Dang

Words mean things. Just not to everyone, especially in the face of certain regional dialects.

Depending on the manner (or manure) I reply to an email scammer, this usually dictates whether I'll get a response or not. Sometimes, for the sheer volume of emails I collect in a half-dozen accounts, I don't have time to engage a dozen at once, so I fire off replies to the more boring in the bunch that are generally guaranteed to leave them with a pretty clear picture as to what their prospects are, achieving success with my email address.

Basically, less than spit raising the river.

But even when I've stretched the limits of dialectuality (and if that ain't a word, it is now), some scammers at least make an effort to fathom what they just got in reply. Like this one, who proved to make the effort, albeit a rather bad and whiny one.

It started with a four paragraph solicitation from Ahmed Hinga, allegedly from Darfur in the Sudan, the gist of which was:

It is my pleasure to conatct you for busines ventura which i intent to estabish in your county. Though I have not met with you befor but consider the recent politic insability in my country, i am Mr. Ahmed Hinga the only survivor son of late Luetenant Coloel Garang Hinga of Darfur Sudan. My parent and rest of family kill by group known as Sadiq al Mahdi during civil war while fight for liberate of Sudan from hand of dictator.

Hinga goes on to tell me, in his ineloquent way and syntax, about the $8 million his father left him before he get kill, and Hinga's need for a reliable foreigner to invest the money outside of Africa...which, of course, I will be "handomly conpenstated for". Hinga directs me to target the investments in "transport, mechanize agiculture and real estrate".

Alrighty then. Since it's no longer considered "fair" to make a bad speller stay after school and write their misspellings on the blackboard about 500 times, let's do something considered even worse by the teachers' union.

Granted, with things at my job in the status they're in, I don't have a whole lot of time to diddle for an extended period with Hinga, though his email offering does throw me some notions for play time. So what I choose to do with him is rewrite his entire email, and simply send it back to him, without comment. That usually puts "paid" to the exchange.

So I rewrote it, sorta kind of almost word for word, in my inarticulate version of redneck*:

Hidy, y'all! Ah'm right pleesed h'yar ta git yore attenshun fer a biscuits thang witch ah intends h'yar ta gore yer ox with, iffen you gots no more sense than a possum onna superslab. Wile ah gots no chance ta havin' met y'all bee4, ah rectum it won' matter wunst it's a dun thang h'yar.

Ah'm Mr. Ahmed Hinga, a sand-lovin' camel humpin' ony servivin' spawn of mah late moonshine-runnin' pa, "Gator" Billy Bob Garang Hinga from Darfer, sumwhar 'souf an eest of th' Ozarks, or so ah'm figgerin'. Didunt git 2 fer in th' grades, y'see, so's ah don' know much 'bout giraffophy an' what's whar.

What y'all gots ta figger h'yar is mah folks 'n the rest of mah incestual relatshuns wuz dun in by some suck egg mule group o' bad fellers called sumpin' Izlambik, at th' beginnin' of a feud herebouts wid some three-teethed goatpokers what runs a competin' operashun in mah home contree of Seedan.

Aftah them long-toothed galoots kilt mah wole famdamily, ah wuz left widda huge bunch of ate millyun baseball kards which mah late pa dun stored widda sekuritee joint fer safe keepin'. Now ah gots ta sell these h'yar thangs fer pork chop money an ah reckon yore dumber than a tree stump, so's ah kin soak whar yore ass sets a spell, and git me sumpin fer nuthin'.

Ah'll tell you what....ah'm now in Bugtussle wid all th' dokewmint thangs y'all think 'ull git you some dis h'yar money. Ah want ya ta keep thinkin' like that thar fer lawng 'nuff til ah gits mah furr piece of whar yer ass sets.

