The Top 5 things the EXPERTS wish you knew about African American English/AAVE (Not what you think!)
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- In this video, I interview four experts on African American English: Dr. Sonja Lanehart, Dr. Hiram Smith, Minnie Quartey Annan, and Christopher Hall, to learn what they wish the public knew about African American English. Their responses weren't what I expected! They discussed everything from who speaks it, to what we call it (with discussion of AAL: "African American Language").
In our wide-ranging discussions, 5 themes emerged:
1. Not all Black Americans speak it and not everyone who speaks it is Black.
2. AAE is systematic. It has rules!
3. The fact that it has rules means that you can get it wrong.
4. The reason it is stigmatized is not about linguistic facts, but are because people use language as a proxy for racial discrimination.
5.It has multiple registers, including a formal register (sometimes called African American Standard English, AASE)
Dr. Lanehart's book, The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, is available for purchase here: amzn.to/3tU1mSx
I will add a purchase link for Dr. Smith's book when it becomes available.
More of my interview with Dr. Lanehart is available here: • Interview with Dr. Son...
The Corpus of Regional African American Language can be found here: oraal.uoregon....
Other recommended reading:
African American English: Structure, History, and Use: amzn.to/3FWFA2X
African American English: A Linguistic Introduction: amzn.to/343KKNt
The study with the "cookie monster" test: link.springer....
T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs here: languagejones....
Book links above are amazon affiliate links.
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This makes me thinking about Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" which people seem to read as "if you have no woman in your life, you will never have any heartbreak, and therefore no reason to cry." Everyone's happy without a woman in their life." But what it actually means is that it's plea to the woman "please woman, don't cry". It's Jamaican Creole English.
"No Woman, No Cry" was a song by Bob Marley; Stevie Wonder "samples" it but it is Marley's song.
@@paganjoe1 yes you are right! Sorry, I mixed the names. I wasn't even aware Stevie Wonder had sampled it. I'm just not good with names and often confuses them. I will edit. Thanks! 😇
No one ever explained that meaning to me, but I inferred it from the feel of the song. Idk, the meaning just jumped out at me. "No, woman; don't cry." I've never interpreted it having the other meaning you said.
that would be "no, woman, no cry"
It was so crazy to me when I learned that many people misunderstood this about the song. It's just such a clear message with clear inflection and the rest of the lyrics support it: "so dry your tears" and "little darling, don't shed no more tears" are clearly not meant to advise men to abandon intimate relationships with women.
I am Black and I totally failed the "Cookie Monster Test".
The PhDs are right! AAL is a social thing!
Which makes it kind of useless. So how is it superior?
@DanSmith-j8y waaa what you on?
@@para811 Brain cells?
@@para811😂 he's on Hating
But that "be" construction can actually be both habitual and present continuous, it's not a very thorough test to be sure but it does illustrate the habitual be construction in AAE which makes it helpful.
It’s really important to acknowledge the validity and legitimacy of a language because I got offended when someone said that a language that is specific to Ivorian people called Nouchi was broken French because I saw that as a personal attack on my identity. People rarely talk about the ties between language and identity but also our relationship with that said language. I often speak about the different relationship I have to different languages that I have spoken and 2 that I continue to speak, I lost my mother tongue btw so that’s really tough but people that only speak one language look at me like I’m odd for having this deep way of thinking about language not saying that there’s not people who speak one language that don’t do that but it’s been my experience that people happen to be really clueless about what I’m talking about.
Aren't there a lot of Dioula words in Nouchi?
It's not a language, that's the whole point...
The Cookie Monster test was such a perfect crossup. The distinction between AAE and AAVE was also enlightening. I had learned to engage with it as a _system with consistent rules,_ but I didn't realize I still had such basic misconceptions _within_ that.
Yes, Cookie Monster for the win!
The point that not all black people speak it is right on the money. I would also add the point that not all black people can speak it well. I grew up in a predominantly white area so I wasn’t exposed to AAE/AAL as a black kid growing up in Atlanta might (I live in North Texas for context). However, I due to having black/mixed parents I was always plugged in and exposed, to some degree, to AAL. Kind of like an accent, my AAE comes out stronger when I’m happy/sad/mad/with black friends, but I’m not the best at it, as I use ASE (American Standard English) more and have to codeswitch to that more often. Because of this I might view the grammar of the Cookie Monster test through ASE (I.e., I selected Elmo instead of CM, although I also understood the AAL form of the question). I want to connect to my roots and black side of my bloodline, so it’s something that I’m still learning.
A vast majority of "black" Americans do and understand via environment. Not foreign blacks
Why would you feel you have to be good at it? What's wrong with who you are?
If you knew you were being tested on it, you would get it right, though. Those who don’t speak it at all would not know the answer. You speak aave and you use it to code switch just about as typically as any black person, just judging by your description. Ost black American speak ASE majority of the time too, even with each other. We use it for emphasis or emotion, most of the time. So, I think you’re good on that.
Those are the five things I wish people knew about the variety of English I grew up speaking, and many people still speak, in the mountains of Southern Appalachia. I'm glad to see videos like this. These kinds of conversations, hopefully, will lead to less stigmatism around varieties of English.
Oh, I think I saw a video of your dialect on RUclips! Never heard it before, and I was surprised to discover it. The clip was short, but I don’t think I was able to understand the speaker
(Though there were several other English dialects in the video, so I can’t remember for sure)
I’m from the rural Ozarks, the cultural and linguistic cousin of Appalachia. More specifically, my hometown is nearly equidistant to Saint Louis, MO, Springfield, MO, and Memphis, TN.
Us redneck hillbillies, save for the most racist of us, understand AAE/AAVE fairly well because we’ve either adopted linguistic principles from it, donated linguistic principles to it, or we have an adequate translation… and of course any combination of the three might be possible.
Now, I know Appalachia and The Ozarks are linguistic cousins, but I’m not entirely sure to what extent this relationship manifests itself so some of my example may not apply in Appalachia but… the “cookie monster” test was understood by me because deep in these Ozarks we modify the word “stay” to stand in for the “habitual be”. In this example we’d say “Who stays eatin’ cookies?” We’d never use “stay” or “be” to describe Elmo actively eating them.
Another example: we aren’t always good at conjugating the word “was”. I was, we was, he/she was, they was. It’s all fine.
We do “R Centralization”, although not as extreme as AAE in STL or Memphis. For example, “I just went and bought me a purr of squrr toe boots”.
I wish more linguistic studies got done on Appalachian and Ozarkian English. I also wish us hillbillies understood that AAE and our backwoods way of talkin’ ain’t really all that different.
