994. This week, you'll learn about the rich linguistic history of African American English with Dr. Sonja Lanehart, an advisor to the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. We talked about what goes into making an entirely new dictionary and about some of the first entries, including "kitchen," "Aunt Hagar's Children," and "do rag."
996. This week, you'll learn about the rich linguistic history of African American English with Dr. Sonja Lanehart, an advisor to the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. We talked about what goes into making an entirely new dictionary and about some of the first entries, including "kitchen," "Aunt Hagar's Children," and "do rag."
Find Dr. Sonja Lanehart at https://www.sonjallanehart.com/.
Visit the ODAAE website: https://www.oed.com/discover/odaae
| Edited transcript with links: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/lanehart/transcript
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MIGNON: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I'm here with Dr. Sonja Lanehart, a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona, the author of the Oxford Handbook of African American Language, and more recently a member of the advisory board for the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, which is eagerly anticipated and coming out in the spring of 2025. Today, we're talking about how they're making the dictionary, and about some of the first entries including "kitchen," "Aunt Hagar's children," and "do rag." And a quick note, we had some technical problems with the interview, so this is a slightly pared down edited version, but if you want to watch the whole thing, you can find it on my YouTube channel at youtube.com/grammargirl.
MIGNON: Thank you for being here, Dr. Lanehart.
SONJA: Thank you. It's my pleasure. I've been looking forward to it.
MIGNON: Yeah, I have so many questions. So I know when I look at the main Oxford English Dictionary, there are some sources that they get a lot of the citations from. Like people mailed in snippets with Shakespeare on it and stuff. Are there big sources like that for the project that you're working on?
SONJA: So the sources that we're using, I don't know how familiar you are. There's a long history of African American newspapers in this country, especially in the 19th century, 18th century. So there's a long history of those newspapers, but also there's a rich literary history. So there's that to use as well. We just met like a week or so ago, and we were talking about Zora Neale Hurston and how Zora Neale Hurston has supplied a lot of the def ... in some cases, she supplied the word and she supplied the sort of etymology for it. You know, as you know, she was a great anthropologist. And so she's provided a great source, especially for the part of the world that she was looking at language in African American communities. But definitely from newspapers, from magazines, from literary figures, and researchers and scholars like Zora Neale Hurston, and from music.
So music is another great source to find how African American language is used in getting those citations. And as you can imagine, especially we just celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip hop. There are a lot of attestations when we're looking at hip hop and rap music as well.
MIGNON: I did not know about the history of Black newspaper. Can you tell me about that?
SONJA: Yeah, there are ... there is definitely that long history. You know, part of it you can think of Black communities needing to have resources for their communities because otherwise it wasn't going to be covered by white newspapers, and doing stories on Black figures and things that are going on in Black communities in which the larger white community would not have been interested in or would have been reporting in very different ways. So there are lots of... There's a long periodical history of these newspapers, but there are also magazines as well. Now, of course, I'm familiar with some of the more 20th century magazines like "Jet" and that sort of thing. But before those started, there's one here, "Freedom Journal" that was founded in 1827. That's the oldest one. One, "The Chicago Defender" which was founded by Robert Abbott. That was 1905 and was once heralded itself as the world's greatest weekly. There is a long history. Let's put it that way in terms of Black. "The North Star" was one. That's the one that was founded by Frederick Douglass in 1847.
MIGNON: Nice.
SONJA: Yes. So, you know, "The Liberator" was one... Oh, that's who I was trying to think of, William Lloyd Garrison. So there were some earlier ones, very early when we go back that far and talking about the early 19th century, those were clearly geared towards liberation. So, freedom of Blacks in the country. So very much along that sort of anti-slavery type, abolitionist type publications. But yeah, lots of them have been digitized during the process of being digitized, so you can go on in particular spaces and find these newspapers because that's a whole line of inquiry that people use.
MIGNON: So, yeah, actually over breakfast I was talking with my husband, and I was telling him that the dictionary is coming out in about a year, and they've been working on it for quite a while, and said, "Well, what takes so long?" And I was kind of indignant on your behalf. It's like it's a dictionary. But maybe since, you know, he's probably not the only one with the question. So can you explain what goes into... What takes so long and not meaning that and like it shouldn't?
