nah ah mean
English
Alternative forms
Interjection
nah ah mean?
- (African-American Vernacular, uncommon) Pronunciation spelling of nah mean?
- 2003 February 6, Reef Central Archives[2]:
- "nah ah mean, playa?" I am Dyslexic of Borg.
- 2008 December, José Alfonso Vanegas, “BLACK, BROWN, YELLOW, AND WHITE: THE NEW FACES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH”[3] (Master's Thesis), in Department of English, Indiana University, page 50:
- In short, if your AAE speech sports a detectable accent, you should not be using it or you may risk finding yourself in a situation where you will need to know some jive talk in a hurry as well! Ya nah’ ah mean?
Usage notes
This form of nah mean is a more accurate representation of the interjection as it is spoken in African American English: with a doubled ah sound rather than a single one—the first standing in place of what (> wha’ > *’a’); the other, of I (> Ah).
It is mostly used by speakers of dialects other than AAVE, or of Standard English, as seen in the quotations above, to mention (directly or indirectly) the interjection itself (rather than actually using it), or to represent or mock slangy parlance. It could be viewed as a “more formal” or “less slangy” form of nah mean, which is reinforced by such examples as its uses above in a master's thesis by a Latin American man, and in a song (by Shaggy, a Black singer) about saving the world from climate change—a serious and important theme.
AAVE speakers generally prefer the form nah mean, which they use in songs, everyday chats, audiovisual media (e.g. My Wife and Kids; see quotation at nah mean), podcasts (such as one called The Nah Mean Show[5]), and other colloquial contexts.