So soospend yore disbeeleaf h'yar, an' let's git to th' rat killin', bee4 yew figger out what th' horsefeathers ah'm sayin' h'yar. Gits back to me h'yar, an' ah'll leed y'all down a path whar a good can o' whupass is comin' yer way. Ah looks forwerd ta ya gittin' back now, y'hear?

Even I had to labor a bit to re-read that, so I figured that my scammer would try, and give up.

Yes and no, as a later-that-day reply indicates:

WHAT!

Ahmed Hinga

LMAO...*ahem*...whaddoz he mean, "what!"? Wasn't I clear as mud h'yar? Let's hep him unnerstand this h'yar:

Dagnabbit, ya cotton-pickin' long-earred galoot, wha' h'yar wuz hard fer ye ta unnerstand? Dadgumit, mah time h'yar is 'spensive, an' ah gots nun of it ta waste tryin' ta 'splain simpul Inglish 2 y'all. Git yer hin'quarters offen yore thinkin' part, an' reread mah emale so's we kin git to thangs, 4 ah hafta tell yew what agin!

I'm a bit amazed and amused as I get another reply that establishes he doesn't unnerstand, but isn't ready to give it up:

i no uderstand what this you say to me Pleese too make words i read.

What? He can't read what I'm writing? I'm supposed to "make words" he can read? Lemme ask him what he thinks he can read:

Feller, wha' kinna werds h'yar is it y'all thinks ya kin reed? Ah meen, iffen yore 2 stoopid ta make sense o' this h'yar simpul Inglish ah'm usin', ah'll tell yew what...yore no' gonna git them werds ah kin writ outta mah dicshunery thang!

Ahmed Hinga is probably many things, a few of which I'm sure are unprintable, at least here; but he gets a nod for his persistence in the face of massive syntax error:

mabe you call me to comucate better ok?

And he gave me his number, which tells me nuthin: Sudan doesn't have a country code for international calling, at least in my phone book, and the number appears to lack a country code, unless the first two numbers are it, which puts him (or his cheap cell phone) as being in, or from, Thailand. So I send him this lil' thang to ponder:

Cawl yew? Onda fone? Hawhawhawhaw! Feller, ah gots this h'yar can onna strang thang, an' wile it werks ok fine fer lokal stuff, ah cain' connekt any more frum h'yar than Skunkfeathersville, 'bout a day's ride onna slow mule. So howz a feller 'sposed ta cawl yew in this Seedan place? Ah'll tell yew what...answer me that thar!

Once more, a forlorn request for clarity from Ahmed:

i no udersand you words what what what? i dont now what you say

Is Ahmed ready to give up on what started as me just rewritin' his scam mail in redneckese? Lesse h'yar:

Dang, Ahmed, yer squealin' wurse thanna hawg gittin' a prod. Iffen yer gonna writ folks like us all h'yarbouts, ain't ya thinkin' ta git some edumacatid on how we all tawlks h'yar? Dang! Yer wastin' mah road kill jerky-makin' time, ah'll tell yew what. Speekin' o' witch, how much jerky y'all thankin' yew kin pull offa road kill camal, Ahmed? Ain't them thangs kinda big?

I'll never know the answer to that 'un. Not at least from Ahmed.

Dang.

* Disclaimer: this h'yar version of redneckese is not necessarily authenticated in Oxford's Collegiate Complete Word Finder, Information Please, The World Almanac, on Google, or on the (un)official online redneck translator, Ah Tell Yew What.com. Actual syllables, consonants, verbs, nouns, dangling possum cicles, and other violations of the laws of written English herein, are not guaranteed to git you past a backwoods road block, or really ugly banjo player with no teeth and no gender preference for backdoor doinkin'. Ah Tell You What (the phrase) rarely does, in the real redneck world, according to Jeff Foxworthy and others of some knowledge in this h'yar field. In the event your political correctness sensibilities are offended by this post, please feel free to write and complain about this post to smith.brain000@gmail.com; I guaran-dang-tee you that he'll have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, any more than he understood this h'yar feller.