I have gotten lucky and landed a editor for my multi-million word Sunset Saga series of novels, which is saving me 160 hours. The lady is working from her home in rural America, in God’s Country as my grandmother used to say.
She sent me an email an hour ago suggesting that I have worn the ‘yo’ joke kind of thin:
“Are you referencing the old cartoon ‘Billy and Mandy’ with the amount of times Eddie says "yo"?
No Dear, Eddie’s ‘yo’ usage is at the median frequency of black urban youth.
[Eddie, by the way, is a reformed East Baltimore crack dealer who has managed to attach himself to a time-travel organization as a gofer and ends up in over his head often.]
Below is a sentence which I shall translate for you on the following line:
“Yo Yo, yo!
“Hey my-special-friend, lookout!”
As you can see the brevity of the diction makes for more efficient communication during such hairy situations as drug deals and busts. Also, the severely limited vocabulary is easily mastered before the age of 8 when boys are first recruited as runners and lookouts. This is just one of many reasons that police departments, saddled as they are with the archaic English language, are so hopelessly overmatched on the street.
Now let’s flex our ebonic muscles a little more, with a sentence that might be employed by a high level operator.
“Yo Yo, Yo’s shit be fucked-up, Yo.”
“Hey my-special-friend that dude’s money is wrong and I think he is stealing, just-between-you-and-me.”
Let me break it down vertically:
"Yo [Hey]
Yo [my-special-friend]
Yo’s [that dude’s]
shit [money]
be [is]
fucked-up, [wrong-and I think he is stealing]
Yo.” [just-between-you-and-me]
So now, T-Bob and Blood-Bone have, by reducing 20 words to 8, gained the three crucial seconds necessary to bum rush their partner in crime before he even gets his hands out of his pockets.
Try pulling that off in English!