SONJA: Yeah, it's just so funny.
MIGNON: What's the process?
SONJA: It's funny because … so I'm on the editorial advisory board, and I was just thinking recently about the conversations that we had when we first got started versus the conversations that we're having now. So in the beginning we were having conversations like, "Well, what sort of semantic categories should we include, right?" "What's the time period?" And then we need to make sure that we're getting words from across the country and not just, you know, centered in the south or centered in the northeast. Like we have to be representative, right, because African American language varies across the U.S. and people use words differently or have different pronunciations, what not. So anyway, so we were talking about that and then semantics. We were like, "Well, what semantic categories should we have?" So I was like, "Well, we definitely have to have beauty products because as a Black woman I know that trying to get my hair done in this country in certain spaces is very difficult, and so we have lots of words related to hair and beauty. Right? You know, and then we had conversations on, "Well, should we include things that relate to like crime and drug culture?" And should we have … right? So all of these conversations on conceptually, what should this dictionary look like? And then our more recent conversations have been about details. So at this point there have been about a hundred words that have been finalized, I believe I recall correctly. And it started really slow, right? At first it's just like, okay, people are collecting things. We have researchers who are, you know, like you said, the slips of paper, that kind of thing. They're getting these slips of papers because people could go online and suggest words and give meanings and stuff like that. And so just collecting, we just need, we're in this gathering phase. And now we've gathered quite a bit and so now it's about, okay, we need to have to make decisions. So which words to include, they have to be supported by lots of historical data. And as you know, for something like African American language, we're more limited in sources than for mainstream white American English, right? In terms of those particular sources, because when we talk about English, we can go all the way back to Britain, and we could have something like Shakespeare or Chaucer or what have you, right? And so we don't use those, we don't have that same sort of lineage for African American language, but then of course African American language didn't exists at that point. So part of it is finding what are the earliest attestations that we can have and then what do we consider legitimate sources, right? How can we corroborate something that we find, right? So there's just a ton of research that goes into it. And so more recent conversations, like we had to have a conversation on what is the word going to look like, what's the head word going to be, for example. Because of oftentimes disconnect between pronunciation and orthographic spelling, right?
So a lot of this, the history for African American language is based upon an oral history. And so as a result, you'll also get differences in pronunciation. So for example, the word "shorty" is used in one part of the country, but in the south it's "shawty." So which one gets the head word spelling and then what gets to be the alternates? Those are difficult decisions to make.
MIGNON: How do you decide?
SONJA: That's a good question. We have these conversations. We haven't gone into the conversation so much about "shorty" versus "shawty" because that's still ongoing. So part of the ongoing thing is, you know, what's the head word going to be? What's the spelling going to be? How are we going to record the pronunciations for those? And then how do we deal with the sources for those? So I'll give you a good example. One word we've had several conversations about is "chitlins."
To my surprise, I learned that the first attestation in the Black community was actually spelled "chitterlings," which is the standard orthographic, but I was like, Black people don't say that. So I was like, no self-respecting Black person says "chitterlings." And so it has to be "chitlins." So we had a conversation about, well, what are we going to make the head word? Is the head word going to be "chitterlings"? So when we first talked about it a few months ago, they had it as "chitterlings." When I just saw it a week or so ago, it was "chitlins," despite sort of this attestation of one of the earliest examples they have with "chitterlings." So we're having, you know, conversations like that.
Another one was what's going to actually be the part of speech. So we had a difference of opinion about the part of speech, about this one particular word. And part of that discussion was because the attestations they were seeing, they were trying to decide, does the attestation indicate it's really a verb, or is it an adverb, or is it a what? And so we were like, well, based on what we're seeing, we really think it is a verb. Right? So, and they're like, okay, thank you for letting us know that. And then, you know, as we finalize this, we will come back to you and show this to you.
