The AAVE language variety - two polyglots discuss African American Vernacular English
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- čas přidán 31. 07. 2024
- In this chat with my fellow polyglot, Daniel Ferguson, we discuss our shared passion for languages and Daniel introduces me to AAVE, his native language variety and one of his areas of expertise.
We look at the features which make AAVE unique, comparing its grammar to other languages we know. We also compare theories about the origins of AAVE and look at implications for educators working with learners whose first language is African American Vernacular English.
Some useful links:
Lisa J Green - Language and the African American Child www.amazon.com/Language-Afric...
April Baker-Bell Linguistic Justice www.amazon.com/Linguistic-Jus...
Remote Tutoring Services www.remotetutoringservices.com
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Irish musicians Flickr @puamelia
I really enjoyed this chat with Daniel, and I hope you do too. Let us know what you would like to know more about and we might do a part two...
Habitual(and other use) "be/bes" is Ulster Scots SCOTS IRISH! its RELATED. AAVE + SCOTS are RELATED!!! The ScotchIrish +english wouldve brought this in this 1700's. Fairly surprised at both of your lack of awareness about that.
"Done" "Done gone"
again a feature of Scots irish Appalachaian/Southern dialect. etc
Really enjoyed Daniel explaining the different reasons that led to him learning languages, plus I watched your video on how to learn a language earlier today. I'd love a video that covers the various reasons why people learn a language including how common they are.
Being from east London I had the experience of being told I was saying things the wrong way, it made me resent the way I sounded words in English and give up on other languages. I now speak mostly standard English with the odd lesser-used word slipping back into a cockney/proto-MLE accent.
I feel like typing standard English should be the educational norm just for continuity, but no teacher should correct a kids actual speech
Yes, where Standard English is the normal educational and business means of communication it should be taught. If it's a second language to the kids, it should be taught and labelled as such.
True but if it's second language it should be treated as such. If some is speaking Spanish and the other person does not understand. They have to correct themselves so the person understand English has become a universal language. Also not all blacks have been exposed to it so they don't speak it.
Also code switching is a made up term its the practice of makeing sure you are aeticulating what you are saying in a professional manner. Soon we will be makeing excuses for commoflouge coveralls and urban street wear as cultural dress in a professional setting.
@@fiend6999 skipped right over the nasty business of learning for 45 minutes to post this did you?
Correct grammar needs to be taught to all people. I teach English to a Chinese man and he persists in learning correct grammar even after I tell him grammar really isn't taught anymore in public schools. It's very sad to see the erosion of the English language.
So many distinctly American slang terms originally come from AAVE because virtually every American style of music starts with African Americans. Many of these words end up being absorbed into the general dialect that their AAVE roots get obscured.
“Cool” meaning good, “bad” meaning good, “cat” meaning person, “chops” meaning skill (especially on a musical instrument), “dig” meaning appreciate, and it’s a major part of why the second person plural pronoun “y’all” left the American south and is becoming borderline mainstream in American English.
That’s not even African American! 🤨
Y’all as well as ain’t and believe it or not soccer was British in origin.
“Cool” is slang. SIang is sIang regardless of the race! There will be no discriminating in this comment section!
I will give you points for “dig” though
No one says bad as good and chops? Who is she?
Cat meaning dude came from white hipsters. It’s even seen as a cringey white thing to say
@@mattybrunolucaszeneresalas9072 Plenty of people say "bad" as good, for example, people describing an attractive woman as "bad". I don't know how recent that is though, but I'm 21 and hear that a lot. "Cat" meaning dude goes back to jazz players, jazz originating from the African-American community
@@shane4976 sure jan *_sips tea_*
@@mattybrunolucaszeneresalas9072 It's okay if you don't have a real response.
@@shane4976 _stares blankly_ what else do you want me to say???!
As a cajun-irish American, AAVE feels like a sister language and I never had to be taught any of it's features, even though my English is a little different.
American Creoles ❤️
Fantastic! I’m planning a trip to the south east later this year and hope to meet some Gullah speakers.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages ah! Gullah! Now I gotta put your channel in my notifications!