This is great! The guests were interesting, and you're a knowledgeable and articulate host. Would love to see more diverse linguistics videos coming from this channel. Keep it up :)
More to come!
The point on linguistic stigma is interesting to me, because I think you can find, for every established language, with its own linguistic institutions and dictionaries, a corresponding set of stigmatized forms of speech, dialects, and related languages which are viewed as simply incorrect forms of that language without any linguistic basis- and all of them have in common an associated general stigma of identity. For example, in russia, there is a sizable and genuine sentiment that ukrainian is simply bad russian. the associated south russian accent is also viewed as uncultured, and the reasons for this are not linguistic, they are historic and sociopolitical.
Right, this is making me think of Canadian french a lot...as well as pretty much any dialect of french spoken outside of France. Which, the more I think about it, the more I think may also have ties to Black culture.
Same with German dialects.
I'm sure my grandmother is not the only Spaniard to say that Catalan is badly spoken Spanish.
@@inigo8740that’s interesting, my dad always made a point to say Castilian rather than just Spanish. But then he lived in Catalonia for a few years right after the civil war interviewing tons of people in Catalan, Castilian, and everything in between.
great comment. this dynamic definitely exists among spanish speaking cultures.
Love this. As a Black linguist, this made me so thirsty for continuing scholarship on our languages.
I want to add one. Black peoples' language ideologies and social concepts of language aren't the same as mainstream / white perceptions of language. And that's okay. An example, "profanity" in our language/community doesn't follow mainstream rules. But there ARE rules. They're our own rules. We don't tend to look at terms themselves as obscene, we have contexts where they are obscene. My Black family never told or modeled that certain words were taboo. Instead they told me where certain speech was or was not allowed ("in my house" / "the streets" / "school" / "with your friends" / "outside" / "in front of me"). My white family instructed me that certain words were "dirty" or wrong, and that certain words should never be used in any context. They didn't necessarily DO that, but that was the language ideology that was passed around. I even had a Black pastor admit unashamedly that it was okay to cuss at home watching the game! Our culture treats language different.
I loved the video, too. One thing I thought when it ended was the different registers (not a linguist, sorry if I get the scientific terminology wrong!) used in music. Like, hip hop is today a huge mainstream production with a multiracial audience. I wonder how the form of AAE in big records differs from the AAE in music or art where the audience is predominately AA, or if there even is a difference.
Profanity isn't a "white" or "black" thing. There are plenty of black people who tell their children that using profanity is wrong, and there are plenty of white people who don't care about their children using profanity. Your very limited personal experience doesn't make your very broad claims about race true.
Ooh, having contexts for where certain words/phrases/whatever are appropriate, rather than hard rules to never use certain coinages, strikes me as such a better way to think about it. Good stuff.
That’s really interesting, I notice the same thing among Scots and English people in the UK. “Not at school” here is “that’s a bad word” in England. People regularly use all sorts of “forbidden” words in casual conversation, to the point they’re often the highest compliment _in the right situation._ English tourists have a hard time not being offended at being “insulted” up here even when they’re actually being heavily complimented, because it’s a “bad thing” to be called. At most they might use it “ironically”, but never sincerely.
@@kaitlyn__L I love this!
Christopher Hall's point about people caring more about the way something is said than the content of information conveyed is absolutely correct. There's the extremely relevant cases of the same idea being accepted when said by a white person but denigrated when said by a person of colour, but I also see it in my work. I'm a doctor, and more doctors are sued here in Australia over poor communication than malpractice. You get very different responses to the same content (e.g. the death of a loved one) based on the characteristics of the speaker, word choice, and paraverbal cues
I somewhat disagree. I have seen this many times when white people write grammatically incorrect sentences. I have experienced this myself and have argued the same thing about the understanding of the content and not nitpicking about the delivery of the message. Though I have definitely seen discrimination against aae speakers no matter who’s speaking it but it seems to be directly related to black speakers.
Great video ! I'm going to be teaching english as a second language and I want to discuss these social , cultural and linguistic topics, that most times you don't really see on these types of classes. I think learning a language is also about learning culture and history, because after all, everything is intertwined
The sociological things are interesting but on a pragmatic level, when teaching a language to people it serves the student best if you teach them the version of the language associated with the highest income earners in the destination where they intend to use the language.
@@fluffymcdeath I disagree! I think it depends on what the students want to use the language for (for business, for friendships, to enjoy media, out of linguistic curiosity, and plenty of other reasons), and also, I'd expect that people are definitely capable of learning and differentiating between multiple forms/dialects/etc of a language. the Spanish-as-a-new-language classes I took taught both formal and informal vocabulary, Latin American and European Spanish, etc etc, and my ability to actually communicate in Spanish has benefitted immensely from it.
So in that picture, Elmo eating a cookie even tho Elmo don't be eating cookies, and Cookie Monster ain't eating cookies even tho Cookie Monster be eating cookies. That is linguistically interesting!
I was always under the impression that the name just sort of evolved over time going back to Ebonics. I didn't realize that AAE was more than just an updated name for AAVE
Very interesting. Thanks.
I've been noticing more qualified people talking about AAE/AAVE in the past few years, and it's really good to see. Now I'm wondering if there is a similar effort for engaging the public in the reality Multicultural London English. In England (not the rest of the UK - see Scots and the Celtic languages), dialectal prejudice is usually more about class than about race, but I think in the case of MLE, it's much more comparable to the situation with AAE. But maybe I'm way off here.
The roots of AAE are Scots , Hiberno and colonial english dialects. habitual be and other forms of is/be, ain't ye-aw Ye'all. etc All from Scots via Ulster. This entire video is a joke, Every feature claimed as 'standard' is the grammar of Appalachian English (Scotch-Irish english). Why the pandering to only AAE as being somehow more relevant or unique or more 'persecuted' based on contrived 'racial' lines applies to all other "white" languages not taught or used widely in the u.s. today. Scots is the root. It's the SCOTS language and older /regional dialects of ENGLISH in England that give AAE its core. From the isle of wight to west country, to ulster.
AAE is used all over pop culture and widely celebrate, in Hiphop around the world.. u.s. "Southern dialect" also celebrated worldwide in Country music fans. It all originated with the diasporas of britain/ireland.
@@AAA-fh5kdtop weirdo nobody copying that shit.
@@AAA-fh5kdExactly. Most of these "black" regional accents which get grouped under AAVE are just southern dialects (which are also used by white people in said regions, so people need to stop making it racial)
@@nickpavia9021Yep, But that isnt discounting the unique(and shared) aspects of (great migration)AAVE< I absolutely hear+see the things that are similar in terms of lexicon/grammar+ accent features(but I know this from firsthand lived experience some decades ago, Pre net/youtube etc) 'slang' and evolved features exist in modern 'appalachia' as must as the regional disaporas of "AVE" speakers but the language stems from the original dialects. There was nothing passed on via 'dna' just as the case for any human being. Reaching further into caribbean/african creoles is all agenda driven study, not based on any logical linguistic evidence. The agenda is to find some source that is "non-white" (already a flawed term) but "non-european/anglic etc".
