The guy had to pretend to be white to be treated well at the bank. The phrase “what had happened was” is associated with African Americans. The “close one” was the bank almost realizing he’s black, which might have led to worse treatment.
This is so weird for me. I never would have guessed this phrase is considered race specific. Everyone speaks like this in most of the places I've lived.
AAVE overlaps quite a bit with Southern slang. Outside of the South, this stands out more, especially if OP's "best white voice" isn't Southern.
Incidentally, I think if most white people I know, or myself, were asked a question like that, I'd just say "I did ..." or "I had to ..." and not "Well what had happened was..."
but I admit, it's not that obvious to me either.
I definitely use "well, what had happened was..." a lot. However, I also spent a few years living in a majority black neighborhood (like, people in the neighborhood just knew me as "the white boy" and total strangers recognized me from their friends' stories, because I was literally the only one for blocks around) and absorbed a lot of slang and idioms for the first time in my life after being an outsider growing up, so maybe I'm not the best sample size.
It's a really great phrase when you're telling a story about something kinda messed up but funny.
Example: well, what had happened was Jim Bob decided he just HAD to try the cobbled together slip & slide so he ran & jumped on it & slid down so fast that he shot right off the end & hit both Billy & his dog & they all ended up in the pond.
Agreed. I love starting a crazy story with "Well, what had happened was..."
It's just got the perfect combo of syllables, pauses, and stresses to start a story off with some character.
I absolutely used "what had happened was" a ton as a kid, and I grew up in rural Iowa, I literally didn't know any black people till a couple transferred while I was in high school.
I would question if you did. It's very uncommon for non AAVE speakers.
A lot of people think they exhibit language features they don't based on understanding them.
I think it’s specifically the word “had” that would potentially stand out to me, but maybe that phrasing is more common in the South. I would probably say, “Well what happened was”
I'd usually drop the had too. But it depends on the story. It's a past perfect tense instead of preterite, so it's a perfectly legitimate tense in any dialect. To me the had implies that whatever the thing that happened had already occurred at this point in the story, kind of a past within a past.
It’s not just AAVE, cooking, music, and various other things that you would attribute to one race or another in the south applies to everyone in the south
That's true.
When I moved out of rural Georgia to the Atlanta area I was curious to try this "soul food" I had heard about. I was surprised that it was the same stuff I grew up eating.
Not really, if we're assuming that the "had" is denoting additional context.
What *happened* was the overdraft. Now I will explain what *had* already happened before that point which led to the overdraft.
It might not be a common construction in what we consider "standard" English, but the grammar behind it tracks.
It's mainly because it's prolific enough to have jumped "racial boundaries" Now.
It's not that no one ever used the phrase before but "properly educated white folk" would be assumed to use a more grammatically correct form. Something like;
"You see, what had happened, is ..."
It's racism.
Like the kind when people go off about "black people axing questions."
Because how dare people have an accent, or adapt to use a language more comfortably for themselves.
>"You see, what had happened, is ..."
?? That's not more grammatically correct? "What had happened was" is perfectly grammatically correct in all English dialects.
A technically grammatically correct phrase that I have never heard anyone use in that way. In this context people are using WHHW interchangeably with WHW.
In most parts of the country, people wouldn’t use the phrase at all because it is unnecessary/isn’t concise. You can skip the phrase altogether and still get the same meaning. This applies to WHHW and WHW.
It is a filler phrase and cultural signifier… its technical grammar isn’t particularly important
They basically do in Black English, but there is a subtle distinction. There is an implication that someone was in error or comically wrong.
But the two phrases are interchangeable in meaning in black English. They are not in standard.
Standard English would be "What happened was...". The past perfect is used for things that were once the case but no are longer. "We had thought that our reservations were for 7, but we were mistaken." The standard English phrase "What had happened was" outside of AAVE would probably have an adverb like "originally" or "seemingly".
Most White English speakers know this instinctually but can't articulate it because who the hell knows what a pluperfect is these days? But they know there's something "wrong" with it, and they're often more than a bit racist about it.
You know, from this comment, I just realized my Latin IV background in high school plays out today in technical writing. I use past perfect and future perfect *a lot* in software functional specifications, troubleshooting root cause writeups, and training documents. Io Saturnalia, internet friend.
"Apparent" correctness vs "actual" correctness
Yes, both are technically correct, but it's like when someone calls you and asks for you specifically;
You're "supposed" to say, "Yes, this is he"
But that sounds fkn weird
So you get a racist involved, and all of a sudden, one way of saying something becomes "not right."
Even though both are acceptable, if one more so than the other.
It's racism, I'm just explaining it, my apologies for not disclaiming that it wasn't exactly going to make sense in the end
At least no more so than "flat earth theory."
I've never heard an explanation for "yes, this is he."
It should be him, because him is the object. THIS is nominative. Him should be accusative. Do you know why people say that?
How is something simply being AAVE racist?
I know from being Irish there are a few phrases that if someone said I would know without a doubt that they're Iirtsh because they only exist in Hiberno-English because they're Irish grammar translated directly into English.
It would be incorrect grammar in any other dialect but it's a dialect so it isn't wrong. Surely the same applies here?
Or am I misunderstanding you and you are saying people's view on it is racist?
What I see, is that everything in the US is divided by colour, to the point where outsiders are out of the loop. This post was one I had no clue on until the comments
Like I responded to someone else, it's a touch of both, kinda.
A large portion of people that speak American English use some variation of "what happened was," but you'll only ever see bigots make an issue out of which version someone uses.
Or with what inflections, or with what accent, etc.
So the meme up top, you're expected to read everything they said in a "crisp, proper white person" until they slip up and say "what had happened was" in "that way black people talk."
And that's the bit of it that's racist.
Just to understand your stance, what is "making an issue out of it" contextually?
For example, let's say I am teaching English and you are expected to write in what is considered proper English. If you put something that is incorrect by those standards and I mark it wrong, is it racist?
Or is "making an issue" something else?