There's a real difference between Alabama AAVE and Kentucky AAVE. I was constantly reminded of my funny accent.
Just peak bad English and you’re there it’s really not that hard
@@walterhenderson2155 That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of this works. Kentucky might sound more Appalachian than the sultry sound in Alabama, but what you just said, was just plain wrong and ignorant.
Fascinating. I studied AAVE over 40 years ago at Georgetown U. when sociolinguistics was just getting its start. It was called "nonstandard" back then. Lots of unconscious (and perhaps conscious) bias in the program. The field has come a long way since then if Daniel is any indication.
You have no idea how important this conversation was. I really appreciate it. Invite him again! Where can we find more of him? Is he on Instagram?
Thank you so much for telling me that. I will reach out to Daniel again. I don't know if he's on Instagram, but will ask.
It would be really interesting to compare AAE with MLE and put them in context with other black languages. I like this format with you interviewing a native speaker. Daniel is a fascinating speaker.
That would be interesting. I’m going to the southern US in October and am hoping to connect with some Gullah speakers.
Languages, accents and dialects, the whole thing is fascinating when you think about it,
Indeed!
Also, I love the editing. Congrats to the person who edited the video.
Thank you! That was me too. I'm a one-person band.
Thanks Dave, and Daniel, this was a really interesting discussion and insight into not only AAVE, but also brought up other important conversations. Please can we have more..
I've never heard it pronounced "avae". I've always just said and heard the letters A.A.V.E. interesting.
I don’t know how common that pronunciation is. I took my cue from Daniel.
Both are fine.
AAVE is at once heavily stigmatized and highly emulated; it's an interesting paradox. One could call it a dialectal dialectic... (sorry, awful joke, but I do think it's a very good example of dialectic, in what I understand to be the Hegelian sense, a strange, societal, interdependent contradiction)
Of course, it is heavily and extensively marginalized, but among certain facets of American society, it actually exerts massive influence. If you look at how lots of non-Black American youth speak, the impact is clear. Music is certainly a primary vessel for this sort of "underdog prestige" that AAVE has acquired; there is also an outsized representation of AAVE in memes and internet culture in general. For these reasons I think AAVE remains pretty resilient and not in imminent danger of extinction, in my mind, but it is interesting to see the ways in which General American English and AAVE interact and will continue to evolve alongside each other
I love this! A lot of the aspectual elements remind me a lot of traditional west country dialects with habitual be and do (which I've never fully worked out how to explain!). I've never really taken the time to look into AAVE all that much but it has fascinated me for a long time. Thank you both for a wonderful conversation!
This is such an an entertaining and enlightening interview. I truly enjoyed it, thanks for the quality content!
Hi Jamie. So glad you enjoyed it.
I'm white but I was raised in black neighborhoods and I constantly code switch by accident. I don't mean to, because if you don't know the person it could be taken the wrong way, but it always happens. And then with Spanish (my 2nd language) I don't speak gringo but I also code switch, if I'm talking to a Mexican I turn to that accent, even though my default is almost a Venezuelan accent (because I'm usually talking in Spanish to my girlfriend, her family or people I met through them, who are all Venezuelan). So I feel like I don't have a true "default" in any language, honeslty.
How cool. Yes, I do that a bit. I once had an Australian girlfriend and everyone in the office knew if I was speaking to her on the phone.
That’s interesting 👌
Starts at 6:50
I'm from Texas and I speak aave and learning English in school the grammar and writing was harder to learn. When I was 7 I got my first Spanish book and started reading and was really interested but didn't formally learn it til 10th grade. I have a lot of Mexican friends. I continued learning Spanish in college. Now I'm starting to learn Portuguese and my Spanish is helping me with the structure and reading.
Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. Thanks for sharing your language journey. I hope all is going well.
Fascinating conversation, there is a real richness and expressiveness to aave
this is a brilliant video. I just discovered your channel and am totally hooked. Thanks for your passion dave!
