Nicki Minaj's 2019 Comment "What?! Um Chile. Anyways. So" That Became An Internet Meme (video, comments, article reprint, and more)

Halima Suzu, Jul 19, 2020
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Transcription:
"I hate doing sh-t* and not perfecting it-
can you guys hear me good?

ummm

big boobs?

What?!

um chile, anyways. so.."
-snip-
This is my amended spelling of that word which Nicki Minaj says in that clip.

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part II of a two part pancocojams series about the use of the African American Vernacular English word "chile" in songs, television programs, and social media.

This post presents selected comments about the Nicki Minaj "um chile anyways so" quote and meme are also included in this post.

That post also includes my speculative interpretation of Nicki Minaj's "um chile anyways so" comment.

That post also presents an almost complete reprint of an online article about how stan twitter has claimed to have originated "chile" and various other African American Vernacular English words. 

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2023/02/nicki-minajs-comment-um-chile-anyways.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That pancocojams post presents a partial timeline of song & social media usages of  the American Vernacular English Word "Chile" from 1967 to the 2000s (with YouTube clips).

This post includes brief quotes about these examples..

The content of this post is presented for historical, linguistic, and socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain witht heir owners.

Thanks to Nicki Minaj for her musical and cultural legacies. hanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this live instagram chat clip on YouTube. 
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Click https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cxy5sQWlm0&t=49s for Nicki Minaj's complete instagram live stream chat on July 28, 2019. The "Um Big Boobs. What?! Um chile anyways so" comment is at 3:36 in that video.
 
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SELECTED COMMENTS ABOUT NICKI MINAJ'S "WHAT?! UM CHILE ANYWAYS SO" COMMENT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b84NdQXHtKI [This is the link for the video that is embedded in this pancocojams post.

Here are some comments from the discussion thread for this video clip. (This compilation includes a comment that I wrote in that discussion thread.)

Numbers added for referencing purposes only.

1. igby, 2020

"It’s crazy how one little IG live comment started all of this

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2. Hailey Marie grande, 2021
"Out of all the comments, she spotted that one LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

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3. CloudBomb3r, 2020
"is this where it started"

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4. renée, 2020
"no. the word “chile” was used for years. it’s aave."
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Ibelieve that the commenter was asking is this where the “um chile anyways so” meme  came from. The answer is "Yes". 

"AAVE"  is African American Vernacular English.

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5. Eman Azizi, 2020
"This live gave birth to so many memes."

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6. Cavalier P3,2020
"Up until now, every time I heard someone say the word chile online I thought they were referring to the country. 😂"

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7. 용준니콜, 2020
"Same, I thought they were writing bad: "chill" Until it became something I saw every day and I decided to find out what they really meant lol"

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8. running, 2020
"ugh the locals ran "Chile" to the ground. they ruin everything"
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Here's an explanation of the twitter term "the locals":
From https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/locals-twitter/
Tiffany Kelly Internet Culture Posted on Mar 12, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 10:07 pm CDT
"Twitter users are constantly creating new slang. A few recent examples include mood, chapstick and mascara Twitter, and stan. Now there’s another term that everyone is throwing around the social site: locals. What are locals? According to various online sources, locals are uncool people (sometimes from your hometown) who don’t understand Twitter lingo. Urban Dictionary calls them a “less cringey term for “normies.”

https://twitter.com/wrathofthehands/status/970829996116803584

Locals are often seen as people who need someone to explain internet culture to them."
-snip-
Example #28 is another comment in this discussion thread that includes the slang term "the locals". 

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9. m, 2020
"I always thought they were saying Ciao ("bye" in a language that i forgot)"

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10. Hange Zoe, 2020
"the person who texted big boobs really changed history-"

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11. hyzaa, 2020
"We know its “child” we just spell it as “chile” because honestly “ciao” doesn’t make sense-"

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12. Sadiaisrat happy, 2020
" @hyzaa  ciao means hi in Italian"

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13. xarissx, 2020
" @Sadiaisrat happy  then why do people use it as bye lmao I’m confused"

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14. Sadiaisrat happy,2020
"@xarissx  ciao can be used as bye and hello

I'm Italian"

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15. Strawbeerryy Mermaida, 2021
"I literally kept saying it like chile. As in the pepper"

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16. chaiboi, 2021
"no, it’s an AAVE. Nicki Minaj just made it popular, it’s been here for generations..."

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17. Corpsdice, 2021
"the confusion in her face when she read “big boobs” always gets me 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂"

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18.  Te, 2020
"All us black people:

Chile = Child

 

All other people:

Chile = ??? Chile pepper? Chile, South America.. ??? DERP DERP DERP?"