So those are the types of conversations, other types of conversations we have on who constitutes being a viable source. Right? So we had a discussion, for example, about someone like Joel Chandler Harris, who's representing African American language and someone like Langston Hughes. Right? Who is African American and is representing African American language. So are they reliable sources? Who gets to be considered a reliable source? Right? Who is actually relating, whether it's, you know, in the newspaper or in their literature, whatever. Who's doing this because they're actually representing those voices? Or are they making it up? And it's hearsay. Right? So do they have direct evidence or indirect evidence? So those are the sorts of conversations and things that have to go into before we can actually say that we have a final entry. For something that we're discussing those sorts of things about what gets included, what, you know, what the evidence for it is, the attestations, all of those things. So yeah, it's a … and keep in mind that in the end, by next year, the goal is to have 1,000 entries, which isn't a lot for a language, but it takes a long time. I mean, think about the OED. The OED took a very long time to produce editions, right? Other dictionaries that we have on language in particular to language in the U.S. One of them is called the Dictionary of American Regional English, DARE, that was edited for quite some time was started and edited by Fred Cassidy, who passed away and then other people, Joan Houston Hall at the University of Wisconsin continued his work, but it was decades for that to produce the volumes, you know, and so now they're at different phases. So in the same way with this dictionary, even once you get sort of this, you know, printed version, something you can hold in your hands because language is living, you will always need to continue to update it, right? And in this particular place, it's not just updating it. There are two sorts of things. One, trying to get additional funding to include as many words as possible, but then secondly, also being able to go into more depth of what you provide. So this first round will look like pretty much most of the OE dictionaries, but secondary things would be like, well, can we get audio recordings of people saying these words from their particular sorts of regions, right? How much more depth can we get in providing people with immersing them in this language? So yes, that's what takes a long time.
MIGNON: And is it, is it actually going to be printed?
SONJA: I believe that's what I was told. I think we'll have a printed version, but there's also obviously going to be an online version. And the online version is where you can get the sort of more in depth things. Like I said, you'll be able to click in the same way that you are in OED. I was just in a webinar yesterday, I think, for the OED talking about the features that they have. And, you know, that's another thing that we have conversations about. This is what they're doing at the OED. Do we want to carry on those particular things that they're doing for this dictionary? So, for example, we had a conversation about, you know, how do we want the ordering? So as I told you, etymology is really important, pronunciation, the definitions, right? They have so the OED has multiple tabs now. So you can tab to get the category for what you want to get more information on, or you can scroll through the page.
So there are some things like that. What do we visually want the dictionary to look like compared to what's going on, for example, in the OED? Some things we've said, okay, yeah, let's that makes sense. We'll keep it the way they have it. And other things we're just like, no, I think we should do this differently. So those are conversations that we've had as a board with the editors as well.
MIGNON: Well, this gets to another question is how do you imagine people will use this once it's finished?
SONJA: I think different people will use it for different purposes. So people like me will be going there. And I want to say people like me, I mean other linguists will be able to use this particular work and go to this because we have people who are lexicographers who are semantists, right? Who are phoneticians and phonologists. So depending on the depth of information, they'll be able to use this as a resource in the same way that we use other dictionaries as resources. They're people, you know, that's what their livelihood is based upon. But I also believe that you will have just people who are curious, just everyday people who are curious and want to see because, you know, part of this is combating this idea that African American language isn't legitimate or it's bad or it's a this bastardized version of American English or what have you. And I don't know about you, but I know I grew up with people saying things like "ain't" ain't a word because "ain't" ain't in the dictionary, right? You know, well now you have a dictionary. So, you know, what will people be able to use and ascertain from that? And I'm sure there will be people who are going to look at the dictionary because again, I told you I have funding limitations. I can't believe this word isn't in there, right? They're going to be looking for their particular words that they use in their particular community in the U.S. and be asking, you know, looking for their words and seeing how they're defined and looking because Black people can critique with the best of them, right?