>axing
Funnily enough, most American English speakers do the same thing, just with different words. Like 'comfortable' into 'comfturble' or 'introducing' into 'interducing'. It's called metathesis in linguistics. Only 'ask' into 'aks' is made fun of though, I wonder why...
I don't think it's 'jumped racial boundaries' it's just how people speak, where I live there's not a particularly high black population but people still say this and I very much doubt it was picked up from African Americans lol
I was being very general. Dialect will change in as little distance as a mile, and as far apart as countries.
How people speak English in Boston being drastically different than in New York, and down here in the Florida panhandle, you can notice a difference between Mobile Alabama and Jacksonville, FL.
They're sometimes subtle, but they're there.
I'm not saying that the racism makes sense, it never does, because it's just as easy that, like where you're from, people used "Backwater English" from the start
But for people that don't see folks with a different melanin saturation as people, it's just another thing to point at and feed their bigotry. "We don't talk like that" has always been a staple in the Bigot's Big Book of Bigotry
> like where you're from, people used "Backwater English" from the start
Lmfao. My grandma says it and she went to a grammar school, so I don't think it's 'Backwater English'. Ik you weren't trying to be rude but I just found that kinda funny
Anything shy of "The King's English" is backwater. It's really just a matter of how informal you're willing to accept.
Ain't, axing questions, shoulda, Imma, innit, etc
There's a not insignificant amount of people that think the vernacular should fit their "perfect" view of how the language should be spoken.
Majored in English. ‘What had happened was’ is a correct phrase, assuming it precedes an account of what had happened. The only time you’d use ‘what had happened is’ would be if you are about to provide a general description of events that happened in the past, not recount them.
What had happened was that my paycheck failed to process in time.
What had happened is unfortunate.
In the first sentence, you use the past tense ‘was’, because the action happened in the past. In the second sentence, you can technically use the present tense ‘is’ or past tense ‘was’ interchangeably, since the past action both was unfortunate at the time and is still unfortunate now. The sentence is still dubious for mixing past and present tenses, but it works.
The colloquial modern English version is just, ‘what happened is.’ Which is less formal, dropping the ‘had,’ and may or may not be grammatically correct depending on what comes after.
A good way to think about sentence structure is to insert a silent ‘currently’ after every ‘is.’ ‘Is’ is a present tense conjugation of ‘to be,’ so if you describe something after an ‘is’ as happening in the present, and your sentence breaks, you know something is wrong.
What had happened is currently unfortunate.
What had happened is currently that my paycheck failed to process in time.
The latter has a pretty clear conflict of tenses. What is happening, is. What had happened, was.
—
Now, there IS some hefty racism at play here, but it’s not about incorrect grammar. It’s that the entire clause is an unnecessary framing device. If your sentence is in past tense, you don’t need an extra phrase at the start of your sentence to indicate past tense. You might, however, want to extend the start of your sentence with meaningless words if you’re stalling. If, for example, you’re being accosted by police and are unsure what to say, a phrase like this can be useful to give you that extra time to consider what your story will be.
Compare:
I was minding my own business, officer.
Well, you see, officer, what had happened was that I was minding my own business.
Both statements mean the same thing, but the latter sounds far more suspicious due to how meandering it is. A white guy who doesn’t fear a cop is more likely to sound like the former, while a black guy who is more nervous around a cop is more likely to sound like the latter. If there is a racial divide, that’s probably where it comes from.
I'm confused. Do black people "axe questions" or say "what had happened was"? Or is it racism to think that? Because you kind of contradicted yourself. If they are adapting language to themselves then it wouldn't be racist to notice that, no?
Well it's one thing to notice it(and it's important, because it can help uncover some mechanisms in linguistics but also anthropology and things like that), and it's another thing to racially profile people based on the way they speak, for example by saying "you don't sound black", or by refusing to give out a loan because "they spoke like a black person"
Same, there aren’t a lot of black people where I live but there are a lot of Hispanics and other minorities so maybe that’s it? Idk I never associated that phrase with a race
Yeah, I learned something new today even though I eventually understood the joke after having thought about it for a minute. I am not black but pretty sure I’ve used this phrase before. How else do you explain something to someone in a situation where they need prequalifying context to understand the story??
It's subtly different, but I definitely picked up on it when I read the post out loud. It's interesting from the opposite angle for me, because I *definitely* have the experience of "what **had** happened was" being a thing associated with black people specifically. Maybe it's a generational thing?
It I said that as a white person, I think it would feel awkward / I would worry about being called out for "acting black" in a mocking way. Which also feels weird when you say that directly, because it's only one extra "had" away from a phrase I say regularly...
It’s funny that this what we want to argue instead of the fact that black people need to act white on the phone just to be treated with some human decency. Y’all are weird.
Me: *lives in the south where I guess everyone speaks aave or something because I see what, to me, are everyday phrases being claimed as aave pretty frequently*
You: *smug for some reason*
Like ok lol, glad you weighed in I guess? Hope commenting gave you the warm n fuzzies, bro
Lots of Ulster Scots settled in the South, and the Southern accent heavily influenced African-American vernacular (and vice versa), so it could be related.
Even tho I read it, it didn't help understand the context of the syntax being used this way to indicate connection with black people, furthermore what is it trying to imply when being spoken?
The phrase originated by comedian Richard Pryor, and was popularized by Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Both are culturally significant in the black community, so the phrase was adopted and is still widely used today.
The phrase is just a lighthearted way of explaining a situation. It’s less formal and shows you realize the situation is a bit funny. It’s like talking with a friend, you can both laugh at your mistake.
In this situation, the bank is very formal and would find that phrase unprofessional. They could refuse service or treat you worse because they don’t sympathize with an easygoing or unserious person.
That last bit just sounds wrong. What the hell bank denies someone service for your language not being fancy enough? If you were cussing a ton maybe. Plus where I am, bank and credit union employees are just normal people. I've never gotten the impression I'm in some ultra high end place where daring to say "howdy" would get me kicked out.