Thanks and welcome
As a member of the black nation it irks me to hear the language of enslaved Africans referred to as a dialect of English. "Ebonics" otherwise known as AAVE is not a dialect of English. It does not follow the English grammar system or morphology so it does not belong to an English language system (In fact the English language is in the "German" language family and is composed of a combination of mostly German, French, and Latin words or vernacular). Ebonics is in the African Niger Congo language family. It's language rules are the same language rules in West Africa. These African people were already speaking African languages then learned English as best as they understood it. So of course there will be retention from your mother tongue as you take on this foreign language. Thus a language was born that uses African rules and thought but adopted English words. Ebonics or AAVE is an African language invented by African people needing to communicate with each other while living in hostile territory where the consequences of speaking their mother language could be devastating. As a result a language was formed using African thought superimposed with English words.
Facts!!! Even though this comment is a year old, it is still so right on the money.
Lol. What do you mean “African thought”?
This must be a troll.
It’s hands down a dialect of English since it is mutually intelligible between other English speakers in most cases. Meanwhile unintelligible with any non-English languages, including indigenous west African languages.
Seems quite the coincidence if it isn’t actually English.
@maxwellphillips5791 I suggest you do a small search on what the criteria is for the basis of a "language"...African thought is "Black" thought. All language is formed from a thought. Funny thing is I don't even have to say a word to express a thought. I can give a gesture or even make a sound and those who share the same language as I will understand. You feel me? (Peep the Double Entendre)
AAVE spoken in Ohio (and other places outside of the Deep South) though it may be mostly structurally the same it tends to sound very different when casually spoken. The accents, tones and word morphology can be a lot different.
Outside the South English words generally aren't chopped and cut short nor combined as much.
Also alot of the South often times don't use the "eS" to mark plurals, some times they'll stretch the word to pluralize it.
Fascinating! Especially the thing about stretching words to puralize. Thanks so much.
It would be interesting to learn how AAVE branched off within Gay culture to become its own distinct vernacular sub-sect. More than likely modern gay vernacular derives from the early Ballroom scene, queer black culture and now mainstream drag to become a language unto itself: "Yas bitch! Werk mama! Queen got me shook. She out here lookin snatched, beat, weave did, giving us class, sass and a whole lotta ass, stomping the house down, doing the most, and giving me everything...I live. Periodtttt! tongue pop***".
AAVE didn’t necessarily branch off. Black women are responsible for the majority of those terms which were taking into LGBTQIA spaces per the Ballroom and gay Black men who took those terms from their mothers and sisters.
As a speaker of Haitian Creole I see so many parallel underlying structures, the Syntax is West African, the lexicon is largely 17th century regional French...
A lot of linguists and scholars now refer to the English dialectal variety of most commonly associated with Black USAmericans as African American Language (AAL.) Or more popularly, but arguably less ideal African American English (AAE.)
Thanks for pointing that out. I can see in particular the advantage of losing the word ‘vernacular’, which limits and undermines.
I was seven in Iceland, newly moved to there from Denmark so I was already bilingual. My older brother was starting to learn English so I swallowed his study material, so I was pretty fluent by the time I started learning English in school. I then learned German from popular German tv shows that were shown on Icelandic tv called Derrick and Der Alte. Later I learned Swedish from tv as well, and at 13 I started studying Russian at the University of Iceland.
Absolutely love this video as an AA. It’s good to see others putting in effort to learn more about us. Also I didn’t know ppl studied AAVE or even cared this much about it besides us
So glad you enjoyed it. Languages are such a wonderful insight into the marvels of the human mind. It’s really important that they are studied and cherished and promoted. I hate to think of kids being told they’re speaking wrongly, when they should be praised for being bilingual.
Interesting! Saw in another video of yours that you know Bahasa Indonesia. It would be fun to have a video on Singapore English or Singlish which has a lot of interesting features like AAVE does
Hi Meera. Great idea! Many thanks.
My natural dialect 🔥🔥🔥 also he from my state 💪🏾 im reppin Cleveland, Ohio
I love this. As a Black/African American I started off learning German as well. From then I went on to Japanese and got certified N4 lower intermediate which I still study as I fell in love with the language. Upon learning of my Fulani and Yoruba ancestral roots in Nigeria, I am now learning the Adamawa dialect of Fulfulde, and some Yoruba. I like the usage of AH-veh pronunciation for AAVE. For Black Americans that is like having our own language or rather again.