So there will be people and naysayers looking and saying this isn't in here and this isn't right and this isn't … And so that all be used for making revisions and updating the dictionary as more and more people engage with it. So we need, you know, a broad swath of people to be able to look at the dictionary, engage with it and give us feedback and give us suggestions and, you know, more slips of paper, so to speak, in terms of updating things and keeping it current and expanding it in ways that benefit not just the community of African American language speakers, but of research communities more broadly. Who would be interested in this? I would also imagine that other sorts of lay people like teachers and sociologists and anthropologists, what not, would be interested in looking at this. Historians, right? Because currently, you know, you can go to the OED for some things, but you can't get everything in the OED that's specifically related to African American language. So this will just be that much more of a special source. I'm sure that at some point, these things, well, I would imagine that at some point, you should say, I'm sure, I would imagine that at some point some of the things that we come up with for the ODAAE will be absorbed into the OED. But the ODAAE will still remain its sort of separate thing as it continues to add and refine and update.
MIGNON: I can just imagine my listeners are wondering, where can I submit words?
SONJA: We have a website. Yes, we will continue to take submissions. If you go to the, if you look up ODAAE, that should take you to the website. There will be, and I can give you the link if you like, but there is a link where you can post words and you put them in there and it asks you, you know, it's just a standard thing. What's the word you want to recommend? What's the definition? Can you give us examples of how it's used in sentences? As much as you possibly can give, you can attach things as needed as well.
MIGNON: Very cool. Yeah, I'll put that in the show notes. And we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors. And then when we come back, I'm sure a lot of people are saying, well, let's talk about the actual words. So when we come back, we'll talk about some words that are in the dictionary.
Okay, well, we're back. Let's now we get to the fun part. Let's talk about some of those words that are in the dictionary. What's your favorite word so far?
SONJA: Well, my favorite absolutely is "kitchen."
MIGNON: Yeah?
SONJA: So yeah, "kitchen" is like, it's just so familiar with it. And it's just a part of my everyday culture. And so, and it's one of the first words that was actually in there, and we discussed it quite a bit. So "kitchen" is the hair on the back of your neck that, that part that's before I guess what you would consider the hairline in the back but right in moving up a little bit that's the shortest, tends to be the shortest part of your hair.
MIGNON: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
SONJA: So that part's called the kitchen. And for Black women who straighten their hair who relax their hair. That's often the most difficult part to deal with. And so it gets its own special name: "kitchen."
MIGNON: Huh. And do you know why? How did how did it get to be called the kitchen? I know sometimes, you know, when you're looking in, you know, Etymonline or the OED, you'll see, you know, a progression of meanings and you'll say, Oh, of course, that's how I got that name. And then other times it'll be like "origin unknown," and you won't know why. Do you know, do you know why?
SONJA: So for that, so for that particular one, it is connected apparently somehow to being in the kitchen, and I think probably because the kitchen in general is a very special place for Black families. It's often where you enter. It's where as a matter of fact, in my first sole author book that I have, I talk about two different types of language: interview talk, but the other one I call kitchen talk. Because that is where so much conversation happens. You know, that's where you would get your hair done: in the kitchen. But there's unknown sort of or unverified origins other than, you know, like I said, there's the practice of doing your hair in the kitchen, and you're using a hot comb. So you have to have it on the stove as the heating element, right from the to heat the comb. And I guess the other one is there may be a parallel between the fact that it's the hair in the back of your head, and that kitchens were often located in the back of the house. So yeah,
MIGNON: Yeah, oh, that makes sense. I love that. What are some of the other words?
SONJA: Yeah, but we have attestations for that one going back to, if I look at this, 1918. I'm surprised I would think they would find it even before then and there may be I just may not have the most up to date thing but certainly 1918.
MIGNON: I like that. What are some of the other ones?
SONJA: So another word that … so this is again gets you to why we shouldn't … we should think about African American language as or the African American language community is not homogenous, right? It is a heterogeneous community like any other community, and people use language differently or have words in one part of the country that you wouldn't necessarily have another. So one of them that I, that we discussed early on was "Aunt Hagar's children," and it's a term that I had never heard of or used. And so another member who I think she's from the Midwest, but you know spent all of her career on the West Coast, and she was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know that term it and so it means Black children. And it was like, well, well, or it means Black, right? I was like, well, I like how did this happen, right? So at "Aunt Hagar children" goes back to Hagar from the Bible. And this idea that Hagar's that descendents of Hagar were darker skinned people. And so therefore, but also that Hagar wasn't wanted, right? So there's this connection between being Black or the children of Blackness, right? And not as wanted or acceptable as, you know, the, the favorite son.
