer who was impressed with Chinese guerrilla forces in ww2
How about we be grateful that those phrases are no longer used out of hate.
No, you people don’t get a pass.
@@ericktellez7632 Okay, Erick 😂
I feel like you went to college for language studys then realized that you can't get a job with it
TH-camrs and Influencers make hella cash, I’m surprised there’s people who still don’t know that
@@Cinnuh how does that refer to the comment? I was just saying that it's probably hard to find jobs in language studies.
@@itsmii1364 Hard to find a job with your degree -> Make your own job creating content
😲🫢 WOW.
@@Cinnuh Most do not. This guy is on the right amount of subscribers to be making it a career but making "hella cash" he will not be.
Taiwanese here to share some of my thoughts
In Taiwan, we actually use some of the phrases ironically (eg. long time no see) to mock those with poor English or simply as a joke. But it has become so prevalent that some people actually believe it’s a legit English phrase lmao
Another example would be using “People mountain people sea”（literal translation of人山人海） to describe an enormous crowd.
P.S good vid btw keep it up ❤
It IS a legit English phrase now.
They are legit in english btw
pff "people mountain people sea"
good good study day day up!
@@Canary_PrismI like that one! Every evocative imagery.
This is so interesting. Im so happy to have found your channel.
Bro is trying to cancel language.
Well it ironically became a way we all talk so that’s karma at least
pointing out the origins isn't canceling silly. It's educating yourself. You guys don't know what canceling is and it's getting out of hand now lol
He’s really really hardcore about keeping those races and cultures separated and pure
Quit being so sensitive. Learning the history behind things isn't the same as cancelling them. 🙄
Bro is practically delusional (referring to "darkened angel 777")
brotha do you know what it means to cancel something or someone, like, at all
“好久不见” (hăo jǐu bu jiàn) is literally “long time no see” in Mandarin. The first two characters mean “quite a while” and the second two mean “to not see.” This is an example of an idiom, which are super common in Mandarin, and is meant to be understood as a concept not literally word for word. English is also expressing the concept not the literal translation. Calling this racist is a misunderstanding of how Mandarin idioms work. Calm down. 😂
No, the context of how the saying is used is what made it racist. The English speakers weren’t saying ‘no can do’ because they had respect for the language, they wanted to mock Chinese speakers.
That’s just history, I don’t know why everybody is so sensitive in the comments 😂
That’s what I was thinking but like the person said it’s most likely just the context of how it was used. Not the phrase itself.
Mandarin didn’t really exist in America at that time. 99% of immigrants were Cantonese.
The phrase was literally originally to mock Chinese immigrants not respect how our language worked stupid, he literally says that in the video how dense are yall💀
@@Candice-x2y Oooh I see. That’s interesting to know.
"En esta economia?!" Always cracks me up as an English speaker
Does that means "In this economy?!"?
@@AnnXYZ666 yes
I'ma native spanish speaker and i have "en esta economia?!" in my daily vocab bc if there's one thing my country can do is make inflation reach triple digits
This is currently happening with “love you long time.” If you weren’t aware this is a racist phrase used to mock Asian women stop using it pleaseee
Is it alarming that a language with the most intercultural reach in history has a handful of phrases that are mean against other cultures...?
Only as alarming as the fact that Coke was once made with cocaine, or that people cheat sometimes
I would argue that they're not "mean against other cultures" because they've become idiomatic and have lost the original mocking connotations, and now they're just expressions we use all the time with no ill will whatsoever.
The people who used them that way are long dead. (Like, "long time no see" is first attested in English in 1843.)