So glad to hear that. Thanks for commenting and sharing your language learning story.
It's funny that he says "I don ate" sounds more like an older AA. I feel like " I been ate" sounds more like how someone in their 30s or younger would say it. The older gen would say "been ate" too. Also I heard "Look what you done did"
Hi Kiki. Thanks for pointing that out. Could it be a regional thing? Daniel’s from Ohio. I’ll check with him.
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages So am I. I didn't know that. But AAVE has southern roots and most black Ohioans have grandparents from the south so our grandparents would say things that we may not say because it sounds old or "too country". You should look up Gullah black americans. The younger generations speak a simplier form of Gullah which some call Geechee.
Maybe he’s just old fashioned!
@@kikikareema5912 Daniel says
😂😂😂 - You know, I do feel like I’ve aged quite a bit during this pandemic lol.
Seriously though, I would say that context absolutely matters in this case. “Done ate” and “been ate” syntactically are correct. However, I cannot tell if she’s referring to stressed or unstressed been (BIN vs. been).
Hrmm...
But I’m also open to the possibility that there could be (have been) a shift in the “younger” generation that’s happening (happened). After all, we spoke AAVE in my household growing up and it’s been years and languages since being fully immersed in AAVE environments. I’d love to do more research! Can you ask her to provide more context and give me an example?
@@DaveHuxtableLanguages To be honest I just started to look up linguistic terminology for languages for AAVE in general. I know about the habitual be and double negatives but I was generally just speaking from a thought process of what sounds more natural or what is more typically used.
Just a fun(?) fact: here in Finland 'aave' means 'a ghost'. AAVE is even pronounced almost exactly like the Finnish word. Any polyglots interested in Sanskrit, especially the older Vedic Sanskrit? Example from the beginning of the Hymn (suukta; su-ukta: well spoken) of Creation of Rgveda (X 129, 1 a), naasadiiya-suukta: naasadaasiinno sadaasiittadaaniim (without sandhi: na asat aasiit na u sat aasiit tadaaniim.) There was not the non-existent nor the existent then (before the Big Bang??).
30 years ago my PhD Spanish Professor told the class several times how much he loved AAVE, though he called African American English or Ebonics. He said it was so rich!
I be agreein 💙
(I hope I did that right)
i understand that most black Americans try to disconnect themselves from West Africa for obvious reasons, but you cant really undersand AAE (not AAVE) without understanding that it is essentially an African way of understanding English, hence West African Pidgin English has the same sentence formations as many AAE albeit more closer to Jamaican Patois with AAE being less removed.. I been ate, would be understood off the back by any Nigerian Ghanaian Sierra Leonian Liberian and SW Camerounian, but they would rather say I don eat or I don chop, (chop being the substitute for eat) if you search youtube and look up videos of an old Southern Gullah lady she expresses herself as "what you dey do there?" which is perfect WA English except that What is used as Wettin in Nigeria but still retained in the other countries.. the word "dey" seems to have been once used by African Americans but lost as the AAE became diluted as more blacks interacted with whites and became educated the fact this Old Gullah lady still used the word "dey" which is the most common word in West African English is a pointer to its possible once widespread use among Black Americans keeping in mind that the Gullah Geechee communities are the last oldest communities of continuous free black presence,. the Gullah speech is a lot closer to WAfrican patois.
Fascinating Kala-ada! Many thanks for sharing your knowledge. I only found out about Gullah Geechee communities quite recently and would love to know more.
I'm in the gambia now, you know Jigi Jigi? In mandinka it means the same thing, people say it around children when they don't want the kids to understand what they're talking about. Also, the way they say in their language "you said what", as opposed to "what did you say" reminds of African American eng, as well as the phonetics of course.
Quite a few years ago I saw something on TV about a school that was teaching young African-American kids to speak standard American English, treating it as learning foreign language of sorts. The teacher, who was also African-American, explained to the kids that there was nothing wrong at all with the language they grew up speaking, but that if they wanted to make it in certain environments, they would have to learn to speak standard English. The teacher would take a phrase and teach them how to say it in their new second language.
a better explanation of the be thing...
past present future and habitually
she lied to you (past)
she lyin to you (present)
she gon lie to you (future)
she be lyin (habitually)
That's cool. Many thanks!