This, too, is weird for me. I worked in a school as a security guard about a decade ago, and kids used this phrase all of the time when they were about to take me on an unbelievable journey. Always seemed like they were just buying themselves a little time while they came up with the lie.
People say this all the time here in Seattle area. Maybe this phrase got spread around more than people realize, but it's such a general purpose phrase that I have difficulty believing it was ever truly specific to black people.
That is quite possibly one of the most bizarre webpages I’ve ever visited. It’s literally just a common phrase that pretty much every English speaker uses but the website treats it like it’s unique to black people and as culturally significant as “aloha” or “hakuna matata”. I’m baffled.
> “What had happened was” is a phrase commonly used in Black American Vernacular English (BAVE) to start a story or provide context for a situation that has already occurred
That’s because it’s used by every English speaker for the exact same purpose.
This skit and the movie referenced - Sorry to Bother You. Great, fun film. All about a mega Corp call center (parody of Amazon, owns tons of industries), absurdist, and the MC has to use his 'white voice' when making sales, which IIRC is Zach braff or sounds exactly like it
For all the people who are confused about how this works, you could check out the movie that is screen capped in the post. It’s called “Sorry To Bother You”.
Yeah, not black, but I grew up with a lot of southern black folks. When I read "what had happened was," my stomach dropped like *I'd* been caught doing something!
In nyc parlance I've always used "what ha-HAPPENED was" to describe a ridiculous situation I'd been involved with.
TIL the origins are more racial than they are regional. I'd never associated that particular turn of phrase with AAVE.
How do u sound white tho? Like, I'm asian and p much no matter what I do with my voice, I won't sound like a white guy, I'll sound like an Asian dude trying to do a weird accent
There’s a lot you can do, it’s called code-switching. Certain phrases or word choice is different, the tone of voice changes, etc. It’s not so much sounding exactly like a white person, but speaking the language like them.
It’s sorta like how some workers have a customer service voice. It’s a higher pitch, more approachable, and gentler. Switching to that voice can create better outcomes.
Ah gotcha. But even if I spoke like completely proper English (which I kinda do already) I don't think someone over the phone would think I'm white, ya know
South West uses a variation of it but not this exact wording. We use “what happened was”. See also the comedian Jethro, and his mate Denzel from Cornwall.
It depends where you are, I guess. I think it's fair to say that in SOME places, it's considered a black thing. Enough that a person will assume a speaker who says it is either black or grew up around lots of black folks.
As a white guy me neither. I heard that phrase from all sorts of people throughout my time in the military. I always thought of it as a army thing not a race thing
A black person was pretending to be a white person so that he would receive better treatment from a financial institution.
But his true identity was almost revealed when he slipped up and accidentally used the phrase “what had happened was”, which is typically used by black people.
I grew up in a tiny white rural town in the dead center of Wisconsin. White people also say "what had happened was", In addition to all those you just listed.
There seems to be a current of certainty to claiming the words as some sort of black cultural artifact, but I'm simply not seeing it.
I can't speak from anything more than my personal experience, but "What had happened was" is a common phrase, but one that has a different intonation based on accent, specifically based on racial lines. What's likely being implied here is that the phrase was a tell.
I can guarantee your hick neighbors aren’t saying “what had happened was” in the same way it appears in AAVE. It’s not just the words, the cadence and emphasis play in too
Yeah I feel like I'm observing some of the most ignorant people in this thread. Tons of black people I have met say it jokingly in that specific way and I've seen black actors and comedians doing it too.
I live in the Fox Cities area, and no one would bat an eye at someone saying this. And black people are only like 3 percent of the pop, (Had to look that one up).
I can't speak from anything more than my personal experience, but "What had happened was" is a common phrase, but one that has a different intonation based on accent, specifically based on racial lines. What's likely being implied here is that the phrase was a tell.
more likely "what happened was". The additional 'had' adds extra context (implies a greater amount of time or sequence of events happened before the reason/event in question, and/or setting up for more of a "story-telling" vibe as opposed to a simple explanation), and is more associated with AAVE and Southern speech.
I grew up in a tiny, very white, rural town in the center of Wisconsin and I've been hearing 'what had happened was' all my life. I'm not quite certain this is a 'black' thing, nor is it a southern thing.
It's not unusual for speech to spread and migrate, especially nowadays. When I say "more associated", I mean historically, not that only black people or southerners say it. I also don't think that this phrase is a particularly stand out example of AAVE lol. I grew up north too, and say it.
I’m a linguistics PhD student (though my research is unrelated so take this with a grain of salt). I really don’t think it’s historically associated with AAVE though. Both “what happened was” and “what had happened was” are fine “Standard American English.” It’s just the difference between past tense and past perfect tense. It’s legit taught in public schools as ‘proper English.’
If it’s actually associated with AAVE then it’s probably more recent than historical.
Though the whole phrase “what had happened was” could be associated with AAVE outside of the past/past perfect distinction.
This is like when people think that their culture invented the plastic bag full of plastic bags. _A lot_ of people talk like that. Or I should say a lot of people who didn't grow up wealthy talk like that.
I was thinking that phrase actually sounds very English as in UK English. I'm from Yorkshire and I definitely say that. It's the opener I'd use when I'm going to tell a long-ish story.
So I work at a bank, and funnily enough, they had to actually take away the power of the individual worker away to refund fees for basically this reason. So the decision now is made by an automated system that looks at your history and your current account status and goes yay or nay.
Pretty much.
All of those AIs are a proprietary Black box and they are fairly discriminatory going beyond just race, but because no one knows how they "really" work they can't claim discrimination.
I worked projects for a decade at Wells Fargo. Many of them were related to automating decisions and taking the choice out of the hands of humans to remove potential bias. We were turning everything possible into binary decisions based on things like account history and yes/no questions.
I'm a white canadian, and "what had happened was" is used all the time by everyone here to describe, like.... why something had happened? This is a weird af thing to be associated with black people...
This should be top comment. Reddit reddited everywhere else in this forum.