@@Eyedunno I agree, which is why I used the Coke thing. The idea of things were once not great and now have lost any of the original meanity can hardly be alarming to normal people. Old phrases sometimes being distasteful has as much relevance as Coke long ago, but not any time recently, having cocaine in it
"Alarming" also implies that the subject is unexpected. Did this guy find it surprising that people do bad things sometimes, and sometimes those bad things are taught to others? Somebody needs to tell him that sometimes kids cheat on tests, and sometimes they tell other kids how to do it successfully. Really alarming stuff, a small population of a massive culture choosing to do bad or mean things sometimes
im now imagining non-english speaking countries saying bye fancy like, "farewell", "good day to you", "toodle-pip" "in a bit" "good morrow"
My man just learnt how 30% of the English language is formed lol .
Hate? That’s not just how the English language was made, that’s how society got created.
@@Shooshpa-z2e i dont think that sentence says hate in it once.
@@Shooshpa-z2e No, he ment stealing it from other countrys.
Like half of english is either french or old Saxon with an Anglo accent.
@@luzifershadres Just yesterday I watched a video about how different humor is between countries and it's just now that I actually get it. I don't exactly know how to explain the joke, just know that it's some kind of German humor.
OMG this helps so much, thank you! I'm a non-native speaker, currently studying Chinese, and I was wracking my brains over "long time no see" perfectly matching 好久不见, but not appearing grammatically correct in English.
Did bro just say cute and funny?
ONG😭😭
for real 😭😭
AAAAHHH GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD
I know what you are
what the fuck is wrong with you "people"
Well im from Argentina and let me tell you our most fanous sauce name "chimichurri" is actually a word we invented to mock and make fun of the English asking "give me curry" when asking for sauce, which is not a curry at all lol. That's why its always funny to me when an English speaking person says that they love chimichurri
We have a thing called curry sauce in Europe.
@@Natasha___. I know. That's the thing, those English people had the habit of calling every sauce a curry even when it was not though that's why the name chimichurri was born, mocking the English for calling everything a curry.
Chimichurri is what we Dominicans call a type of sandwich.
Its interesting how you see all other languages rules as natural phenomenons but this particular one you label as "alarming"
It's the origin of them that he finds alarming, not the phrases themselves. Like he says, the phrase "long time no see" in English came to be because of racists in the past mocking Chinese. Its modern day usage has no connection to this but the fact that it and many other phrases started that way is what he finds weird/alarming :)
@@CrazyJay1301it's pretty ambiguous, i conspiracize intentionally for the sake of engagement bait, whether he's saying we should stop saying them or not
@@yukari_katsuragiYou're somewhat correct, but the main reason is his cultural heritage. The guy is ✡️ and as such comes from more academic/woke/metropolitan backgrounds
@@scottanno8861 that clarifies nothing and doesn't contradict me in any way
his stance is ambiguous. the rage-baitiest possible take is implied but not said outright. his background doesn't explain that
genuinely astounding how everything in america (and, as an australian, here too) always somehow ends up linking back to racism
As a Chinese person, I dunno anything 😅
Racism is everyone bro
We Chinese also banter with the American 😭
From an American, Love ya'll !!
the difference is that white people haven't been opporessed for 90% of western civilisation. it's okay to take the piss out of a white american because of historical context, meanwhile it's unacceptable to do the same to a black or asian person, because both of those groups have been and still are systematically oppressed
American here. Not a commie but nice to see our brothers visiting this comment section too
@@10054 brit here. i absolutely am a commie and it's nice to see people from other cultures here
@@10054 if you actually look at how China runs things, it's actually more capitalist than America lol. China declaring itself as communist is only political.
Bro just discovered how language evolution works
My Blue Archive senses woke me up wtf
Cute and funny 😭😭😭
Nobody finds this alarming.
doesn't mean i'm going to stop saying them. no can do. i'm pretty gung ho about how i speak
Long time no see Gabe!
Long time no see!
You two know each other???
@@gummibear4757 nope lol
@@gabe7120 OH SHIT THE JOKE WENT WAYYYYY OVER MY HEAD.
One of my coworkers recently told me that at her new job, she's not allowed to say things like, "Long time, no see" because it "makes fun" of people like Native Americans... I was shook lol
Hopefully, all businesses will follow this example.