Well I think the big difference with MLE is that it's ... multicultural. As in not an accent perceived as completely restricted to a single racial group the way AAE is.
I'm fairly sure that any non-native learner of English would immediately recognize AAE as a dialect. It is only Americans who are confused about this.
Yeah. As a kid I always just thought of it as “well that’s how people talk in these areas, it doesn’t matter that it’s not formal English. Nobody speaks in formal English.” But I am a native English speaker. It’s more that I grew up in an area where people speak in a fairly wide variety of ways.
No, the my simply wouldn’t be oblivious to it due to English boy being their native tongue, and anybody who’s native language is English would know that this isn’t a dialect, but broken, sloppy English. Very silly comment 🤦🏻♂️
Don’t they speak English in the UK? Do all of them speak AAE?
Depends how racist they are probably.
Racist entertainment like early Disney coming off fake AAE from minstrel shows continued through most of the 20th century. Its popular culture stock has always wrongly been tied to ignorance.
Love this video. I was looking for info about AAVE just last year and felt disheartened by the lack of video material. I feel enchanted to learn about this wonderful thing that I grew around.
The question about which I was the most interested and the most hopeful for its inclusion was actually the first one that was addressed! Thank you again for another wonderful video and thank you to all of the scholars who participated.
One of the best changes in the way we talk about language now compared to when I was a kid is that we have gotten away from the idea that there is a "correct" form of speaking. We can discuss standard American English, and the rules that generally hold, and we can discuss AAE/AAVE, and the rules that generally hold, and they're both "right" in their own way.
Also, the invariant be is something we should have in standard American English.
AAVE was not my first language. I am African American and come from a very small family. My ancestors were brought from Africa to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania during the colonial period. At least one was from Trinidad and my grandfather was born in Barbados.
My maternal great-grandparents, both born in 1877, were entertainers who lived mostly abroad, namely Paris, and toured Europe at the turn of the century, eventually returning to New York to retire.
My siblings and I are the first generation in my family to be born in California. We started life in the early 1960s in Venice and Santa Monica.
In the 1970s we moved to a predominantly Jewish neighborhood on L.A.’s west side. There was an adjacent neighborhood of mid-century apartment buildings, at the time in the early stages of “white flight”. This was when Black people were finally being permitted to leave L.A.’s East Side and were rapidly moving west. Our new school was filling with these Black kids, most of whom were born in the American South or had parents who were.
It was during this period that I heard AAVE for the first time. My siblings and I were teased and made fun of for how we spoke. I was the only one who eventually began to mimic the new words, accents, expressions, and vocalizations I was hearing. My brother and sister did not. I, on the other hand, wanted to fit in with my new Black friends who welcomed me, as did their families, in a way that my peers in Santa Monica had not. Having Black friends and learning traditional Black culture was fascinating and eye-opening for me.
Before this, I had what is known as a “California”, “Valley Girl”, or “surfer” accent. Prime examples of this would be Tony Dow, who played Wally on Leave it to Beaver and Maureen McCormick, who played Marsha Brady on the Brady Bunch. Both actors are from Southern California. This is how I and my siblings talked. Listening to them brings back strong memories of our mid-century version of California speak. Somehow, the speech of Black Angelinos from the period that I hear in film and TV sounds much less familiar to me.
My mom went to predominantly white schools, primarily in Brooklyn and for a few years in a small enclave in upstate New York mostly populated by German immigrants. She had an accent much like that of a young Barbara Streisand. But she quickly adopted a California accent and was self-conscious about her “Brooklynese”. My grandmother had a New York Jewish accent a la George Burns which never went away. Growing up hearing the two of them also had an influence on my speech. I remember my mom using words like frankfurter, dungarees, and sneakers, that Californians did not.
Both my mother and grandmother were educated, cultured, and very New York. Both played and read music. My grandmother gave piano lessons for close to 80 years and played piano and organ in church. My mom played piano and guitar and was a painter. She started off as a registered nurse and eventually became a hospital administrator.
Anyway, I soon became well versed in AAE and AAVE. But learning it was definitely like learning a new language. I also, now, have a greater understanding of its origins in West Africa and Early Modern English.
I learned that not only is AAVE full of strict rules, but Black American culture is as well, more so than white American culture, in my experience. I think it is mostly in response to racism, marginalization, discrimination, and the need to not only conform but attempt to gain acceptance by and admittance to larger, white, mainstream society. But that’s another story.
I once worked at a place that heavily employed African American people that weren't 100% aware of what all the standard English forms for their idioms were, and I remember it caused a bit of confusion when one of them asked me where I "stayed". I answered with something that made no sense based on what I thought she was asking, and she had to paraphrastically come up with what she meant, because she didn't know that in standard English she would ask where I "lived". That's 100% a usage issue and not a grammar issue, and it's somewhat like the difference between a car's bonnet and hood, but instead of living an ocean apart, she was from an area less than 20 miles away.
What? How she could not know that and also you? Haha strange
I’m pretty sure she ALSO knew that you can ask that question with the word live. She just doesn’t typically speak that way. I ask people “where you stay at?” But I know that I’m asking them “where do you live?” And could employ that version of English if I wanted or needed to.
I am pretty sure she would have understood you. The thing is we are aware normally of standard American English as well.
You didn’t understand that she was asking you where you live? This is probably a poor example of your experience-at least it appears that way.
@@stevenglowacki8576 sounds like you’re the one who wasn’t aware.
The Cookie Monster test is brilliant
AAL and all of its variants are a beautiful language, along with the accents. It’s an amazing example of language that is living and evolving. I wish more people would appreciate it at this level.
Please do a video about what the difference is between a language, dialect, accent, pidgin, creole, etc.
A pidgin is when 2 languages are combined into a casual blending, usually shares a grammar system with one or the other. Think about what the slave/poor classes in a colony spoke after being brought into new languages. They are expexted to understand the dominant language but they still keep the slang & concepts from their native language, which causes the two to blend into something that mimics the dominant language. People use it to get by but they often still think in their native languages.
A creole is what the children of pidgin speakers have. They are born to it as their native language. Its been passed down to the next generation with more complexity and normalization. Its started to develop its own slang and rules.
The rest of those words (language, accent, dialect) are all the same things. The distinction is usually cultural-political, not linguistic.
