Question on a common colloquiol english?

Question

I'm not a native speaker of English, so I don't find this "phrase", if you will, make a lot of sense to me. Can you explain?

On a forum, I read this popular phrase "got them hands" (aka got dem handz"). I have no idea what that means...maybe this one is out of context but here's are few more examples

Them flies are huge
Them birds got long feathers
basically, "them (something) is (something)"

What's up with using "them" in the first word of the sentence? Is it just a slangy way to say "those" flies are huge, for example?

Thanks

Answer 1

I wish there was a way to keep all English learners away from talk like that! It is very incorrect and uneducated speech, but is made popular through hip hop/rap culture. People who say this mean "those" but all the grammar is "simplified". As a recently-liberated high school teacher, I heard some awful speech most of the day. They mean "Those flies are huge", but don't bother to use different words for different parts of the sentence. You would say "Those books are for them." Them is not to be used as the subject. they use the word "got" instead of has or have. Or do not conjugate the verb "to be", as in "My feet is big" or "my feet be big", or worse yet, "My feet big." It is very slangy, but from my experience, a lot of kids are so used to speaking that way, they are forgetting when to speak proper English.

Then there's the refusal to pronounce the "th" sound, using "d" . I know it is a difficult sound for non-English speakers at first, but it is an essential English sound and really does a lot to identify who can speak well and who can't. I had a friend who practiced "th" sounds between her teeth all the time because
she felt it was the mark of a true English speaker. Enough lecturing! Just avoid saying those phrases yourself!

Answer 2

If you're versed in the romantic languages, you might recognize Them as the accusative form of Those. Those should be used when referring to the subject of a sentence and Them should be used when referring to the object of a sentence (in case you're wondering, subjects verb objects).

Granted, in English Those can also be used as an accusative, for example the sentence "Look at those" but in general the same is not true for Them. Put simply, it's a grammatically incorrect form which means Those.

Answer 3

Them is an af/american change of the language to differentiate between a black speaker and a white. Further they "rappized" "them" to be "dem."

TX Mom

Answer 4

It's a backward, "country" way of saying "Those". It's informal and not grammatically correct, but most people who speak like that aren't all that correct anyway.

Answer 5

it depends on the regio the people who wrote it were from but it sounds like "them" is used as those or these