Oprah: I thought 'bout seein' everything and then... I saw a pregnant man.
YouTube
It sounds very much like Oprah Winifrey, the iconic show woman and world-famous TV host, is parodying African American Vernacular speech (AAVE). I love hearing the intonation, the dramatic pause, and rise and fall in her speech as she gently mocks the stupor of people when they first heard about Thomas Beatie, the first man to become pregnant.
My question is focussed on the statement. Is this construction accurate? Now, I might be wrong in transcribing this piece but I've listened carefully several times, and it's the reason why I stopped watching the video because I'm not sure if it really is AAVE. I'm aware that Black English has its own unique grammar, tenses, and "rules"; it's not slang or lazy speech, it's a proper dialect, one which I will never be really familiar with because I'm not exposed to that kind of talking; however, I do find it fascinating.
I understand Oprah's opening line, ‘I thought I had seen everything until I saw a pregnant man’ but when I checked online, Google did not find a single result for the "I thought (a)bout seeing everything"
- Is this a typical AAVE sentence? If not, what would it be?
- If it is genuine, what is the grammar behind this construction?