I got this video as a RUclips recommendation, having seen a few others by languagejones. The terms AAL, AAE, and AAVE were used at the start of this video, but I think I got a general idea of what they mean, but only by inferring from context towards the end. I think I would have been helped by having that framework from the start.
The remarks about how AAE exists and has rules, despite some people thinking it's just bad English, reminded me of something. There was a scandal a few years back when it turned out that the majority of Scots Wikipedia was created by a single teenager who didn't speak Scots and just used English with modified spelling and an odd Scots word thrown in every once in a while. This apparently led to many people having a completely distorted image of what Scots is like, and thinking that it's just English with weird spelling. (Disclaimer: I don't know much about Scots myself, but from what I gather, this seems to be rather far from the truth.)
Honestly, being a white person who was never really immersed in communities that used AAE growing up, all of this sounds like a really fascinating language/dialect that I would enjoy learning to use correctly. Like, if there were a way to separate it out from all the social context and it was just something I could take a class on? I would jump on it. The idea of having some of these grammatical features in English sounds really interesting and super useful.
If one wanted to look at/study the grammar, phonology etc. of AAE, where to go? Anyone have tips for learning reasources or documentation?
It's funny thing that I, whose native tongue ids Finnish, seem to understand more dialects of English than many english speakers. For example when I worked internationally one french colleague of mine had hard time to get his point to an english guy. I had to translate. Same english guy didn't understand what an irish barkeeper shouted to us when we went to a bar in Ireland. To me the "shut the door" was as clear as any other way you might want to say it.
On the other hand Finnish is a very hard language to learn. But know what? If you want to speak Finnish without fully knowing all grammatically correct tenses and inflections you will be understood by Finns as there are context that tells what you mean.
Thank you so much for this!! Thank you!!!
You should do language and phrase comparisons for AAVE and SAE like for example some linguists do comparing Scots English and London English.
People think they can say weird things like "You be finna do" and they are speaking black but that actually doesn't make sense.
100%
(although we could probably make that exact string work -- "you (always) be finna do something stupid when he get you mad, so you should be glad she's always there to talk you down.")
We don't say that. So just stop.
The cookie monster scenario was excellent.
The sad part is not being able to convince my own Black family that AAE/AAVE is a codified language.
It's not.
@@DanSmith-j8y in the scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. The goal is ALWAYS effective communication in any manner. My opinions are irrelevant.
@DanSmith-j8y
🤡
@@DanSmith-j8yyou are wrong. 🤷🏻♂️
@@TheTerrainWizard No, I'm not.
yes true. There is no real difference between how we view language and how we view the group (we assume) who speaks it. Language cant be incorrect, because communication includes soooo much more info than our words alone. You dont need sound, grammar, or a shared definition to communicate effectively. You just need to meet the other person where they are, which is how we TEACH language to kids, primates, or dogs.
The auto captions completely missed the point of the cookie monster thing... it said Cookie Monster was the one "who'd" be eating cookies. But no, again, he *be* eatin' cookies.
I am an upper middle class, well educated white person. I was brought up in a small town with a considerable range of socioeconomic levels, although not much racial diversity. I have to catch myself, though, from stigmatizing people of whatever race who use non-standard grammar or have a strong accent, even the strongest examples of the accent I was brought up around ("Minnesota accent"). I.e. I don't think that such stigma is only racially based. One of my pet peeves is the use of "alls" instead of "all" (mostly because I associate it with a particular person who did this a lot). Maybe someone has done a study on this, but I suspect that there are rules about when this is done, and I suspect that at least one rule is that it goes at the beginning of a sentence when it is separated from the word "is" by one or more words. Ex: "Alls we have is..."
I have never heard ‘All’s’ the way you used it in a sentence. And I grew up with very country people.
@@merrytunes8697I’ve heard it before. I grew up in an urban area. It’s not uncommon to hear this in old black and white movies. “How’s about we…” is also common. I never stopped to think about where it came from.
@@caryw.7626 ignore my comment above. I’m certain I had eaten a ton of edibles when I wrote it. I don’t even remember commenting it
Well, im sorry to tell you but its GOT to be racial (or at the very least political/cultural stigma associated with race) because it sure as hell isnt due to any trait of the sounds/language itself. Language doesnt have inherent meaning, we give it meaning based on the culture we grew up with. In the US, that is a very racist culture that subjugated slaves from africa. sorry bud.
its not a thing....its a WHOLE thing.
I don't just think it's a race thing. I think we should also look at it through a class lens.
In England, we have something similar with regional accents. As a kid, I was taught to speak in RP, being told that a regional accent made me seem less intelligent. That qualities such as the glottal t made me sound lazy.
All people have unconscious biases, an the way others talk is one of them.
you cant isolate racism from classism though. both systems work in tandem for the same goal, and they magnify each other. Its almost as if people have some greater discomfort touching the subject of race vs class, and seek to avoid it on purpose.
At the 10:37 mark you state “if you say double negatives are wrong, but you say French is sophisticated or that you love Russian Literature, then you are not being consistent.” Linguistically, is it possible for double negatives to be wrong or inappropriate in one language (as we were taught in grade school and HS school English) but correct or appropriate in another language (like French or Russian)?
Speaking as a linguist, its all the same thing. Nothing is wrong, its all just communication. Politics and stigma are what cause people to assume one way is correct/proper. English/language comes from dozens of other languages and influences, everything is constantly changing based on how its used. Consistency means accepting that everyone is doing their best to communicate and that correcting them (my way is proper and yours is bad. i wont listen until you say it right) only makes it HARDER to understand them with the language they already have.
Thanks for sharing such valuable information! A bit off-topic, but I wanted to ask: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (behave today finger ski upon boy assault summer exhaust beauty stereo over). What's the best way to send them to Binance?
I used to feel weird about (specifically) the term "African-American Language" as opposed to "African-American English" or "African-American Vernacular English." It seemed to me like using the term AAL attempted to create an unnecessary distinction/separation from English. But after watching this video again, and really starting to understand that there's a certain level of mutual unintelligibility (or semi-mutual unintelligibility really, because let's be honest, black people in America dont have the option of not understanding "standard" English) due to cultural, geographical, and/or socio-economic distance, and combining that with the idea that languages BECOME languages in the first place (as opposed to dialects) at least in part due to unintelligibility, I start to wonder if maybe it SHOULD be considered its own language. Relatively new concept to me, but I'm sure it's not new to the linguists who study this, which is probably the reason for the term AAL in the first place. As long as we don't have to go back to using the word Ebonics...
I can easily understand spoken AAE, but I would never try to speak it. The same is true for "southern" and for rural Texan.
I don't suppose I can learn AAE on Duolingo. Any suggestions?
