A lot of people have been asking me about this: after reviewing and analyzing the audio, it is my expert professional opinion that Mr. Floyd did *not* say "I ate too many drugs," and instead said "I ain't do any drugs." #DerekChauvinTrial 1/

I will be writing a detailed blog post about this today, but the gist is there is linguistic and non-linguistic evidence for this analysis. 2/

The linguistic evidence:
1. Mr. Floyd speaks African American English (AAE), and makes use of the negative marker "ain't."

Earlier, in body cam footage, he said "I ain't do nothing!" ("I didn't do anything" in classroom English). This will be relevant later. 3/

2. In many varieties of AAE and in Mr. Floyd's speech, "ain't" is pronounced [e͡ɪ̃ʔ]. If you don't read IPA, the important part is that the n is often pronounced as nasalization on the vowel, and not as a separate, following segment (think of French "on" or Portuguese -ão) 4/

3. Mr. Floyd's pronunciation of the oo vowel in "do" follows a pattern common in most varieties of North American English, where it glides between two vowels...linguists sometimes represent this as /uw/. w is VERY close to m (try for yourself, compare "awa" and "ama") 5/

...the main difference between the two is whether you mostly or completely close your lips (and how much air then goes out your nose). Going back to "awa" and "ama" how confident are you that you could clearly distinguish them in speech while under duress? 6/

...from the earlier footage, it is also clear that Mr. Floyd nearly closes his lips entirely when saying that /uw/ vowel. 7/

4. While textbooks and article about AAE will explain that AAE uses negative concord (also known as "multiple negation" or "double negatives"), it is not always obligatory, and there are some instances when speakers may use "any" instead of "no." For instance, for emphasis 8/

...as in "I ain't do ANY drugs."

5. There was significant noise in the audio, and multiple voices talking at the same time. I believe the noise and other voices contributed to the incorrect perception that Mr. Floyd said "too many" and not "do any". 9/

6. nasalization (like in the word "ain't") is hard to hear in a noisy channel. It's not surprising that "ain't" could have been misheard. In fact, this is exactly the kind of mishearing I wrote about in 2019 in Language, with @sociologyjones and @R_A_Hancock 10/

7. "I ain't do any drugs" is a normal, grammatical sentence in AAE. 11/

Comparing Mr. Floyd's statements earlier in the stop ("I ain't do nothin'") to the statement in question, the first 3 syllables sound EXACTLY THE SAME. We have audio of him saying "I ain't do" to compare against, and it's clear that's what he's saying. 12/

If we really wanted to get to the bottom of this, we'd also want to know how Mr. Floyd pronounces the past tense of "eat." Given his upbringing in the south, there is a high likelihood that it is pronounced with a different vowel than "ain't." 13/

Earlier recordings, or speaking with his family might illuminate this. I would not be surprised if his pronunciation of "ate" is closer to [ɛt] "et". But we can't ask him anymore. 14/

The extralinguistic evidence:
1. "I ate too many drugs" is a strange sentence. I have known plenty of people who have experience with drug use, and none have ever referred to it as "eating drugs." This is just not how people talk, and is highly implausible. 15/

2. Context of the speech act is important. The defense claims that Mr. Floyd was freaking out (perhaps due to substance abuse). It is clear, watching the video that he is begging for his life, and attempting to negotiate, but defer to the officers ("please, mister officer") 16/

3. Why would someone who has been insisting for minutes "I ain't do nothing" suddenly switch to the bizarre sentence "I ate too many drugs" interjected in the middle of other protestations of innocence? 17/

4. Misunderstandings or misrepresentations of AAE are often used to discredit and discount Black people's speech, especially in a judicial setting. See Rickford & King 2016, or Jones, Kalbfeld, Hancock & Clark 2019, both in Language ( https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/LSA952102.pdf) @LingSocAm 18/

It is possible that the defense is not acting cynically, and simply lacks basic knowledge about spoken African American English, but this is not the first egregious mistake they've made. 19/

Last week, they claimed his statement that he had been "hooping" (that is, shooting hoops, also known as playing basketball), was an admission of ingesting drugs rectally ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/george-floyd-fentanyl/2021/03/10/c3d4f328-76ec-11eb-9537-496158cc5fd9_story.html) 20/

Perhaps this goes without saying, but not only is "rectally ingesting" not what "hooping" means, but also not what "eating" refers to. 21/

This is also not the first time the crowd-sourced Urban Dictionary has been used in a legal setting to "explain" African American speech, with absurd results. 22/

I'll have more to say later, but I want to reiterate: my expert professional opinion as a linguist whose PhD and research program revolve around AAE, and as someone who lives in and grew up in AAE speech communities, is that Mr. Floyd unequivocally said "I ain't do any drugs."

@AGEllison @keithellison @AttorneyCrump

@maddow @chrislhayes @JoyAnnReid @jeligon @cassieowens @VICENews @GeeDee215 @NPRCodeSwitch @NBCNews @abcnews @CNN @CBSNews

Blog post is coming, but I had work with the DOJ yesterday and am getting my Covid shot today. The post will include cleaned audio and a thorough phonemic analysis with charts, which is taking some time