Talking out me neck, again

Re this post by Eric Bakovic, I reckon that when Chuck D of Public Enemy sings

he is using “how that” where standard English speakers would use “how”, and that the pronoun “that” is assumed in the “ain’t” or what precedes it. The “how that”/”how” swap turns up in a variety of sources, including in 1513 in Douglas’s Æneis (OED), where the “that” clearly does not refer to one particular (manifestation of) Aeneas:

This idiom is, I believe, more common in Dutch than English. Here’s an example from the 1462 Reis van Jan van Mandeville (my emphasis):

Here’s a contemporary Afrikaans example taken from a sermon by Ds Jaco Kruger of the Gereformeerde Kerk Wapadrant:

Another interesting idiom that turns up in hiphop and in African American English is to be found in Doo Wop (That Thing) by Lauryn Hill:

Here, too, are the Beastie Boys in Time to Build:

The standard English usage is noted first by the OED in EW Hoffnung’s story, The Return Match (1899):

The fact that (quasi-)black American artists use “out” instead of “through” or even “out of” suggests to me that for them the phrase comes from the Dutch equivalent, uit je nek praten/lullen/kletsen. It would be interesting to know (a) how the expression arose, and (b) whether it was already in circulation in the period when (I am told) Dutch traders used to try to add value to slaves intended for households in New York and other parts by giving them elementary English lessons.

Trevor @ 28 July 2004 6:07 PM

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Comments

1. Geoff
   9:03 PM on 28 July 2004

   That line makes more sense as “[It] ain’t how that God planned it!”

2. Trevor
   10:41 PM on 28 July 2004

   I’ll buy that, with ice please.

3. Language Log
   11:14 PM on 28 July 2004 That’s not how that … is it?
   Mark narrowly beat me to the punch in commenting on Trevor at Kaleboel’s response to my post yesterday about the “Ain’t how that God planned it?” lyric. I have to disagree with Mark; I’m not so sure about the sensibility…

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