This is just making me want a video going over several of the unique features with use cases and actual clips of people using them in context (like Youglish does for standard English). ...of course, I also want to see that for Hiberno-English and how that plays out in Irish-American dialects, and one for Hawaiian Pidgin as well, if that's possible. The fuzzy edges between languages is endlessly intriguing.
(I just had to think whether to use "is" or "are" there, and I think "is" because I'm referring to the whole set of fuzzy edges, rather than referring to them as discrete things with separate forms of interest. But I'm questioning my usage.)
Dr. Jones: I appreciate your work. You make, concise, approachable, research-based videos. I consider you a trusted source in a swamp of pretenders. From a place of respect and appreciation, I have to raise an issue I have. You have a tendency to tout your credentials with a frequency that strikes me as sometimes intrusive. Of course, I don’t know your context, and perhaps you’re trying to preempt know-nothing critics. Maybe I’m just triggered by anyone mentioning their Ivy League credentials. My respect and appreciation for your work remains.
Seconding this
How does "Jive" fit into this? My English book definition of Jive could also describe AAE, so when is it Jive, when is it AAE, and what's the difference between the one and the other?
Jive is no different than saying Ebonics, which is also no different than saying AAE or AAVE. How Black Americans talk is the takeaway.
Every language has waht we would call grammatical errors or double negatives but because we dont have an accent to make it "sound good" we are judged.
I'm confused about "she ain't be doin' that " being incorrect. I hear people using that kind of phrase frequently. It might be a very local variation. I live on the central coast of California.
I am also from California and I have also heard that used. I think it might be a regional variation. The point still remains that there are rules because "She be ain't doin' that" would sound incorrect to me. But "she ain't be doin' that" would clearly mean to me that the subject has never done whatever that is referring to. The construction would also imply that the speaker is negating an accusation.
Id say it’s usually dont instead of aint
As a kid I was taught to speak "good English". Misuse or abuse of the language angers me. I was also taught that racism is wrong, even "evil". Then I lived a sheltered life with no Black people in it. Schizophrenia guaranteed.
When I was first come into the States, the most confusing time I had on English in New Orleans, Y2K
I'm also a white person who grew up in an AAE community; I very consciously avoid using it in mixed groups, as a rule, because I don't want to encourage cultural appropriation, but I can code-switch into it at the drop of a hat if I'm in the right group.
I grew up in heavily mixed Latino and Black neighborhoods all my life and went to a black high school. First girlfriends were all black. I totally get this.
You're not appropriating our language or culture when you grew up in the culture. It's not about your skin it's about where you came from.
With that being said I understand why you choose not to when you are around strangers because of the backlash you may get from both sides.
I, too, find myself code-switching a bit when in the right company - mostly things learned from being around black classmates. A decent amount of AAVE has become mainstream as it is.
AAVE doesn't exist. If someone has a problem with the way you speak due to your race, that is THEIR problem. Not yours. Don't change to please others.
This was fascinating, thanks.
I find African influence on language so interesting, such as Creole and AAVE.
Not the picture of the Auntie.
I never really understood the AAE verb forms until after explicitly learning about them as an adult.
I think you can loose your AAE. Being assimilated and being told you speak wrong your whole life will make you speak differently. But think I still can go back and forth when I’m with my family. But not as much as when I was a kid
Speaking differently in different households/situations is called Code Switching. Its really common. Language is learned so it makes a lot of sense that you would use whatever feels most comfortable or helps you get by. There can be a lot of negative pushback for AAE especially in the workplace or school. You probably had to learn to communicate well in both, but the people youre talking to only use/understand one or the other.
Great video! I’m interested in why it’s not referred to as Black American English instead of African American.
Because not all Black people are African Americans.
@@carolines5355 that’s my point. It should be referred to as black American English
@@theprincesscrown1509 there are black Americans that speak other languages, immigrants.
@@carolines5355 yes, there are. In reference to this video it should be referred to as black American English. That’s my argument
@@carolines5355 not sure I’m following exactly what you’re argument is…
What I just don't understand as an outsider is the point: "AAVE makes you different from mainstream society and if you feel excluded from mainstream society, or mainstream society doesn't want to give you a job, then why do you say mainstream society is ignorant or racist? You just try to fit in better"
For me in Europe, where we have several languages and we also have English as our main language, everyone always tries to get so good that there is no longer any difference between to a native speaker.
As was mentioned here, but n great part that is down to the specific context of chattel slavery in the United States, and the circumstances of its abolition and subsequent treatment of black Americans.
It's not directly replicated in Europe, although you can contrast the reception of white western Europeans or Scandinavians with the reception of Africans in Europe for a picture that isn't dissimilar.
Is saying "every person does not do this thing" when they mean "not every person does this thing" an aspect of this?
@@bgaesop yes! That’s referred to as “quantifier scope” and “negation scope” and it’s how you get sayings like “everything that glitters isn’t gold” or “all skin folk ain’t kin folk.”
@@languagejones6784 out of all the aspects of AAE that's the one part I really struggle with. Coming from a pure maths background my brain really struggles with what I see as a lack of precision and of inconsistency in logical modifiers and negation, which isn't a problem for things like the habitual be. How would one, in this dialect, unambiguously express the sentiment "every person does not do this thing"?
Thank you for making this video, educational indeed thanks again... Peace!
I'll take this opportunity to plug "Language in Society," a picture book about language variation, centered on and narrated in AAE, written by my grad-school colleague, Dr. Nandi Sims. It even has a mini research activity for learning about language attitudes by asking people to read a short paragraph in parallel AAVE and Standard English versions and talk about how they imagine the writers.
As for what I myself wish people knew: Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, though written in dialect, are not the minstrelsy that misused stereotypes of that dialect. Nor are they Disney's Song of the South that borrowed them while painting some sort of fond, voluntary postbellum servitude over top of the plantation system's cruelty.
Harris was so careful as to transcribe different accents of Black speech with different spellings, and he published only stories he had two independent sources for. Uncle Remus is no Uncle Tom; he has a kind relationship with White children, but slave narratives recorded in the 1930s confirm that such a thing was common enough; and in any case it falls to his own credit, not to slavery's.
I'm curious about what non-speakers of AAE misunderstand or miss. I feel like I understand AAE perfectly, but I did fail the Cookie Monster test. I'd love a video on distinctions non-speaker miss.
Thanks!
Would it be offensive if I learned the AAVE as a foreigner?
I'm not African-American, but since it's been four weeks now, I'll have to do till an African-American comes along. I don't know if it would be "offensive", but if you started mastering AAVE, you would risk coming across as someone who is "trying to be" African-American, and being derided by people of all races. You would be better off mastering standard 'American English' or standard 'British English', and, if you have the opportunity to become immersed in an English-language environment, to accept whatever the accent and usage of that environment is.
