Structuse

Though Fishsticks was first aired in the United States three months ago (and became South Park’s most viewed episode so far), I didn’t know it existed until a couple of days ago, when Kanye West reminded us of his existence with one of his public outbursts (the video keeps being removed by Viacom, but it’s the one in which he interrupts Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech).

The joke itself is very simple (and rather dumb, I admit), and here’s Kanye failing to get it:

Though explaining a joke usually ruins it, I think this may be an exception. The joke plays with the fact that the contrast between /t/ and /d/ and English does not depend solely on voicing. On top of that, in many different dialects, voiceless consonants also tend to be aspirated, though that doesn’t happen to voiced consonants. “Bike”, for instance, sounds like [baɪk] in these dialects, whereas “Pike” sounds like [p^haɪk]. Nice, huh? But, there are rules to this aspiration and, failing to notice that often leads to hilarious results.

At the beginning of a syllable, a voiceless plosive is not aspirated when it follows an /s/. What does that mean? It means that, even though “bike” is pronounced [baɪk], and “pike” sounds like [p^haɪk], “spike” becomes [spaɪk]. So, what does that have to do with gay fish?

Well, when you say [fɪʃ.stɪks] the /s/ preceding the /t/ blocks the aspiration, so to speak. But, what if, in rapid speech, you drop the /s/? You end up having [fɪʃ.tɪk]… and there’s a problem: how should one interpret our dear alveolar plosive? Both /t/ and /d/ are alveolar plosives, after all, and the listener must make a choice. If you pay close attention the pronunciation of the TV host in the sample above, the plosive is always voiced, thus producing [fɪʃ.dɪks] (which is exactly what he wants to say, “fish dicks”). But, Kanye, being led on by the context, believes the TV host is just pronouncing the /t/ without the aspiration because of the preceding consonant. Though the non sequitur should correct his interpretation, it just doesn’t happen… making the joke all the more hilarious. Anyway, while we’re at it:

I just love the fact that Kanye butchered a tune by Daft Punk that I didn’t like and managed to make something cool out of it. Besides, the video has got a couple of French producers and an American rapper pretending to be Japanese — I think that grants them a few bonus points for cultural diversity. But, I can’t understand why they chose to write everything in katakana. Has it got something to do with how manga is written?