sinesalvatorem:

thetransintransgenic:

sinesalvatorem:

Well, actually, just to the memes that were popular around me while I was in college. Most of these come from songs. I am tired of memeing around my American friends and having them be like “wut???”, so I am educating you all now.

I. [X] does give me me powers

The origin of this meme is the song Phenomenal by Benjai. It come from the line “Soca does gi’ me me powas; ey-ay”. ie: “[Caribbean music genre] makes me powerful; [sound of enthusiasm]”. The specific way this is used varies a lot.

Most commonly, it’ll be a comment on how something has given you the ability to do stupid things faster with more energy. “coffee”, “ganja”, “cocaine”, “manga”, and “pumpum” (ie: vagina) are all things I heard people say gave them powers (it has to be two syllables to fit the song). Alternatively, if your friend has just done something stupid, you can comment on it this way – usually attributing their sudden energy to something silly as a form of ribbing.

Alternatively, you can use it as an image macro, as we often do on WhatsApp (yes, we’re whatsappers). The general format here is a call-and-response macro. The first image is of the thing giving the powers, with the caption “[thing] does give me me powers”. The second image shows someone doing something silly, with either the caption “Ey Ay”/”Eh I” or the caption “See me deh/dey/there”.

Example from WhatsApp:

However, the punning potential is great and terrible

(I’m a horrible person, I know)

And, thus, you have been educated! Which is great, because I am constantly tempted to use this meme, and then have to refrain from it to avoid confusion. But no more! Go forth and meme like a true rudeboy

How does “[X] does give me me powers“ parse syntactically?

Specifically, what is each “me” doing? Do they both mean the same thing, and were just repeated for the meter to work? (Or for emphasis? Does [Redacted]-dialect repeat nouns for emphasis?)

Or are they doing different things? Are they both ~something about the speaker~ (with some grammatical effects), or is one of them totally unrelated?

“me” is the first person singular pronoun.

Yes, there aren’t first person singular pronouns. There is only one. It does the work of English I, me, and my.

So, replacing the ‘me’s with their equivalents, we get “Soca does give me my powers”.

But wait! What’s the “does” doing here?

It puts the sentence in the present tense, because “Soca give me my powers” would be past tense. The unmarked form of a verb in my dialect generally is.

So the sentence parses as “Soca gives me my powers” in standard English.

Ah, so that’s what the “does” was for.

(The doubled “me” didn’t confuse me, personally: my language-parsing module saw the second one, said “ah, it’s the cockney ‘me’”, and continued on. Apparently I’ve consumed enough British media for “’me’ can be used as a possessive” to be an available thought.)

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On an unrelated note: is it just me*, or does that song–especially the chorus–sound very…itself? Like, a song they would play over a location-establishing shot. “HAVE WE MENTIONED YET THAT WE’RE IN THE CARIBBEAN??”

Not in a bad way, just…intensely Caribbean.

*It might just be me and my lack of experience with the genre.

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Tags:

#reply via reblog #language #the more you know #music #also #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #because that was indeed a great and terrible pun

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