I didn't know we were calling it "ah-vay" now lol. I just say the letters. But to add on to "done gone" one, I was confused. I thought he was saying "done gun". I take it that's what they say where he grew up. I'm Chicagoan and we say "done gone and" to say a person did something (usually something bad or something that annoyed the person saying it). Another BIG one is "finna", which is a variation of "fixing to" to say that we're about to do something. Or we say "I'm bout to (insert activity). AAVE has regional differences just like like standard American English. New York AAVE sounds vastly different from Chicago and southern areas. Same with West Coast AAVE.
Hi. I followed Daniel’s lead on the pronunciation. It does seem quite common to pronounce it like that, though lots of people do say it as the letters. Thanks for sharing about your variety of the grammar and pronunciation. I think there are lots of interesting things to discover about how AAVE is different across the country.
Wonderful interview! There is also often a zero copula in AAVE, with the exception of the first person.
So glad you think so. Yes, that zero copula is fascinating.
It’s so important that people know their language is unique and precious - another insight into how amazing human minds are.
All interesting!
And even before you said the word appropriation, I started this comment to note the touch on the topic of appropriation. I am not sure I can ever really grasp that ideology and what I really need to do to not engage in it.
My views differ somewhat. I have always code switched. It is because of having parents from the South (Deep South and Southeast). I never tried to get rid of anything, because I never had to do so. I always separated the two. My mother's generation went through that. It is the idea that it is "wrong" that push people to feel that they are doing someting incorrect. And this is why people are quick to dismiss it as a variety. Whereas Scots today is being promoted as a separate language.
The copula is often left out, except in the contraction or when you want to stress it, in the present tense. "Tyson learning languages" vs "Tyson IS learning languages"
And I agree with the Irish connection. It was in learning Irish that I noticed.
"I been done ate" to take it further.
Instead of "don gon did..." I would say "don went and did"
I would like to work with Daniel on this.
Hi Tyson. Thanks so much for sharing your experiences. Cool that you have learned Irish - is that still a work in progress? I'll pass on your comments to Daniel. He's pretty busy with his postgrad degree and full-time teaching.
Cool interview. Would love to see more literature written in AAVE dialect. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Thanks Victor. I haven't read any books in AAVE, but I did find this conversation on Reddit. www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/5urxef/novels_written_in_aave/
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
You may like Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
Roots, by Alex Haley. The dialogue between characters is AAVE.
Tony Morrison’s Beloved. Dominion by Randy Alcorn.
He has a husband. I don't even know him and I'm jealous! I'd love to have a S.O. as beautiful, sexy, and smart as Daniel!
I've been speaking in a light form of AAVE since age 13 when I attended a school for 3 years that had significant Black student population.
I’ll pass that on!
I don’t think it was explicitly stated but that there are historical linguists who argue that as part of the so-called settler hypothesis many of AAVE’s unique features come from Africans’ interaction with Irish indentured servants in the colonial period. Then others prefer to think of AAVE as a creole-like phenomenon where the unique features are a legacy of African heritage, as in the creoles of the Lowcountry or Caribbean. Where one stands on this question may often depend on one’s politics as well as linguistic analysis, but it’s interesting that the present/habitual “be” distinction could support either idea…
I think some of the discord in the comments about the accuracy of Daniel’s AAVE stems from the fact that there are both regional and class-based distinctions in the dialect. My experience is that professional/middle-class folks who’ve navigated white spaces for significant periods sometimes import standard English phonetics and grammar into AAVE. Then there’s also the matter of black people who learn standard first and then AAVE later which is another story. Fun video!
Glad you enjoyed it. As far as I know, Daniel’s first language is AAVE and he learned standard English at school. My assumption on comments about some of his examples is that AAVE isn’t a monolith since, as you say, there is region and social variation. I’m sure that many speakers vary their speech on a continuum from ‘broad’ AAVE to standard English according do a mix of criteria.