As long as you do it with respect to the native speakers and are sensitive to them, and don't try to appropriate it for yourself, I don't see anything wrong with learning anything really
I just keep thinking of Paul Rudd in the end of Clueless
Anyways. I lived on a rancheria from age 15 to 20 as a white girl and I picked up rez English (or whatever it would be called) kind of against my will I had had proper English hammered in pretty hard from my biological family, and my peers fucked with me a lot about sounding so white and nerdy All these years later I still find myself slipping into that rez cadence and slang if I'm talking to my Native friends I wonder how this way of speaking is viewed by linguists since it is a result of colonization
I'm really trying to wrap my head around that there was an actual legitimate name other Ebonics for how black folks talk. This is why black children should have the opportunity to attend HBCUs for at least black cultural education, because if you leave it to society they will make you feel stupid, uneducated, and improper for being you. We will even condemn ourselves and other black folks for it. My grandmother was a proud AA woman, but was always on me about speaking the King's English. I completely understood because she grew up in a time where assimilation was a necessity. I speak it at home with my sons and they are aware that the ability to code switch is also a necessity in most work environments. However, I don't condemn them for using it because I use it, their family uses it, their black friends use it, etc. When they hear me code switch on the phone, they think it's the funniest thing in the world. They be lightn me up! 😂
Are you not also a white word nerd? I am, and I also made a video about AAE, though I used the term AAVE, since that’s what the expert I worked with called it.
Judging from many of the comments below, there is lots of ignorance and bigotry around this topic. Those of us who know that all languages are rich and valuable should stick together. We don’t get anywhere by dissing each other.
I am, hence my stare at the camera when I said it. But also, there's a saying in AAE Dr. Smith is fond of: "a hit dog'll holler." I've also heard "if the shoe don't fit, you ain't gotta wear it." Don't get sidetracked by defending yourself against things that aren't about you, and keep fighting the good fight!
@@languagejones6784 I’d interpreted the stare differently, but I can see what you mean. Thanks for the excellent advice!
Great video!
What I've been trying to figure out is at what point a term becomes apart of AAE. Is it any word that a Black person invented? What if it was one Black person in a predominantly white community? Or, does it only become AAE once it is widely adopted by a predominantly Black community/group of people? I can't seem to find any information on this, and I think it would clear a lot up as far as the line between terms that are "slang" and terms that are real parts of AAE.
At what point does a word become part of English? Culturally, we don't tend to have language bureaux in the English speaking world to tell us when a word is ‘official’, and if you look to Oxford words are apparently dated just from the first time they appear in print (though they may have to achieve a level of currency before they are backdated to that point). But there's certainly no requirement that a Black person have _invented_ a word. There's plenty of vocabulary overlap between AAE and other languages-most notably, but far from exclusively, English. Languages are just what language communities agree them to be, regardless of origin, and each community, large or small, has its own language.
You’re still thinking about it in slang terms…when AAE are things and rules of language that Black people have been using through generations…a lot of “slang” or AAVE can clearly be rooted back to Black people and our subcultures with Black culture as a whole
Every language has slang. AAVE/AAE does as well. The connotation we give to words and/or phrases based on shared experiences, being cool, finding a shorter way of saying something verbose, creating a new word or phrase altogether and how all of these things are done by different AAVE/AAE speakers in different regions of America is how slang works within the confines of AAVE/AAE.
When it finds its way to mainstream society, possibly through Hip-Hop, a meme, a gif or a video of users of the slang, then it may put on as many faces and races as people who listen or absorb the slang. If you watch enough Black TV, or have AAVE/AAE using Black people around you, you'll see and hear words and phrases within AAVE/AAE's slang that will start to pop up online and soon outside of the Black community.
8:53 She ain't been doin' it
If I use 'They are here' to refer to one person in AAVE , am I breaking any grammatical rules?
Not for AAVE, no.
In AAVE, “they here” could be used to refer to a single person or multiple persons.
Good stuff.
Are your videos supposed to be more for linguistics experts or a general audience? Because I like the topics but you speak quickly and use a lot of jargon, so a lot of it is going over my head.
I love learning about AAE, but as a Canadian looking at the White/Black segregation down there, I can't help but feel sad that this simple difference of color has had such a profound effect that it has caused a divergence of dialect in a population who lives in the same space. I can't think of any other situation in history where people who live in the same country and interact with each other daily would keep themselves so separate that their dialects would split like that. Normally you see the opposite, where different dialects and even languages would merge with constant interaction.
It's under-acknowledged that the varieties of AAE and the varieties of English spoken by White Southerners had plenty of mutual influence, but it's true that on top of that foundation there is plenty of suspicion and hostility that have kept Whites and Blacks not only socially but even spatially separated. De jure segregation is dead, but its legacy in practice and circumstance has helped to maintain it de facto.
(Of course, it was never wholly about skin color, either. Although human beings have invented plenty of forms of classism and coercion, chattel slavery -- enslavement that is heritable, lifelong by default, and fully without distinction from mere property -- is rare and unusually harsh. Those who established it in the Americas in the early modern period took rare and unusually strong steps to protect it.
I don't think it's an accident that they imposed heritable slavery on people with a heritable, visible difference from themselves, or that they promoted exactly the stereotypes of Black sexuality and concepts of racial purity that maintained the usefulness of color as a marker of slavery (with a violent fear of cross-racial rape that would result in freeborn mixed-race children, and a lie that cross-racial rape that would result in mixed-race slave children was no rape at all).
I know it's no accident that they cultivated division, fear, and hate toward them among other low-status people who weren't so easy to distinguish from the would-be nobility, or that they invented ideas about a race naturally suited to and happiest in slavery, who would only seek for things like self-determination or reward for their work if they were ill and dangerous. And so many other ideas about natural dispositions, intelligence, purity, and everything else, that made Black people seem less-than, that got Black people mistreated and ill-resourced, that resulted in the kinds of life circumstances that Whites could point to to endorse those ideas again. Long story short, chattel slavers got 339 years to install a self-perpetuating meme complex in America about Blacks, and we haven't even been winding it down for half that long yet.)
There are benign forms of community language distinction too, even in Canada. I recall a study of IIRC Nova Scotian fishermen whose usage ranged between more standard and more dialectal English, depending whether they were getting things done with outsiders or affirming local belonging.
@@eritain Even today, it's pretty disturbing when you move here, to the US. Every official form asks about race, and there's mandatory workplace training that-in the guise of combatting it-reinforces the racialisation of, well, everything. Working in an environment where (I think) the majority are immigrants, it's quite noticeable how mandatory ‘sensitivity’ training makes everyone less comfortable and more defensive, and how it deflects understanding away from issues of wealth, class, culture and education to a one-size-fits-all racial analysis. It's truly loathsome, and pervades the entire political spectrum.