MIGNON: So how would you say that in a sentence?
SONJA: So for Aunt Hagar's children, I'll give you an attestation from 1883 in the "New York Globe" on December 1, page two, it says, "for to this day, the colored people are sometimes called Aunt Hagar's children." In 1889, in the "Savannah Tribune," January 19, "There is no Negro question or problem. And the only question about Aunt Hagar's children is, will their white neighbors recognize them as American citizens, or will they endeavor to drive us back colonizes?"
MIGNON: Oh, OK, so that makes sense.
SONJA: Yeah, it looks like even Zora Neale Hurston used this in "Mules and Men." On page 134, she said, "'Lowd,' Willard said bitterly, 'My people, my people, as the monkey said, you fool with Aunt Hagar's chillen, and they'll sho discriminate you and put your name in the streets.'"
MIGNON: It has a very literary feel. Yes. It's nice.
SONJA: Oh, I like this one from 1938 in "Esquire," "Twix Uncle Ham's Sunny Boys and Aunt Hagar's Daughters.”
MIGNON: Oooh, daughters. Nice.
SONJA: Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, that was one I'd never heard that before. And so, you know, this person grew up with it and knew it quite well.
MIGNON: Yeah, I mean, there are sayings from other parts of the country that I haven't heard of either. I mean, you're right. We're a big country.
So what are, what are some of the other words?
SONJA: Some other words. Oh, okay, so I had a conversation with someone about this recently, which was a word that I didn't. I don't think I had heard it, but I think it has slightly different meanings maybe in the south than it does in other parts of the country because I've asked people about it and they seem to know it. And that's "bussin." Do you know this word "bussin"?
MIGNON: I think so. It was … we actually covered it maybe maybe a few months ago in the podcast. Does it mean tasty food?
SONJA: It can mean yeah, it can mean that. And I had never heard this, but it means describing something that's impressive or excellent. So it's not specific to food. We have an attestation from Twitter on 2023 saying "curls was bussin." Right. And let's see. We have one from 2022 also on Twitter "October Fennaby bussin. All the TV shows coming back on scary movies pumpkin patches Halloween etc." And I've forgotten to mention that the social media is also obviously a huge source for looking at we have Black Twitter so there's a lot of things that are going on that we'll also get from social social media. But yeah, so just describing something excellent, but it could be specific to food right food that's delicious flavorful whatever enjoyable so you'll get something like someone on Twitter I'll just say that on Twitter said "currently eating a bussin fruit cup by Dole."
MIGNON: So or so funny. This is the word that will not go away. So months ago I had a caller calling about "larruping." "Larrupin food," food and she thought it was just in her family. And then a lot of people called in and said no we use "larrupin" too, and then we started talking about words like "larrupin" that someone, someone from Trinidad called and said they use "lash" like "that food lashes." To me it's good, and then it came up that you know there are all these different ways of saying if you like hit something it's good so like you know there and "laruppin" can also mean hit and "lash" can mean hit, and I asked for the other words and "bussin" was one of those words that people added to "larrupin" and "lashing." And so now here we are again with "bussin" — like this, this topic just keeps coming up; it's so funny.
SONJA: Yeah … oh my favorite person they have cited, Michael Harriet is one of my favorite people who I follow on wherever he is: on Twitter, on "The Root," which he's now doing, he has his own podcast, he has a book out. But his 2020 attestation was "Those McDonald fries do be bussin though. And I know you're going to say they're not as good as they used to be, but that's your fault. Probably eat McDonald's when when you're sober." That's what he said. So you probably knew when you're sober but anyway. Yeah, so like I said I had just wasn't some end so when I was giving this talk at Louisiana State University, I mentioned this term, and you know I was like "Do you guys know this term?" and all these young people like "Yeah, I know this, and we say this," and I was like what does it mean? And so they were telling me, you know, and they … and I don't think they talked about it as much as food per se but as it meaning this excellent, right, it's you know this impressive thing. But I'm like "Oh my goodness. So I interact with you guys, and I have never heard this term. How is that possible?" But I feel like I've gotten to that point where this is a particular type of currency that I just don't have. I've aged out of that currency, so because these were all youngsters.