My guess on the settler/creole question is that it’s a bit of both. The version of English the African people were initially exposed to was not the speech of Cambridge graduates, so Hiberno-English would have been one of the ingredients of the initial pidgin varieties. You comment got me thinking about how certain features survive in language contact situations. Taking habitual “be” as an example, it was transferred from the Irish language to Hiberno-English over centuries of bilingualism. When speakers of a large variety of often mutually unrelated African languages encountered this, enough of them must have related to it and found it useful for it to become an element of the pidgins and eventual creole. I’m having a chat on Tuesday with a West African linguist, so will check to see if he knows of that distinction in any of the languages he is familiar with.
I work in Philadelphia and here AAVE all day and started using with the older folks very easy to switch to standard English why some people in the comments section trashy is beyond me
Sadly, I think the 'trashy' comments come from racism.
Just to say, that "bín ceol" sentence has an equivalent in hiberno English. (Or at least conservative rural hiberno English.)
"There does be music there every Thursday."
That’s wonderful!
Hello from Cleveland Ohio!
Hello Jackson! I’m in Orange County, CA.
22:25 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is incorrect. "He BEEN finished" can indeed mean ages and ages ago. Think if someone said, for example: "He don't work no more. He BEEN retired."
Hi Matt. I'm afraid I don't know. I can only go on what I understood from this conversation with Daniel, who's a native speaker.
He is so proud of his mother tongue ( AAVE ) that not even a trace of it in his speech.
It’s called code switching. Look it up
In Dublin some people say, 'does be' and 'do be'.
This is probably the most mild dialect of the English language, it is definitely easy to understand for people people who don't live in America, the dialect is really obvious and is closer to modern English than most British dialects (Most British Dialects are closer to Middle and old English).
like "da" sounds very similar to "the", it is not hard to figure out, and many British people say "da" instead of "the". I don't see why they need to speak "proper" English because their dialect is the easiest dialect to understand of all dialects.
I think the hardest dialect to understand in America is the Appalachian Dialect but even then it sounds very similar to a lot of North English and Scots language dialects so I can figure it out better than most americans.
Thank you so much for your comments. I think the easiest dialect to understand is whichever one you are most used to.
I don’t agree about some English dialects being closer to Old or Middle English. They are all very different indeed from Old English, which had grammatical gender and cases. They each differ in their own way from the different kinds of Middle English they are descended from. I suppose you could say that some have changed a little less, but I think all modern varieties are more similar to each other than any of them is to Middle English.
Aave dialect come from our non written language
AAVE is not a single dialect and the people who do these interviews usually don't verbally represent the dialects in their raw form or they do it in a MidWestern or East or West Coast form but never in a raw Southern form.
Shoutout to Columbus OH.. there a lot of very intelligent, skilled and talented people hidden there..
I'll visit once day.
It seems like lately Ohio has become a shorthand in American culture for all things boring and reactionary. I love to see people representing the incredible diversity and talent and creativity in our state. I’m from Cincinnati and the culture here is extremely vibrant.
Graz is beaut! Best museum (of armory).
(Not to condescend if you are already familiar with this - you bring it up later in the video- just sharing thoughts/first impressions)
The USA (as far as I know, living here) doesn't have a "prestige variety" that is openly acknowledged as such. There is a single "correct" version of English that is taught nationwide with any variations being "incorrect." ( I am not agreeing with or defending this attitude - just trying to describe it)
We recognize that different US accents exist, but in general, that has to do with pronunciation, slang, and specific terms ("Do you call this a roundabout or a traffic circle?"). Plus, any acknowledged accent is associated with a stereotype, usually negative - southern accents are "hick," uninformed, lazy, stupid; New York accents are "rude," silly, ethnic (thanks to Yiddish stereotypes, I think?); Minnesotan accents are dorky, sheltered, extra-polite; Valley accents are vapid, youthful, flippant, shallow. Etc. Someone who moves from the south to the north may experience prejudice based on how they sound "dumb" to everyone else! Other countries' use of English is usually not acknowledged except for British (and yes, we only widely know two British accents: posh and Cockney) or sometimes Australian (as an impression of the one or two Australian people from tv).