@@eritainyou who was slaves again?
americans get such opportunities to be at the best ling institutions in the world meanwhile im here not getting anywhere
Bix Nood scholars 👀
3:09 I enjoyed that reference lol
very important point: 12:00
Why do some of you say "Standard English" when obviously referring to some (or a collective of) non-AAE American dialect?
I'm not an expert, but non-AAE could refer to other English dialects in America that are not AAE. Think about Louisiana and Texas. Maybe there are dialects there that are also not "standard English."
I wasn't going to say anything about this except for your last sentence. There was something in this video that always bothered me. It's sort of a pet peeve, and it was "committed" by Minnie Quartey Annan. She said that "every black person doesn't speak African American Language..." This is immediately, obviously, and absurdly incorrect. I was going to say "wrong," but I knew what she meant. Non-native English speakers may not. What I'm pretty sure she meant was that not every black person speaks AAL. She did it again seconds later, and I'm a little surprised to hear a linguist talk like that. All that glitters is not gold. Nope. All things not on sale. Nope again. It's such an easy thing to fix. If you addressed this in a video, I'd be very interested in seeing it and hearing your take on this.
Likely for the reason that you said “There was something in this video that always bothered me” instead of “There was something in this video that *has* always bothered me”. Your meaning is clear enough from context that you feel comfortable dropping a word. I could question how long you have been watching this video such that an aspect of it could have *always* bothered you. But I wouldn’t because that’d be intentionally obtuse.
Like you said, the literal meaning is clearly incorrect, so the intended meaning becomes obvious.
@@taylor3950 You are absolutely correct in pointing out my mistake. The verb should have been "has...bothered". I'm NOT comfortable with that mistake and it's something that I shall work on because I think that precision is important in language, especially in any linguistic discussion. I can't entirely agree with your opinion that I'm being obtuse, however. Once again, precision is, in my view, important and worth striving for, especially in any standard English because of so many people from so many cultures learning and using it. I'm an English teacher, and I've had students question me about the phrase "all that glitters is not gold" because the meaning is NOT clear to some non-native speakers. My use of the past simple where the present perfect is the (for us) obviously the correct form could also cause plenty of confusion amongst non-natives.
@@theskintexpat-themightygreegor ah I see. In the context of teaching English to young, non-native students precision is more important. When I’m speaking to non-fluent speakers I make an effort to use less slang and fewer idioms to aid understanding. I just don’t feel accessibility to non-native speakers is the standard by which all spoken language should be measured. Especially since in this discussion you’re speaking in a register that would go above the heads of many beginners in English.
And to be clear, that’s not a bad thing! These are comments on a linguistics video, higher registers and casual conversation “mistakes” are both appropriate. I suppose I just chafe at prescriptivist notions of objective correctness without regard to context. They especially irk me when applied to AAE speakers, though I am one of those black people who doesn’t (natively) speak AAE.
Anyway, unnecessary RUclips rant over. Being a teacher is wonderful, enjoy your work with the kiddos.
@@taylor3950 Thank you, sir. I'm very glad to hear that you are conscious enough with non-natives to avoid too much slang. I do the opposite, but that is, of course, because I want the students to hear it in context and then teach it as lexis (basically vocabulary for those who don't know). I still think we should strive for clarity (yes, you're right, not CORRECTNESS exactly, but clarity) even with each other. Prescriptivists bother me as well, but "All that glitters is not gold" simply isn't clear. My past simple instead of present perfect wasn't QUITE as unclear, but it's bad enough to confuse non-natives, which is the VAST majority of the English I encounter. The Georgian language is a BITCH to learn. I mean, you wouldn't believe it. Mandarin Chinese? I'm about B1+ and Spanish about the same, maybe B2. But Georgian? Jesus wept. So when people here automatically use English with me (and they seem to just SENSE that I don't speak Georgian), I want to thank them for their service, hahaha.
Isn't that usually the case though, that more divergent forms of language get stigmatised? I m pretty sure that, in, say, a German context, Austrian, Bavarian, Saxonian etc dialects are stigmatised to an extent, even though their speakers are the same race as standard German speakers. Just like having a Southern French or a Canadian French accent, or a Cretan Greek accent, etc etc, might get you looked down upon. And all these do sound really harsh, and "uncultured", somehow, if you will, to a huge chunk of the respective populations.
You can totally have non-standard dialects that are seen as having *more* prestige, like dialects commonly spoken by royalty or aristocracy.
@@TheRationalPi yes, obviously. I said "usually", not "in every single last instance".
In Germany because of the federal nature and the long time it took to unite the country, there is considerable less social stigma on dialects than in other countries, BUT that's mostly true for Western dialects. There is some stigma towards Saxonian. Austria is a different country with a different culture though. (not looked down upon though)
@@mobo7420 Well, I ve definitely witnessed derogatory remarks being made about Bavarian, Saxonian and Austrian etc dialects over the years. And Austria may be a different country, but it's the same language, and my point was about language. So I m not sure what point you are trying to make. Same language, same race.
@@Wandering.Homebody Well, the concept of "race" is kind of weird anyways, but if we agree on "ethnic group" than Austrians and Germans are different enough to be different ethnicities.
A lot of these assertions are not news, but the examples enrich the presentation. That said, I disagree about the source of stigma. I believe that any stigma is largely a consequence of certain behaviors and attitudes associated with some speakers of AAE / AAVE / AAL. And not all AAE, &c., is stigmatized. For example, many turns of phrase in the lyrics of R&B songs have long been admired and adopted by non-AA folks for their unique expressiveness. Interesting video.
Old white lady here who loves AA English
What's the difference between AAE and Ebonics? I know it was mentioned that this isn't qualitatively bad English but didn't a culture of low education create this to begin with?
I thought they don't want to be called African Americans...
That depends entirely on the individual. Dr. Smith (far right on the thumbnail) doesn't prefer that term. But also talks about "African American English" in some publications because that's the dominant term in the field right now.
Professor John McWhorter notably missing.
He doesn’t speak AAE and is adamant in multiple places that he hates being asked about it and hates the assumption that he speaks it. If I want to discuss a minority opinion on the history of English in England, I’ll think about hitting him up.
6:41 "For the most part, we're understood." Use regular, standard English and be understood a lot more often, if not virtually always. "Who be eatin' cookies" is just incorrect grammar. "Who's eating cookies" clears it up. Why add unnecessary complication when that just obscures meaning?