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19. Ashanti Gardner, 2020
"@シGabriela  basing it off the comments"

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20. Reb, 2020
"Chile doesn’t mean child LMAOO 💀"

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21.  E, 2020
"Tiktokers: m e m e"

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22. Te, 2020 
"@Reb  yesssss it doess... ......only black people generally say chiiiiiiile bye or chiiiiiiile please and it's a colloquialism you'd mostly hear amongst blacks in the south..... it means child but slang. But with appropriation running rampant....I wouldn't be surprised if non blacks stay using it."

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23.Trashchild, 2020
"@Reb 

um yes it is

It’s apart of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety formerly known as Black English Vernacular or Vernacular Black English among sociolinguists, and commonly called Ebonics outside the academic community.

basically how african americans pronounce words child>chile

it ain’t some tiktok/twitter slang 🙄

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24. Terrah E, 2020
" @Reb  it definitely means child it’s aave for child..."

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25.  s a i, 2020
"I'm black and I pronounced it a sign the country CHILE in the beginning lmaoo"

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26. AliveAndUnwell, 2020 
"im black and i thought it was from stan twitter i-💀"

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27. Lazarine Munroe, 2020 
"@Trashchild  tbh lol yall taking this mad far its not really like a slang, probably for you but thats how, us (including nicki sometimes) trinidadians speak "

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28. jude, 2020
"ugh omg the locals 😹😹😹😹 they found chile 😿😿😿😼😼😼 i’m so alt 😹😹😹😹😻😻😻😻😾😾😼😼😼😽😽"

 
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29. alaina, 2020
"@jude  the fact that the ppl saying this stole it from black women too lmao"

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30. dezz, 2020
"i keep on finding 14 year old white copy and pastes on roblox saying “Um Chill anyways so..” its so cringy. and everybody keeps thinking nicki minaj made up that word. its been apart of aave for long."

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31. maikol, 2020
"@Parris -_-  ok so anybody of any other race can't say any of it because African American people made it?"

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32. Parris -_-, 2020 
"@maikol  Every race can use aave, but they either have to understand where the dialect came from(African Americans) or be raised around people who use aave"

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33. maikol, 2020 
"@Parris -_-  ah, okay"

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34. Emercyn K.
"It's pronounced child!? 👁👄👁 I've been saying chill-ee all this time..."

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35. _ Aliencentral _, 2020 
"Same 😭😂"

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36. cherxii, 2020
"Whats wrong with yall 😭"

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37. Vidhi Raina, 2020
 "People need to stop being so confused."

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38. Angel Ezemba, 2021
"Then stop using aave. It’s child. African American vernacular English. We just keep the d in silent. This word exist since slavery. My mom got a Chile, she got a Chile, they got a Chile. Chile is child. Y’all ist use it for everything now and destroyed it."
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I believe that the word "ist" is a shortened form of the word "bi-tch" that is written and spoken that way to make it more socially acceptable.

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39. Heloísa Teixeira, 2020
"Someone can explain to me the meaning of “Chile”, I’m still learning english ☺️"

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40. unknownmachinax, 2020 
"I got you Its southern slang for child it's like if you talked slick to you parents and they said "child pleaseee your still young go bac to hitting them books" "

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41. Angel Ezemba, 2021
"@SaBria Washington  what r u talkin? It’s literally just African American vernacular English and means CHILD

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42. Azizi Powell, 2023
@Angel Ezemba, as your comments indicate, the word "chile" originated a looong time ago as a Southern African American Vernacular English/Southern United States region way of saying "child". The plural form of "chile" is "chirren" (also spelled "chillen" and "chillun"), but those words appears to be seldom used in the late 20th and in the 21st century.

The affectionate referent "honey chile" is an early form of the word "chile". Eventually people dropped the ending word "chile" and just used the complimentary word "honey". In the 20th century and sometimes nowadays "chile" has the meaning of "friend" and not an actual youngster,  particularly when it was/is used by African American females. Later, "chile" began to be used as a put down for the person being addressed. Two examples of this usage are  the common AAVE sentence "Chile, please" and Nicki Minaj's quote "Um chile anyways so".  Those putdowns (insults) imply/are short hand ways of saying that those people are acting childish (foolish).

All this to say that what the AAVE word "chile" means is complicated and saying that "chile"  has the exact same meaning as the word "child" isn't really true."