I am saying this only because I know England approaches the topic differently, where (from my understanding) very few people claim to speak what you call the "prestige variety" natively, and instead learn a new accent as part of their education...?
As for our attitude towards whether other English-speaking countries' English is legitimate (when we even know that they speak English and not, say, Canadian), we don't honestly think about it unless we're like "That's confusing!" Let me quote the Legally Blonde musical to illustrate, but apologies to everyone European:
You see they bring their boys up different
in those charming foreign ports
They play peculiar sports
In shiny shirts and tiny shorts
Gay or foreign fella?
The answer could take weeks
They will say things like "ciao bella"
while they kiss you on both cheeks
[...]
But they bring their boys up different there
It's culturally diverse
It's not a fashion curse
If he wears a kilt or bears a purse
Gay or just exotic?
I still can't crack the code
Yet his accent is hypnotic
but his shoes are pointy toed
Thank you to Daniel for sharing so much info!
Hi. Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you. I suppose the 'prestige variety' that AAVE is often compared to in the US is almost the same as in the rest of the English-speaking world and is know as 'standard modern English'. It doesn't have negative reinforcement ('double negatives"), has 'ask' and not 'aks', people speak 'slowly' and not 'slow' and all the other things that teachers correct people for. That's all about vocabulary and grammar rather than pronunciation. You are right that the US doesn't have a prestige accent in the way that some other societies do, whereby you can recognise the elite by the way they talk. General American - the way most newsreaders, TV journalists, actors and people who think they "don't have an accent" talk is the de facto prestige accent. It's the one that the New Yorkers, Southerners and Minnesotans are compared to. It's the accent that doesn't mark its speakers as being from a particular place or belonging to a particular group. I actually live in California.
What you say about England - and you're right to use that term because the situation is different in the rest of the UK - is only partly correct. Social class is an element of accents in England in a way that isn't the case in the US. On the whole, it is working class people who have regional accents, north, south, east, west, different urban centres. (I've made a video on the topic: czcams.com/video/mU8uenMGt_o/video.html). Middle class people, defined by profession rather than wealth, tend to speak with an accent called RP which is mostly the same across the country as well as in Wales. There is a misconception that this accent is rare and artificial. That isn't true - we have no shortage of doctors, lawyers, judges, architects etc. What is rare is the upper-class accent, an old-fashioned version of RP spoken by aging aristocrats (including the Queen) and the cast of Downton Abbey. There isn't an accent that is learnt as part of anyone's education. Kids who go to elite schools speak RP already, since that's what their parents speak. Those that don't soon pick it up from their peers. Nowhere is it formally taught.
Is he on social media?
I'll check and let you know.
do we protect hill people / appalachian english or other dialects from the american south? that’s where the first african americans learned and formed the ancestor dialects of what we call AAVE today…
edit: you can even go back to the “wild lands” peoples of what is now the united kingdom, particularly celtic peoples… people all over the uk and ireland speak with dialects with similar features still
When we use Done gone we always use and before the following word
Done gone and. South carolina African American here. The area im from we have a very weird dialect ive noticed since ive got older and traveled. Soon as i open my mouth people go dang you got an accent. Or either they smile and say huh because they never heard my dialect and they dont understand.
Actually there was no large scale slavery South of Georgia before 1800. The majority of the enslaved actually lived in Virginia. Blacks from Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas were sold to the Gulf region after 1807.
Thanks for that clarification.
Hearing AAVE being pronounced makes me wince because of my background in Latin.
How might you say “Just let it go” in Latin?
Ha ha.
13:35 Saving this part
Great!
38:38 ඞ
😂😂😂
I got my spdaking accent from a county immediately SW of columbus. Thiis dude is so HARD on all of his prounciations. I attribute it to his sexuality and thus his received accent. he needs to tone it back.
“There is no such thing as American English. There is English , and there are mistakes” Queen Elizabeth II
Disagree with a few things the brotha is saying here: AAVE is usually zero copula, so, "he be studying languages" does mean habitually, but to say he is learning right now would more commonly be, "he studying". Just my 2 cents from a bona-fide, life-long native speaker 😅
Hi. Many thanks for pointing that out.
