I'm still West Indian, hahaha

[minoanmiss]

Today at work I was so annoyed at (another department's) piece of foolishness that I hissed my teeth, then heard myself and started laughing. I couldn't explain it to anyone present (none of my coworkers of Haitian extraction were around to understand) but I can write about it here.

Not only Black people from the Caribbean do this (people who'd call ourselves from the West Indies) but it's pretty characteristic of us to hiss our teeth when deeply annoyed. I don't ever do this consciously because it weirds out [White] Americans and because when I'm in public I try to make my anger appear as cold as possible, so I am kind of amused at myself when I do it unconciously. It's like catching myself muttering a vernacular swearword.

It's a pity I can't tell my parents this story, hahahaha.

Comments

[dine]

it's funny how some stuff sticks with one, and surfaces when least expected.
I'm not religious, but in the past few years have started channeling my grandmother by frequently calling on the saints and holy mother, which, when combined with my excessive cursing, would have horrified her

[minoanmiss]

BWEE

[amaebi]

:)

Flavor.

[acelightning73]

Don't hiss through your teeth if there is a cat nearby. That sound is an extremely nasty word in Feline. I used to hear it a lot from older Black women on the subway; they were too Church-going to use swear words, but that sharp little hiss carries a lot of the same meaning.

[full_metal_ox]

Here’s an example of a nasty feline exhalation hiss performed en masse by humans (ethnicity unspecified); I assure you I’d have joined the chorus:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150302201626/https://thefourthvine.tumblr.com/post/111997148301/team-angry-cat

[minoanmiss]

oh I remember that!

[acelightning73]

The link goes nowhere.

[full_metal_ox]

I chose a Wayback Machine archive; let me know if the original comes through for you.

https://thefourthvine.tumblr.com/post/111997148301/team-angry-cat

[goss]

Hee! We call it a 'steups' (very onomatopoeia. *g* ) round these parts, and it is SUCH a satisfying way to express irritation. *g*

[sabotabby]

We have a pretty big Caribbean population here so when I had a character in my book sucking her teeth, I was baffled that there were people who were confused by it. I thought everyone knew what it meant.

[lb_lee]

Is this an inhale hiss or exhale hiss? Because I'm totally familiar with the inhale hiss, in a sorta, "I am in pain" or "YOU DAMN FOOL YOU POURED THE WRONG TEA FOR THE BOSS" sense, though come to think of it, I don't encounter it much up here I guess. But I could swear I heard it around in Texas!

[minoanmiss]

As I said elsewher (heh) it's on an inhale, but the teeth are part of it. It's not a wince-hiss.

[ethelmay]

I never thought of there being a distinction between inhale and exhale hissing. I guess I think of mouth noises as exhale by default, even though obviously they needn't be.

[ethelmay]

I have never quite understood what was meant by sucking one's teeth, but I am pretty sure I occasionally hiss like that (it's an unconscious thing and I don't especially recall whether I know anyone else who does it). The one time I definitely recall hearing someone hiss at anyone was in an Armenian restaurant when a clueless customer asked the server for Turkish coffee. She hissed at him.

[minoanmiss]

He's lucky that's all she did!

[full_metal_ox]

That’s one of the thousand-and-three pitfalls of casual ethnic profiling: proximity breeds contempt, and there is an excellent chance that you’ll have jauntily greeted your target in the language of their historical arch-enemies.

[anagramofbrat]

I firmly believe you cannot achieve Caribbean Elder status until you can start kissing your teeth on one side of your mouth and can work it all the way around to the other side in one continuous noise.

I just tried, I'm not there yet.

I'm a generation or so removed from the Guyanese on my Dad's side but it does tend to jump out in moments of extreme vexation. It's about the only time I can call up the accent too.

[minoanmiss]

This is why I wish I could ask my parents about this, because it would be HILARIOUS to ask them if either of them can do that like my maternal grandmother could. But as old as I am I don't want to invite a scolding (like my paternal grandmother could).

[cmcmck]

Accents are such a thing!

I was born in the Medway area of north Kent and the local accent 'Medway tarns' or 'Chatham-ese' is a sort of sub cockney.

Given my ancestry in the midlands and the northeast , I don't have that accent, unless I get really annoyed than out it comes! :o)

[lokifan]

Heh!

It's so expressive. And kissing your teeth especially has spread out of the West Indian/Afro-Caribbean communities in London; I remember seeing the theory that it's popular with schoolkids because it's defiant but deniable.

[ethelmay]

So what IS it?

[acelightning73]

It's a sound that expresses irritation, dismay, or anger, like the tongue noise people often spell as "tut tut" or "tch" I've seen Chinese and Japanese people (usually old ladies) use a high-pitched humming or keening sound to express the same thing. And it's like schoolkids sneezing loudly enough to disrupt class. "Oh, sorry, it's allergy season..."

I've also heard old Scottish and Irish women hiss through their teeth at outrageous behavior.

[cellio]

Huh. I do that sometimes and I'm white, but I've also spent decades living with cats so maybe it's that.