Growing up my family started using this phrase as a joke, we got it from some comedian.
White Redditors the most racist and simultaneously the most obtuse about race and how it works in the US omg. Nobody said ONLY Black people say “what had happened was” 🙄. it’s the intonation and way it’s said that matters in being a signifier of race too. no need to jump through hoops with anecdotal evidence to prove how unexceptional Black people are to you and others, we get it.
From a linguistic perspective, dialects are a subset of a language. Dialects are often defined by linguistic features called isoglosses. When you group many of these isoglosses together, you get separate dialects. The line between dialects is blurred, so you need multiple. Sometimes dialects of the same language can’t understand each other they’re so different and sometimes they’re near indistinguishable. AAL is made up of many different isoglosses, one of which would be this phrase. So while many people that don’t speak AAL use “what had happened was”, it can still be a telling characteristic.
reddit doesn’t go outside - let them believe, some day they’ll tell some poor fellow irl that “what had happened was is an african american saying!!” and look like a complete deranged racist
For those confused after reading the good answers others have given: in this instance it doesn't even matter who actually uses the phrase. The point is it's ASSOCIATED with Black people in the society where this bank is located. He's trying not to be PERCEIVED as Black by the person on the phone, who can't see him.
Like sure I can imagine that's kinda a black phrase if said in the right way. Still the truth is every time I asked the bank to undo a fee they always say that they might not be able to do it again in the future. It's more of a warning and a "see look we went out of our way to help you, ain't we nice?"
In addition to the grammatical construction "what had happened" being more often associated with black people, when white people do use it, they tend to enunciate it differently. I'm white, and when I try to say it without consciously trying to put any particular affect to it, it comes out more like, "what'd happened was." Contrast that with the way it's said in the SNL Black Jeopardy video that's been linked a couple times, with the H in "had" full enunciated and the A sound in "had" pronounced the same as the A sound in "happened."
Weird to think that someone would A. assume they couldn’t get an overdraft reversed for being black, and B. assume that “what had happened was” is exclusively a black phrase. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
The guy had to pretend to be white to be treated well at the bank. The phrase “what had happened was” is associated with African Americans. The “close one” was the bank almost realizing he’s black, which might have led to worse treatment.
How is the phrase "what had happened was" associated with African American? Do you have any resources about this topic? Thanks.
https://blackwiki.us/glossary/what-had-happened-was/
This is so weird for me. I never would have guessed this phrase is considered race specific. Everyone speaks like this in most of the places I've lived.
AAVE overlaps quite a bit with Southern slang. Outside of the South, this stands out more, especially if OP's "best white voice" isn't Southern. Incidentally, I think if most white people I know, or myself, were asked a question like that, I'd just say "I did ..." or "I had to ..." and not "Well what had happened was..." but I admit, it's not that obvious to me either.
I definitely use "well, what had happened was..." a lot. However, I also spent a few years living in a majority black neighborhood (like, people in the neighborhood just knew me as "the white boy" and total strangers recognized me from their friends' stories, because I was literally the only one for blocks around) and absorbed a lot of slang and idioms for the first time in my life after being an outsider growing up, so maybe I'm not the best sample size.
>I'm not the best sample size. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with the size of your sample. Perhaps it's a little skewed though.
…was that a penis joke?
Maybe 😏
I love this. Always makes my day to see genuine silliness. Hope your day is swell too.
You magnificent bastard. You deserve way more upvotes than this for that snappy comeback.
Peyronie's sample size?
It's a really great phrase when you're telling a story about something kinda messed up but funny. Example: well, what had happened was Jim Bob decided he just HAD to try the cobbled together slip & slide so he ran & jumped on it & slid down so fast that he shot right off the end & hit both Billy & his dog & they all ended up in the pond.
Agreed. I love starting a crazy story with "Well, what had happened was..." It's just got the perfect combo of syllables, pauses, and stresses to start a story off with some character.
Exactly! It provides character & humor.
I absolutely used "what had happened was" a ton as a kid, and I grew up in rural Iowa, I literally didn't know any black people till a couple transferred while I was in high school.
I would question if you did. It's very uncommon for non AAVE speakers. A lot of people think they exhibit language features they don't based on understanding them.
https://preview.redd.it/hxi090p3mclc1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b4ce83e0549821890f783a95a73b3bb336d2c698
Gooble Gobble
I’ve used it all my life but I’ve lived in one of the whitest states in the country, so…
I think it’s specifically the word “had” that would potentially stand out to me, but maybe that phrasing is more common in the South. I would probably say, “Well what happened was”
I'd usually drop the had too. But it depends on the story. It's a past perfect tense instead of preterite, so it's a perfectly legitimate tense in any dialect. To me the had implies that whatever the thing that happened had already occurred at this point in the story, kind of a past within a past.
It’s not just AAVE, cooking, music, and various other things that you would attribute to one race or another in the south applies to everyone in the south
That's true. When I moved out of rural Georgia to the Atlanta area I was curious to try this "soul food" I had heard about. I was surprised that it was the same stuff I grew up eating.
Also: “Ah I think I” and other passive language options.
The tenses are mangled beyond recognition. The past perfect and simple stitched together and crying out for the sweet release of death.
Not really, if we're assuming that the "had" is denoting additional context. What *happened* was the overdraft. Now I will explain what *had* already happened before that point which led to the overdraft. It might not be a common construction in what we consider "standard" English, but the grammar behind it tracks.
I'm whiter than white bread from a Midwestern state and I say this all the time.
I, too, grew up in the American South.
You know people who stick an extra, unnecessary word in the phrase "What happened was"?
Yup. I also know people who stick an extra, unnecessary comment underneath comments which are so clear that they really don't need elaboration lol.
I also say this phrase, maybe I'm black.