I've heard peope from the Caribbean say " She hungry" Etc etc. I suspect West African pigeon use the same.
Hunnuh eh benyah a deh comyah
?
I don't feel like AAVE needs to he mapped out as if we as Black Peiple decided on a set of grammarica rules. I feel like the way we speak is very loose and adaptable like we are. Maybe it's because I have no understanding of any African languages and how they are structured. I think I should be appreciated as a phenomenon that happen due to circumstances but rules don't need to be written it's not learned or taught that way it's just a very natural thing and it's too hard to try and explain ot just is. But I'm a math and science type of gal not a linguists.
Hmm, I don't think in any language rules are set out, they evolve naturally. Hence here in England modern English is completely different to Old English and the two are not mutually intelligible. Old English once would have been 'standard' English in England (accounting for regional dialects of course). I think AAVE is as worthy of rigorous linguistic study as any other dialect. Studying it doesn't restrict it or formalise it though, by studying it you are not setting rules, but analysing AAVE as it was and as it is. I don't see anything inherently detrimental in that.
@@breakfreak3181Absolutely. AAVE is like any other language/dialect. It has rules that develop naturally as a result of circumstance, and it changes over time.
To say that it is exceptional in any way is to 'other' it, and the othering of AAVE has gone on for far too long as is.
Linguistics is a social science; and as such, necessarily a scientific discipline. I'm guessing you meant maths and hard sciences
aave does not come from standard english, it’s english dialects from the american south where most black people of african american heritage migrated from to the major cities across the u.s. now we speak english on a spectrum of southern dialects, northern dialects and the east and west coast dialects which are considered standard and academically taught “proper english” is one point on the spectrum whereas the african american sub dialects of dialects from the american south have definitely mixed with the dialects and accents of wherever they moved and intersected with to create new dialects that stay connected just like jews who use yiddish vocab along with whatever english dialect is local.
the history is definitely peoples from all different ethnic linguistic groups of africa but mostly western bantu mixed up learning english from speakers in the american south. then there was a migration after emancipation to the major cities all over obviously joining people who would find freedom in those places that were part of the union. but the major base of aave can be traced all the way back to the scots-irish.
research professor thomas sowell
It takes them until 23:00 until they get down to where AAVE comes from. Growing up in the north east US much of this AAVE I'm learning about was very elusive. I'm Black and virtually no one I knew growing up spoke it. But since my family grew up in Boston and Rhode Island areas we they have the same lingual quirks that mark our region. Someone from York, or Leeds in the UK sounds more familiar than both the polished presenter on the BBC, or the broad American Standard English of Barack Obama. Very interesting. Education, integration and standardization is eradicating all regional dialects, and AAVE. Although interesting, I don't see it as anything more than a remnant of the past.
That would be sad. I think there are forces in both directions. One pull towards greater standardisation and the other questions the idea that one way of speaking is better than others. What gives me hope for increased diversity is the development of multicultural language varieties in cosmopolitan cities. Here’s a video I did on that. czcams.com/video/aoCyNhdIK6U/video.html
Black people in the US have a certain connection to the Irish, if you're "from round here."
@@autobotdiva9268 guess you don't know history.
Very true for some, not all
@@autobotdiva9268 the Irish at this time were indentured servants. Not the slave owner. Meaning that their relationship was as "slaves."
@@autobotdiva9268 I'm black, sis. With an Irish last name. They weren't slaves of any Irish people.
@@autobotdiva9268 you should try reading some books and doing some research. The Irish were never chattel slaves, nor did I say they were. Grow up.
AAVE is easy.
Hi Walter. Are you a fluent speaker?
I lasted twenty seconds with the gump. Sorry.,👎🏾
ugh - why would anyone choose to speak in this way... so trashy
How can a way of speaking possibly be trashy?
You’ve written this comment under multiple videos about AAVE. You should find a counselor and try to figure why you have such a problem existing around people who aren’t like you
Because it flows well and it is an efficient way of speaking.
We African peoples are natural language creators. It's probably evolutionary 😅 like, Africans were probably the first on the planet to create language (homo sapiens, anyway) so it's probably coded in our dna 😅