When they start talking like rejected extras for Top Boy...

[resipsa]

...how do you react? Laugh and hope it passes? Ignore? Imitate? Advice please as it's driving me mad, fam, innit.

In what way does an accent make you a drug dealer?

Have you seen top boy?

@MCOut Topboy is about two drug dealers and that is the slant discussed here. See tittle of thread. Not that I see that shit program. However, stop gaslighting people with calling them racist if they do not agree with allowing their teens to talk like the characters of a crime series based in London dodgy drug dealers.

@MurielThrockmorton I see what you’re saying. I think that there’s always the assumption that both parties are enjoying the banter because they participate. This is very much not always the case, a lot of people just suffer through it for a peaceful life, because it brings their white or mc friend joy and they don’t want to kill the mood. The problem is that it’s at the expense of their self-esteem. Personally, I don’t feel like this is togetherness, it’s just a case of ignorance is bliss. Also, because this happens in groups of people who are the same class or the same race it’s clear that those don’t need to be front and centre of whatever good natured teasing goes on.

These attitudes are also never just confined to interpersonal relationships so if the choice is between banter & a false sense of togetherness or less discrimination I choose the latter.

No, what's biased is that the main or only association so many of you have with that way of speaking is a show about drug dealers.

Get some global majority or working class friends...if they'll have you.

Oh my god, this.

I have started to:

(a) say ‘Yes, it IS that deep. If you don’t clear your plate now, there’ll be trouble’

(b) use it against them - ‘it’s not that deep, just tidy your room!’

Both of these seem to work.

Its like the teen version of ‘calm down, dear’ isn’t it? 😡

@travelnorth @wensleywhale if you’re under the impression that this is a phenomenon that is only a few years old you live under a rock… this very much predates the TV show.

also, if you go back and read you’ll notice, I didn’t say it was wrong to discourage it. I said it was wrong to belittle it with a whole load of racist stereotypes. It is very easy not to be accused of racism. Just don’t do it.

I just laugh when I hear the (white) boys in their tracksuits and little bags trying to talk patois like they are some yardie. Do that not realise how stupid they look. 🤣🤣

If they grew up in some areas of London/on some council estates etc then some white kids do speak like this naturally without it being cultural appropriation, as it's what they grew up around. MLE is multi-cultural after all.

Even I say some of these things on the thread and I'm 27, they were around when I were young! It's hardly new at all. Innit is so extremely common I find it weird that it's even commented on anymore!

Grime music was around and popular before top boy itself and a lot of teens will have heard MLE through grime, think Skepta, JME, P Money, Kano. Although, I doubt anyone commenting negatively on this thread has ever enjoyed grime tbf, and no grime isn't drill music.

Bottom line is this; it sounds awful on anyone.

This thread got kinda deep still.

Apologies if this has been posted already...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/14/wagwan-why-are-more-and-more-britons-speaking-multicultural-london-english?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

Come on be honest, it’s precisely where it all started decades ago. We all know that.

@BackAgainstWall BackAgainstWall it's not that deep, chill

I think we have to get used to it - linguists predict that MLE will become the predominant dialect in England in the next couple of decades. Similar has happened in our lifetimes - look at archive BBC footage from the 60s and 70s - even normal people on the street spoke in much more clipped tones then than they do now, pronouncing more letters in words than most people do now, regardless of accent:
https://fb.watch/oh9xVEVEVv/

Kids were speaking like this 20 years ago in London. What I can't understand is the mc kids saying things like "I'm a roadman". You're really not sweetheart, you're a home counties boy doing his GCSEs whose mum cooks his tea every day.

@LastNightIDreamtIWasAtManderleyAgain
Clap back, exactly bruh

Doesn't it depend on where they're from? My son and his mates speak like they're on the set of top boy, with my boy merging into Danny Dyer when angry, we are from East London, completely normal, including bits of Jamaican slang, it doesn't bother me🤷🏻‍♀️