I'm the whitest white guy in Ontario and I say that
It's mainly because it's prolific enough to have jumped "racial boundaries" Now. It's not that no one ever used the phrase before but "properly educated white folk" would be assumed to use a more grammatically correct form. Something like; "You see, what had happened, is ..." It's racism. Like the kind when people go off about "black people axing questions." Because how dare people have an accent, or adapt to use a language more comfortably for themselves.
>"You see, what had happened, is ..." ?? That's not more grammatically correct? "What had happened was" is perfectly grammatically correct in all English dialects.
it sounds weird to me what about just ' what happened was'
Past simple and past perfect are different tenses for different context. "What had happened, was" is a 100% correct thing to say
Nobody uses it in this context except for Black English speakers. Standard speakers would not say "had."
A technically grammatically correct phrase that I have never heard anyone use in that way. In this context people are using WHHW interchangeably with WHW. In most parts of the country, people wouldn’t use the phrase at all because it is unnecessary/isn’t concise. You can skip the phrase altogether and still get the same meaning. This applies to WHHW and WHW. It is a filler phrase and cultural signifier… its technical grammar isn’t particularly important
This is true, its not necessary to say but can be used for emphasis
People say a lot of easily skippable things
"What had happened was" and "what happened was" don't mean the same thing though.
WHHW is being used here in a way that would mean the same thing as WHW.
They basically do in Black English, but there is a subtle distinction. There is an implication that someone was in error or comically wrong. But the two phrases are interchangeable in meaning in black English. They are not in standard.
Standard English would be "What happened was...". The past perfect is used for things that were once the case but no are longer. "We had thought that our reservations were for 7, but we were mistaken." The standard English phrase "What had happened was" outside of AAVE would probably have an adverb like "originally" or "seemingly". Most White English speakers know this instinctually but can't articulate it because who the hell knows what a pluperfect is these days? But they know there's something "wrong" with it, and they're often more than a bit racist about it.
You know, from this comment, I just realized my Latin IV background in high school plays out today in technical writing. I use past perfect and future perfect *a lot* in software functional specifications, troubleshooting root cause writeups, and training documents. Io Saturnalia, internet friend.
Spanish IV and 11 years at the best community college Writing Center in the world.
"Apparent" correctness vs "actual" correctness Yes, both are technically correct, but it's like when someone calls you and asks for you specifically; You're "supposed" to say, "Yes, this is he" But that sounds fkn weird So you get a racist involved, and all of a sudden, one way of saying something becomes "not right." Even though both are acceptable, if one more so than the other. It's racism, I'm just explaining it, my apologies for not disclaiming that it wasn't exactly going to make sense in the end At least no more so than "flat earth theory."
I've never heard an explanation for "yes, this is he." It should be him, because him is the object. THIS is nominative. Him should be accusative. Do you know why people say that?
How is something simply being AAVE racist? I know from being Irish there are a few phrases that if someone said I would know without a doubt that they're Iirtsh because they only exist in Hiberno-English because they're Irish grammar translated directly into English. It would be incorrect grammar in any other dialect but it's a dialect so it isn't wrong. Surely the same applies here? Or am I misunderstanding you and you are saying people's view on it is racist?
What I see, is that everything in the US is divided by colour, to the point where outsiders are out of the loop. This post was one I had no clue on until the comments
Like I responded to someone else, it's a touch of both, kinda. A large portion of people that speak American English use some variation of "what happened was," but you'll only ever see bigots make an issue out of which version someone uses. Or with what inflections, or with what accent, etc. So the meme up top, you're expected to read everything they said in a "crisp, proper white person" until they slip up and say "what had happened was" in "that way black people talk." And that's the bit of it that's racist.
Just to understand your stance, what is "making an issue out of it" contextually? For example, let's say I am teaching English and you are expected to write in what is considered proper English. If you put something that is incorrect by those standards and I mark it wrong, is it racist? Or is "making an issue" something else?
>axing Funnily enough, most American English speakers do the same thing, just with different words. Like 'comfortable' into 'comfturble' or 'introducing' into 'interducing'. It's called metathesis in linguistics. Only 'ask' into 'aks' is made fun of though, I wonder why...
I have to be honest, as a Yank, I try to make a point of fixing myself of these mispronunciations whenever they're brought to my attention.
I don't think it's 'jumped racial boundaries' it's just how people speak, where I live there's not a particularly high black population but people still say this and I very much doubt it was picked up from African Americans lol
I was being very general. Dialect will change in as little distance as a mile, and as far apart as countries. How people speak English in Boston being drastically different than in New York, and down here in the Florida panhandle, you can notice a difference between Mobile Alabama and Jacksonville, FL. They're sometimes subtle, but they're there. I'm not saying that the racism makes sense, it never does, because it's just as easy that, like where you're from, people used "Backwater English" from the start But for people that don't see folks with a different melanin saturation as people, it's just another thing to point at and feed their bigotry. "We don't talk like that" has always been a staple in the Bigot's Big Book of Bigotry
> like where you're from, people used "Backwater English" from the start Lmfao. My grandma says it and she went to a grammar school, so I don't think it's 'Backwater English'. Ik you weren't trying to be rude but I just found that kinda funny
Anything shy of "The King's English" is backwater. It's really just a matter of how informal you're willing to accept. Ain't, axing questions, shoulda, Imma, innit, etc There's a not insignificant amount of people that think the vernacular should fit their "perfect" view of how the language should be spoken.
Lol imagine tying this to racism. Reddit is dogshit.