MIGNON: That's so great about studying language. I mean there's always, there are always new things to learn. I learn new things all the time.
SONJA: Oh absolutely. Are there things, are there things that you knew that other people didn't know that you thought, you know, how could you … I thought everyone knew that.
MIGNON: I don't think there's anything that I've said I thought everyone knew that I'm trying to think there was a word we were just talking about. And the definition that they gave … so there was another person there we are age cohorts, were you know career cohorts were going through at the, at about the same time. Going to grad school and stuff at the same time. And we were talking about this word. I'm trying to remember what the word was and the definition that they had like they started telling us. Oh it was "stay." So they told it they said had the definition, and I said we both looked at each other and this is on on, not Zoom but you know Zoom-like, Microsoft Teams I think, and we both look at each other when they say it, and we were like that's not what I was expecting, right. But we didn't say anything, but we just both had this look. So as we talked about it. Then you know, they sort of talked about this word some more and stuff like that, and I was like well I don't understand like why is that definition there because I think you know this other person … I was like I think we were thinking of this other definition, and they're like oh yeah that's one of them. It is in there. But it has different definitions, or you know they're different usages. And so it wasn't just just for that, because we were just like what makes why is it even in here if it just means you know this thing. But we were thinking about … so they so the definition they showed us first was this sort of intransitive verb for "stay" which you know, to me what … because the other thing we thought about was so there I'll tell you something that's interesting and studying African American language. And then I'll go back, which was this was probably 15 years or so ago, some researchers that I've known for I've known for most of my career one of them is an age cohort the other one is a mentor, and they were doing this they do this work in Texas, which is where I'm from in this rural community, and they started publishing this thing on what's called "had" — the verb "had" — plus past. And I was reading this research and reading the examples that they had, and I was like I didn't know that was an African American language thing. I just thought that was what you know you know mainstream English was, and so it helped me to sort of crystallize the idea that I had had already had which was there are things in African American language that we as linguists don't even recognize as such because it's it just it's just there. Right. Like, I was like, well, of course you say, "I'd had that for whatever." You don't say "I had," you know, "X." Right? That you use a past verb with this. But it's like, no, that's not what mainstream English does, right. We don't say "See what had happened was," we would say, you know what — I shouldn't say we — but mainstream English says "What happened was," not "had" plus the past. Right. And I was like, wow, well, I knew I use African American language. I just didn't know that that was thing. I just thought that was … And so it's like no it's like white people don't do that. I was like "Really I didn't know that?"
So I think the same thing, you know, we were thinking when they mentioned this would "stay." I was like, wait, is that another instance of where I was using African American language, and I didn't know that that was African American language. I just thought that was just the way everybody talked, right. And so they're like no. So they had "stay," and they had "to live or reside somewhere." And that was like but doesn't everybody use "stay" that way? So for an example, Langston Hughes in 1942 in "The Sun Do Move" has this word: "She don't stay in no slave row." And so for, let's see, 1883 Joel Chandler Harris says, "Den Mr. Lion, he acts of Mr. Jack Sparrow know where he stay, which Mr. Sparrow say that he do." Right, but I was like but that's just regular "stay," isn't it? Like, clearly not.
That wasn't the "stay" that we were thinking about, because there's another "stay" that is much more, or a lot of research is done on it, which has to do with this sort of habitual or continuous idea about "stay," like an example is Wanda Coleman from "Ladies: A War of Eyes and Other Stories," where the character says, "He ain't the marryin kind. We've been living together now two years. It was better tween us when he worked a regular job, but he fell in with a new crowd about a year ago, and he stay in the streets." That was the "stay" I was familiar with. Right. 22 attestation on Twitter. "One thing about me, I can't be broke, I stay with a job." Right, so like, this is always the case, right, this habitual condition.
