NMTMBA?!

Editor's note: my last blogs were long and I'm positive they drained me more than they drained you reading it. I'mma try to keep this one succinct.

Frankfurt-n-Motion is basically a networking group comprised of ex-pats whom happen to be living/working in Frankfurt. While some of its members work either for the military or contract for the military (and the predominant language spoken amongst the group is English), many of its members are not American. Case in point, Etsuko...


She is Japanese, speaks 3 languages (Japanese, German and English) and is working on a fourth (French). Anyways, every Tuesday evening, Frankfurt-n-Motion holds "Drinkstag"--basically, Frankfurt-n-Motion members meet at a bar/restaurant and converse over drinks and food.

At some point during our (Etsuko and I) conversation, she makes the statement, "I want to learn to talk like you." Now mind you, Etsuko's English, while superb (verb conjugation and tense recognition and all), is no doubt spoken in an accent to where you know English is not her first language. I asked her what she meant, to which she replied with the phrase "do you know what I'm saying" while simultaneously imitating one of the many hand gestures I often use subconsciously. I found this interesting as I saw it less of a reflection of me, but more as an interest in "learning" (if you will) American "swag"...or maybe even the possibilty of learning more American slang so that less of her personality is "lost in translation" (if you will).

Throwing corniness to the wind, I took the back of a receipt on the table and wrote:

"you-o-what-m-sayin?!"

Of course she pronounced this very phoenetically, after which I corrected and instructed her to sort of let the letters/sounds flow together as easily as possible. It was then that I believe I inadvertently stumbled upon an epiphany (and of course, my tape recorder was at home).

I began to explain that we Americans are lazy (in theory). So in talking, we try to avoid the use of hard consonants or letters/sounds that chop the flow of a word/sentence. This in turn makes for words/sentences that are easier and/or faster to pronounce. I then broke down the following phrase and told her this is what's currently hot in the streets of America in the '07 (I really didn't say that, but you'll get the picture)...

"do you know what I'm talking about?"

"u-no-wh-m-talm-bout?"

"NMTMBA?!"

It was quite the entertaining exercise watching and hearing her attempt to this phrase this out...but sure enough after 5 or 6 tries, she got it. It was then that the British guy sitting next to us chimed in. He stated that that may be the case for America, but in England its different. He used the word "little" (which they pronounce "li-oo"--> I'm sorry, I don't know how to write it out, but EVERY SINGLE VIEWER AT HOME...NSMTMBA!)

I then felt even more gratified cause this only served to further extend my epiff. See, they do the same thing, the only difference is while we Americans try to smooth over the natural break caused by hard consonants, the British sort of chop it up--while omitting the hard consonant sound altogether (Kadija...you want to chime in on this?).

Anyways, I found this all quite amusing. Score one for American swag...and another for the intelligence of the boy Freud to articulate it.

Cheers.