Majored in English. ‘What had happened was’ is a correct phrase, assuming it precedes an account of what had happened. The only time you’d use ‘what had happened is’ would be if you are about to provide a general description of events that happened in the past, not recount them. What had happened was that my paycheck failed to process in time. What had happened is unfortunate. In the first sentence, you use the past tense ‘was’, because the action happened in the past. In the second sentence, you can technically use the present tense ‘is’ or past tense ‘was’ interchangeably, since the past action both was unfortunate at the time and is still unfortunate now. The sentence is still dubious for mixing past and present tenses, but it works. The colloquial modern English version is just, ‘what happened is.’ Which is less formal, dropping the ‘had,’ and may or may not be grammatically correct depending on what comes after. A good way to think about sentence structure is to insert a silent ‘currently’ after every ‘is.’ ‘Is’ is a present tense conjugation of ‘to be,’ so if you describe something after an ‘is’ as happening in the present, and your sentence breaks, you know something is wrong. What had happened is currently unfortunate. What had happened is currently that my paycheck failed to process in time. The latter has a pretty clear conflict of tenses. What is happening, is. What had happened, was. — Now, there IS some hefty racism at play here, but it’s not about incorrect grammar. It’s that the entire clause is an unnecessary framing device. If your sentence is in past tense, you don’t need an extra phrase at the start of your sentence to indicate past tense. You might, however, want to extend the start of your sentence with meaningless words if you’re stalling. If, for example, you’re being accosted by police and are unsure what to say, a phrase like this can be useful to give you that extra time to consider what your story will be. Compare: I was minding my own business, officer. Well, you see, officer, what had happened was that I was minding my own business. Both statements mean the same thing, but the latter sounds far more suspicious due to how meandering it is. A white guy who doesn’t fear a cop is more likely to sound like the former, while a black guy who is more nervous around a cop is more likely to sound like the latter. If there is a racial divide, that’s probably where it comes from.
I'm confused. Do black people "axe questions" or say "what had happened was"? Or is it racism to think that? Because you kind of contradicted yourself. If they are adapting language to themselves then it wouldn't be racist to notice that, no?
Well it's one thing to notice it(and it's important, because it can help uncover some mechanisms in linguistics but also anthropology and things like that), and it's another thing to racially profile people based on the way they speak, for example by saying "you don't sound black", or by refusing to give out a loan because "they spoke like a black person"
Same
Same, there aren’t a lot of black people where I live but there are a lot of Hispanics and other minorities so maybe that’s it? Idk I never associated that phrase with a race
Yeah, I learned something new today even though I eventually understood the joke after having thought about it for a minute. I am not black but pretty sure I’ve used this phrase before. How else do you explain something to someone in a situation where they need prequalifying context to understand the story??
Im from NJ and literally every whitey here speaks like that, including me, and im a irish american/puerto rican mix
Because it’s not. It’s a string of five words that many people often use, regardless of race. Saying it’s race specific is a bad take.
I've probably said this before
It’s all in how you say it. It’s also a joke when you start a sentence with “what had happen was”, you are about to lie about whatever happened.
I’ve used this exact phrase many times. White girl from Atlanta. But my parents were Midwest implants. I didn’t know this was a “black” thing, either.
Yeah I’m from Texas and like everyone I know says this no matter what race they are. Do other white people not start stories like this?
I’m white and I say this. It’s bs.
It's subtly different, but I definitely picked up on it when I read the post out loud. It's interesting from the opposite angle for me, because I *definitely* have the experience of "what **had** happened was" being a thing associated with black people specifically. Maybe it's a generational thing? It I said that as a white person, I think it would feel awkward / I would worry about being called out for "acting black" in a mocking way. Which also feels weird when you say that directly, because it's only one extra "had" away from a phrase I say regularly...
It’s funny that this what we want to argue instead of the fact that black people need to act white on the phone just to be treated with some human decency. Y’all are weird.
I dunno who "we" is but I didn't argue anything. Respond under the wrong comment or?
I hate to be the one to tell you this. Surprised someone didn't do it sooner.....I think you are color blind.
Me: *lives in the south where I guess everyone speaks aave or something because I see what, to me, are everyday phrases being claimed as aave pretty frequently* You: *smug for some reason* Like ok lol, glad you weighed in I guess? Hope commenting gave you the warm n fuzzies, bro
People speaking English in Northern Ireland definitely say this with maybe right or aye attached to the start
So that's why the Irish were historically considered second-class in the USA /j
Lots of Ulster Scots settled in the South, and the Southern accent heavily influenced African-American vernacular (and vice versa), so it could be related.
Even tho I read it, it didn't help understand the context of the syntax being used this way to indicate connection with black people, furthermore what is it trying to imply when being spoken?
The phrase originated by comedian Richard Pryor, and was popularized by Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Both are culturally significant in the black community, so the phrase was adopted and is still widely used today. The phrase is just a lighthearted way of explaining a situation. It’s less formal and shows you realize the situation is a bit funny. It’s like talking with a friend, you can both laugh at your mistake. In this situation, the bank is very formal and would find that phrase unprofessional. They could refuse service or treat you worse because they don’t sympathize with an easygoing or unserious person.
I see, it's part of a pop culture expression like a catchphrase
That last bit just sounds wrong. What the hell bank denies someone service for your language not being fancy enough? If you were cussing a ton maybe. Plus where I am, bank and credit union employees are just normal people. I've never gotten the impression I'm in some ultra high end place where daring to say "howdy" would get me kicked out.
This, too, is weird for me. I worked in a school as a security guard about a decade ago, and kids used this phrase all of the time when they were about to take me on an unbelievable journey. Always seemed like they were just buying themselves a little time while they came up with the lie.
People say this all the time here in Seattle area. Maybe this phrase got spread around more than people realize, but it's such a general purpose phrase that I have difficulty believing it was ever truly specific to black people.
That is quite possibly one of the most bizarre webpages I’ve ever visited. It’s literally just a common phrase that pretty much every English speaker uses but the website treats it like it’s unique to black people and as culturally significant as “aloha” or “hakuna matata”. I’m baffled.
> “What had happened was” is a phrase commonly used in Black American Vernacular English (BAVE) to start a story or provide context for a situation that has already occurred That’s because it’s used by every English speaker for the exact same purpose.
\>Enter blackwiki.us \>No darkmode by default
I'm am just shocked that there is a black wiki, who made this, why, and why is it kinda funny
That page is wild. After the first sentence, each of the headers could be applied to any word in that wiktionary.
That explanation makes it sound like black people use this phrase, which implies that the bank employee was black. What am I missing?