Because it is correct african american english. It's not incorrect american classroom english (there is no such thing as regular, standard english), it's just not american classroom english. And sorry but its speakers do not owe you, someone who does not speak it, in particular to speak exactly how you expect english to sound.
@@rheiagreenland4714 There is such a thing as "regular, standard English" - it's what any foreign speaker learns, so that all foreign speakers of English can communicate - which they couldn't, were it not standardized.
It is only confusing to you because you ain’t smart
@@DanSmith-j8ywe are under no obligation to communicate with you. Hush
@@davruck1 In that case, why subject me to your idiocy? I could have done without that.
So this shows there is a link between genetics and language but it's a weak link. LME demonstrates this, being spoken by people of European, Asian and African descent. LME is so new that some people still call it "Jafaikan". Any divergence from RP is considered lower status and in all cases there are cultural reasons for this. People who use hifalutin' loan words from Greek and Latin always sound posh and words with French roots come a close third. There are historical and political reasons for this (as I'm sure you're aware). Multicultural dialects of English give us a chance to study this phenomenon from a more recent perspective innit?
How does this show a connection with language and genetics?
@@kudjoeadkins-battle2502 the point I'm making is about how weak it is. We know IE languages originally spread via Haplogroup R1, People tend to talk about the genetics of west Africa in terms of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speakers, but we know that learning languages is a process of cultural assimilation, so your L1 language is whatever you grew up with regardless of genetics.
About the only link that exists between genetics and language are aphasias, which can be inherited.
@@timflatuslol babbling
There is no such thing as " African American". The term African American is a politically correct way of saying " Black American".
Secondly, there is no such thing as " AAVE" aka " Ebonics". What is called Ebonics originally derived from a subsect in England who migrated to the U.S, specifically to the south, during the 17th and 18th century.
As Whites slowly moved away from that dialect of English and/or has evolved into modern day Southern dialects, Blacks in the U.S kept it going.
Now it is a dialect popularized by modern day Rap, R&B, and Hip-Hop and predominantly is spoken by lower income Blacks.
There is no mystery at all about Ebonics, its just people making it out to be somthing greater or more mysterious than it really is.
Ooh you were almost close there... AAVE is a blanket term applied to dozens of different dialects, that are categorized by Europeans as simply "different than how white people talk."
Take a guy from baltimore, a guy from houston, and a guy from Oakland, and you might think they all sound the same, but they would not be able to understand each other's vernacular at all
Interesting that you mentioned the South. I am from Georgia and it is often not easy to distinguish white speakers from black speakers. The white speakers are of Irish and Scottish descent, who like us, has English as a second language. I am not a fan of codifying AAS ; either you can do it,understand it, or not. So, No need to formalize it. We don’t be writing nothing down, you just gots to grab what you can. Now don’t get be started on the northeastern Italian Americans and their “yous guys” and the “what’s da matter for you?” Phrases. It upsets my ears.
Was Walt Wolfram, one of the world's top two or three experts on AAE, not available? Or does he just have the wrong skin color?
How it’s not bad English? You don’t respect any grammar rule.
Just invent your own language and speak it as you want
And why is that your concern?
@@davruck1 because I’m learning the language
You need to learn standard English to understand AAE, and then you need to learn more to understand AAE. It's not broken English. It's beyond the rules because it combines and adds to rules to create nuisance, inflection, and deeper meaning.
Example:
"He stay outside"
What does that sentence mean?
@@peachmilkshake_ standard English is monotone. That’s why you can get AI to replace most white speakers. AAVE changes meaning depending on inflection which makes it much harder for AI to understand. An AI wouldn’t understand which inflection to use when reading “he stay outside” cuz AI does not have real understanding
Four minutes in... hang on, why would anyone expect all Black people to speak a specifically American language? That's weird that this even has to be said. Obviously there are Black people in the world who don't even speak English, let alone some specific variation of English that arose within America! (I would also assume that not all African-Americans speak African-American English; I'll wait to see if that gets expressly stated in your video.)
@4:21: To state that “every Black person doesn’t speak African-American Language” is grammatically incorrect.
If “every Black person does NOT speak African-American Language”, then NO Black person DOES speak African-American Language.
“Not every Black person speaks African-American Language” would be correct.
My Son in Law is black as coal. He comes from a church going military family and takes his family to church every Sunday and they say grace before dinner. He works hard on computers to support his family and coaches little league. He votes republican. I love my little grandkids.
okay? good to know i guess
You're from Pennsylvania and don't know about Scotch-Irish influence on the language and region? Yinzer? Scots? Give me a break 'DR'.
Despite agreeing with every point in this video, "aks" still gives me a twinge. It will never sound "right" to me.
"Be" and "Bes" is a standard STANDARD feature of HIBERNO-English, Ulster-English and Scots. The language brought to the u.s. Habitual or in any other form. This is not an invention of AAE.
Cap, they didn’t bring the American “be” to AAE…AAE and even our pronunciation is a mix between our people learning the English language along with things that come directly from African countries and pronunciation…y’all always wanna take credit lmao
@@HiiipowerHabits Yes they did, well documented. Afamericans are speaking a varian of "appalachian' of "Scotch-irish" english with obvious unique features over time.
Without an imput source for transmitting your accent, the accent is nothing more than southern-american (and that's the post civil war where over 20,000 confederates left for Brazil and out of the u.s. so appalachians moved south.) You're absolutely nuts if you think any U.S> AfAm person gets their 'accent' from Africa or via Dna. Looney tunes.
@@AAA-fh5kd no they didn’t y’all irrelevant…you and your opinion aren’t worth shit Karen move around and stay outta Black people’s business
It wouldn’t have to be a completely new invention, in order to be distinct, that’s not how languages work.
@@devconley9483 It's not new, nor is it distinct, despite "aave/aae" having unique features, the core grammar and use of verbs/etc are all rooted in scots/english colonial dialects. all regional variations of ANY language be it foreign or native to America< has and continues to evolve. Native americans, Latino-americans, asian americans all speak foreign/native languages which contantly evolve and often speak English/Spanish/French varieties of )colonial) language in the americas which are diverse and also influence each other. That's how language works. But calling "AAVE" a 'thing' as if it isnt basically southern english< dialect or appalachian in grammar etc is purely sociol-political, not objective linguistics.
This “sounds “ like some bullshit. What happened to Ebonics. I think you’re really talking about verb conjugation.
Scots + Hiberno English all have 'grammars' + 'rules'.. this is where "aae" comes from. "White language"
Stop using 'Black + white' to describe language. Its poor academic work.
This is ridiculous 😂. Ghetto is a language? I'm black and from the hood and this is nonsense. Every culture has their own slang. 🤦🏾♂️Stop it please.