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43. yelan 🌊, 2020 
"When my friends said "chile anyways" I was so confused and though they were saying "chill-AY anyways" so I had to look this up 💀"

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44. soph, 2020 
"its so funny how people are hearing this from her for the FIRST TIME like I hear this anytime I'm with family😭"

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45. Turquoise Stranger, 2021
"Same, whats funnier is they're calling it gen z language when it existed from eons ago"

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46. Rigby, 2020
"It’s crazy how one little IG live comment started all of this"

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47. candychan, 2020 
"Chile” in this context is pronounced like “child” but with a silent D. It’s African American Vernacular English, and anyone who thinks it’s pronounced “chilly” or “chillay” has obviously never been around black people lmao. I’m white and I knew this my whole life."

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48. Keith Foester, 2021
"um child anyways so"

-Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty"

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49. Giyuu Tomioka, 2022
" “Um chile anyways so” is carrying tiktok single handedly.."

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50. Stalin Gordon, 2021
"This is one of the most used sounds on tick tock 🤣"

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MY SPECULATIVE INTERPRETATION OF NICKI MINAJ'S "WHAT?! UM CHILE ANYWAYS SO" COMMENT
"What?! Um chile anyways so" is a shortened comment that consists of the abbreviated sentence "Um chile" (which is prefaced by the word "What?!"), the word "anyways" and the word "so".

I believe that one way this comment could be interpreted is:
What?! Um, whoever was foolish enough to write "big boobs" in my instagram chat, [You really don't want me to go there because I could forget all about my instagram, celebrity persona and lash out on your ass.  But, I'm gonna play pass what you wrote and gonna move right along and read other comments in this instagram chat. 
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What do you think Nicki Minaj's shortened comment means?  

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ARTICLE: NO CHILE" IS NOT STAN CULTURE" - IT'S AAVE 

[AAVE- AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH]

https://girlsunited.essence.com/article/aave-language-chile/ No, “Chile” Is Not Stan Culture—It’s AAVE by Brooklyn White, August 3, 2020

"Give credit where credit is due.

The internet is a messy melting pot.

This knowledge has slowly led to it becoming a digital form of globalization, much to the chagrin of Black people. Through the advent of the world wide web, we’ve watched the spread of ideas, sounds, techniques, and language, but with that has come confusion about the proper origins of widely used terms. For an uncomfortable amount of time, we’ve watched words and phrases like “chile” and “periodt” enter the mass lexicon, while stan communities take the credit for either their creation or use. But this linguistic form of cultural appropriation is problematic, because it robs Black people of their role as innovators.

Over the weekend, the internet bubbled with an exhausting, but apparently necessary, conversation about the origin of the AAVE term “chile.” Black folks of all ages swore that it’s a southern pronunciation of the word “child,” while certain internet circles believed that it was invented in late 2019 and that its popularization was due to stan Twitter. The latter encourages mystery and anger, since Black people have had to tolerate insults about our relationship with the English language, only to have our slang taken and accredited to others.

y’all really let this yt woman sit up and here and boldly tell black people AAVE is “stan culture” i’m sick pic.twitter.com/QjD4mixEr0

— flo millicent stan account ... July 31, 2020

The idea of “stanning” is inspired by Eminem’s 2000 song about a crazed super fan who’s willing to do anything to gain proximity to his idol. I’m sure it wasn’t meant to become a verb, much less a welcomed community name, but two decades later, here we are. Today, stans tend to huddle up to discuss, ruthlessly defend and promote the work of the celebrity of their choosing. At their most intense, they almost appear to occupy a separate universe completely dedicated to the object of their affection. They are thought to have their own way of speaking, but the conversations are largely built on the backs of Black people, and often more specifically, Black members of the LGBTQ+ community.

[...]

The exact origins of Black people using “chile” to describe children, or to simply refer to one another, are muddled. As one Twitter user pointed out, “chile” was used in the 1978 film “The Wiz,” but the beginnings of the phrase extend beyond then as well. My Generation X-born aunt (b. 1974) aging grandmother (b. 1953) and deceased great-grandmother (b. 1916) all were born in Louisiana, and use[d] “chile” as a term of endearment. Since stan twitter is a relatively new concept (though it has roots in early online forums,) there is no way that it’s use of “chile” predates Black, southern, in-person use.

“Melting pot” is used to describe the exchange of culture within America, completely ignoring the abuse and purposely misplaced credit that allows this pot to exist. The same idea applies to internet stans who are so tethered to believing their style of communication is unique, that they can’t believe they are not the beginning or end of speech that is ultimately Black.

Whew chile.”

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