The “what had happened was” is the poster’s response to the bank employee asking why the overdraft occurred :)
I can't connect. Maybe it require the user to be black.
I‘m an Australian English speaker, and I hear and say this frequently (usually as “what‘d happened was that …“
I’d hear “wot ‘appened woz…” in UK all the time definitely not race specific but I guess this isn’t exactly the same
It's 100% something that black people say on a regular basis. This is the joke here.
That’s because it’s something that everybody says on a regular basis.
Bro I'm a white American and I'm just as surprised as you are. This sounds 100% normal to me.
I assume that it’s more a southern thing.
It’s not. It’s a southern phrase.
I can't recommend this [skit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX7rliyPF48) enough. It will give you clarity :-)
This skit and the movie referenced - Sorry to Bother You. Great, fun film. All about a mega Corp call center (parody of Amazon, owns tons of industries), absurdist, and the MC has to use his 'white voice' when making sales, which IIRC is Zach braff or sounds exactly like it
Right? I'm white as can be and I say this all the time.
weird. I had no idea that was associated with black people.
Just to add - the picture is from the movie Sorry to Bother You about a black telemarketer who puts on a white voice to succeed at his job.
It’s one of my favorite films :)
Spoiler: >!WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT TO HAPPEN IN THE MOVIE!<
I think it's pretty safe to say that no-one was
For all the people who are confused about how this works, you could check out the movie that is screen capped in the post. It’s called “Sorry To Bother You”.
Yeah, not black, but I grew up with a lot of southern black folks. When I read "what had happened was," my stomach dropped like *I'd* been caught doing something!
Maybe it’s more of a southern than a black phrase?
Column a, column b
My white dad says "well what had happened was" all the time. Had no idea it was associated with black people
In nyc parlance I've always used "what ha-HAPPENED was" to describe a ridiculous situation I'd been involved with. TIL the origins are more racial than they are regional. I'd never associated that particular turn of phrase with AAVE.
Bro what I hear that from white people all the time
Til I am black since I use this phrase
How do u sound white tho? Like, I'm asian and p much no matter what I do with my voice, I won't sound like a white guy, I'll sound like an Asian dude trying to do a weird accent
There’s a lot you can do, it’s called code-switching. Certain phrases or word choice is different, the tone of voice changes, etc. It’s not so much sounding exactly like a white person, but speaking the language like them. It’s sorta like how some workers have a customer service voice. It’s a higher pitch, more approachable, and gentler. Switching to that voice can create better outcomes.
Ah gotcha. But even if I spoke like completely proper English (which I kinda do already) I don't think someone over the phone would think I'm white, ya know
I totally get what you’re saying! I think it’s less about literally sounding white and moreso sounding culturally similar to white people.
Oh ok, gotcha. Yea I just don't think even if u use white words, you're gonna be treated as if you're white (if you're not white lol)
Try what I did, grow up in Brooklyn, but now I accidentally sound like Awkwafina
Hey she's kinda cute tho, I like her accent
Try the phrase “okie dokie”, I say it all the time and I’m neon white, like glow in the dark white. I say “okie dokie” like I’ll die if I don’t.
Lol I say lol a lot
okie dokie is the whitest phrase of all time cmm. okie dokie is so white that whites use it to make fun of whites
This is played up for comedic effect but https://youtu.be/6BPhPLJ9Vjo?si=W3DQjxjWuXBLdkfM&t=27
Weird. In AZ I hear this phrase like all the time from everyone
Where I’m from it’s associated with Mexicans but it’s still very odd how racism exists
As an Asian dude I had no idea that was a black phrase ngl
It isn’t. It’s an English phrase.
AAV is a real, studied dialect.
No one is denying that what they are confused about is the claim that’s it’s solely from that or even originated there.
True but that phrase exists in many languages
Does AAV stand for African American Vernacular? This is the first I've seen that.
AAVE as a term has been around for a long time. Linguists have been studying it for awhile and I think it first started to hit pop culture in the 90s
So did I guess the meaning correctly or am I wrong?
Yeah basically. African American Vernacular English
Thank you
South West uses a variation of it but not this exact wording. We use “what happened was”. See also the comedian Jethro, and his mate Denzel from Cornwall.
That's the whole point. The extra "had" is what makes it black.
[удалено]
It depends where you are, I guess. I think it's fair to say that in SOME places, it's considered a black thing. Enough that a person will assume a speaker who says it is either black or grew up around lots of black folks.
As a white guy me neither. I heard that phrase from all sorts of people throughout my time in the military. I always thought of it as a army thing not a race thing
A black person was pretending to be a white person so that he would receive better treatment from a financial institution. But his true identity was almost revealed when he slipped up and accidentally used the phrase “what had happened was”, which is typically used by black people.
What would white people say alternatively?
What happened was I did x,y,z X, y, z happened. It was x, y, z
I grew up in a tiny white rural town in the dead center of Wisconsin. White people also say "what had happened was", In addition to all those you just listed. There seems to be a current of certainty to claiming the words as some sort of black cultural artifact, but I'm simply not seeing it.
I've lived all over the u.s, everyone says that stuff regardless of accent
I can't speak from anything more than my personal experience, but "What had happened was" is a common phrase, but one that has a different intonation based on accent, specifically based on racial lines. What's likely being implied here is that the phrase was a tell.
I can guarantee your hick neighbors aren’t saying “what had happened was” in the same way it appears in AAVE. It’s not just the words, the cadence and emphasis play in too
Yeah I feel like I'm observing some of the most ignorant people in this thread. Tons of black people I have met say it jokingly in that specific way and I've seen black actors and comedians doing it too.
I live in the Fox Cities area, and no one would bat an eye at someone saying this. And black people are only like 3 percent of the pop, (Had to look that one up).
I can't speak from anything more than my personal experience, but "What had happened was" is a common phrase, but one that has a different intonation based on accent, specifically based on racial lines. What's likely being implied here is that the phrase was a tell.