@AmusedCoffee-ym3gb Hopefully, they won't
@@AmusedCoffee-ym3gbwhy the fuck would you ever want that
@@AmusedCoffee-ym3gb fuck that
Huh. I WAS wondering why, despite Mandarin Chinese and English having very different grammar structures, 好久不见 translated perfectly to English, without any need for rephrasing. I just thought it was a coincidence.
But that was cantonese, not mandarin.
@@Nikkikkikkiz same Hanzi.
@@blakksheep736 冇 does not exist in mandarin and 不 is no replacement
@@Nikkikkikkiz same difference.
@@Nikkikkikkiz Im not sure what you're getting at, as that phrase in mandarin with "bu" does exist
Bye-bye: 🥹
Farewell: 🗿
Any thoughts about how many yiddish words are used by typically older people, I mean, I don’t see any kids saying tuchas or schmuck
They were used in media in the 90's. If you get around the right Millenial, it might slip out.
They do if they’re Jewish enough! I’m Jewish and the Yiddish I was raised on definitely pops out every now and again!
My assumption is that non-Yiddish speakers used Yiddish words as slang-like replacers for English words that would have been considered situationally inappropriate. Like how someone might say a booty or bum hole instead of ass or anus. Since Yiddish was generally a lesser-known language, it could function as a “silly” sound that could get the point across in a more subtle way. My assumption is that Yiddish simply fell out of popularity and/or common knowledge with younger generations who have different sources for slang and replacer words. I guess the age of the proud Jewish New Yorker comedian is over, with the sea of vaguely Californian TH-camr/tiktokers taking over the airwaves lol
@@Canonicallycreative it appears I aint Jewish enough :(
@@ohrats731 ah, thank you for the in depth answer
its almost as if words have as much power as you give to them
It’s true, I saw these phrases as harmless but after this vid I can’t unlearn the origins. I can never say “eeny meeny miny moe catch a tiger by the toe” without feeling like a racist capitalist pig
😭
No can do, ”no can do” is just too perfect of a phrase
As a chinese American, i can tell you my immigrant parents are actual proud of the fact that these phrases came from chinese people lmao
Etymology and idioms are fascinating. The "English" we use today has morphed countless times and is filled with culture slang , especially in America. There are wordsmiths like Shakespeare who created and documented nearly 2000 words and contemporaries like snoop dog who now how to bridge the gap between the past and the present.
There's also convergent evolution in English. "Holmes" (yes, before Doyle) Was a real Surname, and surnames were used as a sign of deference and respect. That got combined with 20th century "Homie," As in someone from your home, you share roots and have a bond there. But now instead of "Homes," It's often spelled as "Holmes," but still refers to both "I'm respecting you" and "We share experiences"
Just wait until he googles the etymology of the word "bad"
Interesting, thanks for that.
Etymology is SO interesting, I've always wondered where phrases originated from
Bruh stop capping. Sure "Gung Ho" was based on a Chinese term meaning "work together". But it was introduced as a slogan in the Marines during WW2 by Lt Cl Evans Carlson, who has been impressed by the way Chinese troops he had observed worked together during the 2nd Sino-Japanese war. It didn't become a popular term in American households until the 1943 movie "Gung Ho" starring Randolph Scott as a marine popularized it. Now you can have criticisms of films from that era. But its intellectually dishonest to say these terms are a result of Americans making fun of the way immigrants say things. If you do any actually research I'm sure you'll find that the case for most of the terms you mention, and more.
Alarming? No.
But watching you freakout about it is fun.
He has multiple videos where he freaks out about “racist” and “offensive” word origins and how problematic it is lol
Thank you for your service
lol he's not freaking out where the fuck did you get that from
@@giby8866"its so alarming guys, americans are so racist!! We need to do something about it immediately, stop using these phrases or you're racist!!" that's the vibe he gives off. Seems soft.
My feelings are not hurt that easily