So that's the "stay" that my friend and I are looking at each other going, where's that "stay," because that's the one we know. And I was like, this is another "had" plus past for me that I didn't realize this was African American language. And I think they're just a really a lot of things out there that are like that. I grew up in, I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, but both of my parents and everybody else in my family who are my, I guess would say sort of cohort are from Louisiana. And so I've spent quite a bit of time there; that's where I would spend my summers with my grandparents and hanging out with my aunts and uncles who were closer to my age, and my uncles, I mean, my cousins, etc. And so there's a lot of terminology. Unfortunately, Louisiana is a very fertile place for looking at language in African American communities. But there aren't a lot of people who do work in Louisiana that look at African Americans, because they tend to look at the French Cajun French of white people instead of Creole French of Black people. And so there's a lot of that there's it's a very interesting linguistic situation in Louisiana. So there are things that I grew up with that seem to have, if we look at etymologically, they may have some connection to the French that became part of that area, but as used by African Americans.
So, for example, I grew up with friends who would say, Oh, are you going to make grocery? Meaning, are you going to go to the store? You're going to buy grocery? You know, mash the lights, not turn off or switch off or whatever the lights. There are a variety and also particular words for anatomy that were used that I've never heard used anywhere else to this day. And so I think there's still a lot to be done in terms of including some of these things, some that aren't so obvious and some that may be more obvious. But I think it's just so fertile for finding so many of these things. But yeah, so "stay" anyway.
SONJA: I want to give you one other example. And that's "do rag." So we had a conversation about this about three months ago. How would you spell it? Right. What does it mean? Right. So "do rag" is this, you know, the scarf that men or women will put around their hair. It can … you can either think of it as like the bandanas that you will sometimes see on Black men's hair or the skull cap thing that you'll see, etc. And so we got into this conversation. So "do rag" comes from "hairdo." At least that's the history for the word. However, with things like social media, right, people are because again, I told you that this oral history, and there's not necessarily the connection for some people that I have that know it comes from "hairdo" and just think about it as "do rag." So as a result, we have different spellings. If you go on social media, instead of the traditional "do" and "rag," you'll see "doo." You'll see "du," right. You'll see all of these alternations that take it away from the "hairdo" right. H-A-I-R-D-O rag that it came from to just the fact that this is a pronunciation for it. And so our discussion was which word do we include? Or which headword do we include? And you know, I was just like, it has to be "do" and "rag," right. "Do rag" because that's where it comes from. Now part of what makes it get the headword is which one is the most popular. Well, historically, the "do" is going to be the most popular right now. But as time goes on, and people are using social media or whatever is going to come into the future, that may surpass what is the etymological connection to the spelling of "do." And that spelling may become something else. So in 20 years from now, it could be that that headword has to change. And the "do" spelling becomes an alternate instead of the headword, just because of how we are measuring language now and being able to see this, and we'll have more attestations. But this is why having a historical dictionary is important, because the historical dictionary will be able to track that, and it will provide that evidentiary trail for you to see what has happened over the period of time. So I'm kind of looking forward to that.
MIGNON: Right. As you were saying that I was thinking about the Oxford English Dictionary where you see, you know, there's the headword, but then you can see like the older spellings that are there.
SONJA: Yes.
MIGNON: It happens with all languages.
SONJA: So at some point, one of those words would have actually been the headword. But yeah, I think that's really cool.
MIGNON: That is very cool. I know I was thinking, I think it comes from "hairdo," but then I thought about it. Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. This is just delightful, and truly I can't wait to read it when it comes out, which is going to be in about a year in the spring of 2025. And again, Dr. Sonja Lanehart from the University of Arizona. Thank you for being here with us today.
SONJA: Thank you so much for having me, and I look forward as well as you. I'm waiting for the dictionary to come out and to be able to share that and teach it. That's going to be lovely.
MIGNON: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks.
MIGNON: I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. I'll catch you back here on Tuesday when I have a segment about when to use "that" versus "which," and a fun segment about words for walking, including "traipse" and "sashay."
That's all. Thanks for listening!