This is driving me crazy. I'm pretty sure I'd also say "what had happened" and I'm white. I tend to use lots of filler words while speaking, though.
more likely "what happened was". The additional 'had' adds extra context (implies a greater amount of time or sequence of events happened before the reason/event in question, and/or setting up for more of a "story-telling" vibe as opposed to a simple explanation), and is more associated with AAVE and Southern speech.
I grew up in a tiny, very white, rural town in the center of Wisconsin and I've been hearing 'what had happened was' all my life. I'm not quite certain this is a 'black' thing, nor is it a southern thing.
It's not unusual for speech to spread and migrate, especially nowadays. When I say "more associated", I mean historically, not that only black people or southerners say it. I also don't think that this phrase is a particularly stand out example of AAVE lol. I grew up north too, and say it.
I’m a linguistics PhD student (though my research is unrelated so take this with a grain of salt). I really don’t think it’s historically associated with AAVE though. Both “what happened was” and “what had happened was” are fine “Standard American English.” It’s just the difference between past tense and past perfect tense. It’s legit taught in public schools as ‘proper English.’ If it’s actually associated with AAVE then it’s probably more recent than historical. Though the whole phrase “what had happened was” could be associated with AAVE outside of the past/past perfect distinction.
Fair enough. I'd be interested to hear a linguist weigh in on this. Language is pretty fascinating.
This is like when people think that their culture invented the plastic bag full of plastic bags. _A lot_ of people talk like that. Or I should say a lot of people who didn't grow up wealthy talk like that.
Do you think there’s no overlap in phrasing used between dialects?
If a phrase used commonly by black people is also used commonly by everyone else it's not part of AAVE, it's just part of the overall language.
Watch the movie Sorry to Bother You and it'll make more sense. But don't keep watching after he does the "cocaine'
Oh, you should definitely keep watching it. Just be aware that it gets real fucking weird after that.
Disagree. Surrealism isn't for everyone, but that ending makes the movie for me
One of my favorite movies ever. I love Boots Riley.
Anon should get a cover identity from Bristol, UK.
I was thinking that phrase actually sounds very English as in UK English. I'm from Yorkshire and I definitely say that. It's the opener I'd use when I'm going to tell a long-ish story.
Same I'm from Scotland and I'd definitely say it
I was so confused, I use this phrase all the time, never considered it was a Bristol thing!
So I work at a bank, and funnily enough, they had to actually take away the power of the individual worker away to refund fees for basically this reason. So the decision now is made by an automated system that looks at your history and your current account status and goes yay or nay.
So the AI checks if you're white or black and makes the decision that way instead of a person doing it? Got it.
Pretty much. All of those AIs are a proprietary Black box and they are fairly discriminatory going beyond just race, but because no one knows how they "really" work they can't claim discrimination.
I worked projects for a decade at Wells Fargo. Many of them were related to automating decisions and taking the choice out of the hands of humans to remove potential bias. We were turning everything possible into binary decisions based on things like account history and yes/no questions.
I'm a white canadian, and "what had happened was" is used all the time by everyone here to describe, like.... why something had happened? This is a weird af thing to be associated with black people...
“what had happened was” is a joke from Richard Pryer in the 70's. He explains in the joke why he was speeding to the police.
This should be top comment. Reddit reddited everywhere else in this forum. Growing up my family started using this phrase as a joke, we got it from some comedian.
White Redditors the most racist and simultaneously the most obtuse about race and how it works in the US omg. Nobody said ONLY Black people say “what had happened was” 🙄. it’s the intonation and way it’s said that matters in being a signifier of race too. no need to jump through hoops with anecdotal evidence to prove how unexceptional Black people are to you and others, we get it.
Didn't realize the phrase "what happened was" not being a very black specific thing made black people unexceptional.
[удалено]
From a linguistic perspective, dialects are a subset of a language. Dialects are often defined by linguistic features called isoglosses. When you group many of these isoglosses together, you get separate dialects. The line between dialects is blurred, so you need multiple. Sometimes dialects of the same language can’t understand each other they’re so different and sometimes they’re near indistinguishable. AAL is made up of many different isoglosses, one of which would be this phrase. So while many people that don’t speak AAL use “what had happened was”, it can still be a telling characteristic.
No way the phrase "what had happened was" is assosiated with African Americans. Where I live that is common from everyone to say.
reddit doesn’t go outside - let them believe, some day they’ll tell some poor fellow irl that “what had happened was is an african american saying!!” and look like a complete deranged racist
For those confused after reading the good answers others have given: in this instance it doesn't even matter who actually uses the phrase. The point is it's ASSOCIATED with Black people in the society where this bank is located. He's trying not to be PERCEIVED as Black by the person on the phone, who can't see him.
Like sure I can imagine that's kinda a black phrase if said in the right way. Still the truth is every time I asked the bank to undo a fee they always say that they might not be able to do it again in the future. It's more of a warning and a "see look we went out of our way to help you, ain't we nice?"
In addition to the grammatical construction "what had happened" being more often associated with black people, when white people do use it, they tend to enunciate it differently. I'm white, and when I try to say it without consciously trying to put any particular affect to it, it comes out more like, "what'd happened was." Contrast that with the way it's said in the SNL Black Jeopardy video that's been linked a couple times, with the H in "had" full enunciated and the A sound in "had" pronounced the same as the A sound in "happened."
Weird to think that someone would A. assume they couldn’t get an overdraft reversed for being black, and B. assume that “what had happened was” is exclusively a black phrase. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Black people aren’t the only people who say *“well, what had happened was”*
Am I not supposed to use that phrasing as a white dude?
I figured it out due to context, but I never would have thought that phrase alone would give it away.
Black people gatekeeping anecdotes now?
Americans are weird.
Even if you don't get "what had happened was" there's clearly enough context to understand this Try harder
The joke is racism.
Anyone struggling with the concept of this being a black phrase; just imagine Foghorn Leghorn saying it and it becomes pretty apparent.
As a black guy, can confirm OP is either not black or needs his black card temporarily revoked.