• tygerprints@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    52
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    You’ve never heard the expression, “how now, brown cow?” It used to be something people said all the time, it’s just a silly phrase meaning “how’s everything going.” He’s just playing around with the phrase “how now brown cow.”

      • Aa!@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        10 months ago

        “How now” is a phrase that goes back to Shakespeare at least. The full phrase is nothing more than a silly rhyme, which was sometimes used as a vowel sound exercise in English education.

        It most certainly had nothing to do with mocking indigenous American speech patterns, and it does no one any favors to make connections like that where there are none.

      • tygerprints@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        10 months ago

        It is? I had no idea, I’d never heard of that before but it now I can see what you mean. I hope I haven’t been offending people by saying it!!