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That's never going to happen. Most educated Black people will continue to use AAVE, they just won't use it at work or other settings where it's deemed inappropriate.
Yeah, I agree. I dont know what he means that educated Blacks dont use or disdains AAVE. Now more educated blacks in major Midwestern or Southern cities may sound less country or ghetto than their less educated counterparts, but most I've met still speak with that "soulful" or AAVE tone in their voice. I personally talk however I want around anybody, I've found I get more respect from whites when I'm not trying to imitate their up-speak and nasally accents. By the way I have a masters degree.
St. Louis rapper Tef Poe and Detroit rapper Royce Da 5'9 on the same track. I would say both are pretty accurate representation of what young people in both cities talk like.
There is a lot of country ass people in St. Louis, but a lot of time its based on socioeconomic condition and education. I personally have a Midwest twang, but I grew up around a more street crowd than my cousins, who are from the same city but went to private schools with white kids and upwardly mobile blacks. There is a large "bougie" black middle class in St. Louis that tries their best to hide any "southern", "country", or stereotypically "black" accent they may have, I've noticed this even in large Southern cities like Dallas and Atlanta. I have family in St. Louis and up in Evanston (Chicago), that talk with no visible accent but their parents have a "country" or "ghetto" accent and it embarrasses the hell out of them. Personally, I don't care how a person talks, as long as I can understand them, and have a decent conversation. I've also come to learn that you cant judge a persons background on accent alone, there are country sounding black kids in St. Louis that grew up in a more urban environment than a suburban black kid from outside New York, who talks with the stereotypical "Yankee" accent. I think people often make the wrong association about a place based on accents. People assume I'm country, because I'm from St. Louis when I never saw a cow in person until I moved to Florida. I will say that all major Midwestern cities have Southern sounding blacks, obviously St. Louis more Southern leaning because of proximity, but I've met some straight up country (not necessarily Southern) cats from Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, but most of them were street dudes or less educated. I also find many St. Louisans have a similar accent to Mike Epps, an Indianapolis native. I've met a lot of black people from Midwestern cities with Katt Williams (from Ohio), who is has a noticeably country accent.
One thing is that White people won't make those assumptions in Chicago. Whites in Chicago equate the Black speech with a more "urban" person and nothing country. I feel Blacks not from Chicago come here and hear Black speech and think "country" but White people don't think that.
Because of segregation, most Chicago Whites don't even know that Chicago Blacks have a lot of Deep South roots. To them, that drawl is a "hood accent" and someone like a country singer has a "Southern" accent even though they have less Southern characteristics in their speech than Chicago Blacks do. Of course the Deep South Blaccent heard in older Chicago Blacks is more different than the highly rhotic accent with variable glide deletion of their idea of Southern Whites.
To be fair, though, Chicago Whites sometimes think MIDWESTERN accents sound Southern. You'll have some that swear people from other parts of Illinois or the Midwest like Iowa sound no different than Willie Robertson. We had a guy at our old church who was a White guy from Central Illinois, and my girlfriend swore he sounded Southern even though he had barely any trace of a distinguishable accent in his speech.
Yeah, I agree. I dont know what he means that educated Blacks dont use or disdains AAVE. Now more educated blacks in major Midwestern or Southern cities may sound less country or ghetto than their less educated counterparts, but most I've met still speak with that "soulful" or AAVE tone in their voice. I personally talk however I want around anybody, I've found I get more respect from whites when I'm not trying to imitate their up-speak and nasally accents. By the way I have a masters degree.
Steve Harvey does sound Southern but not every Cleveland Black person has it that extreme. Detroit Blacks tend to more Northern accents than practically all Great Lakes cities. Now, I can't speak for Buffalo, Rochester, or Syracuse. I've met some Blacks from Upstate NY that sound Northern.
I mentioned earlier that entertainers, while entertaining use a different forms of speaking. One cannot base their presumption on "most" black people and our accents on Steve Harvey, Jay-Z or other entertainers since they, as a function of their jobs "entertain" and they act and sound a certain way to appeal to their audience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caribny
In NY/NJ typical black speech and tone is different from that of whites. We can debate as to the reasons why, but what should not be surprising is that certain patterns of speech that are used in the parts of the South that AA NY blacks originate from, still linger among AAs. Now this is less the case among the millennial generation, and among the most educated, but it is indeed the case.
In addition the AAVE is rooted in various regions in the South. It has certain parallels with the various English creoles of the Caribbean and less obviously so, with the various Pidgin Englishes of West Africa. This speech developed in areas of dense population by peoples of African descent. In the USA, this was the South.
I doubt that in places like NYC AAVE developed among the pre Civil War black populations which existed, as their numbers were too small, and they were forced to have high levels of social interaction with other groups. That all changed in the turn of the 20th C when large numbers of blacks arrived from the South East, and from the Caribbean. So what will be called the NY version of AAVE, will have its roots in the SE USA, and will differ some what from that of the Deep South, but will have similar grammatical structures.
Having said all of that, I will argue that AAVE is declining faster than Southern influences in accent, because AAVE is not well regarded, even by blacks, when spoken by those with education.
I agree that typical speaking accents of blacks in NJ/NY is different from whites, but on the reverse, southern black people and their accents are TOTALLY different from white southerners. Being that I lived in the south over 15 years, I am well aware that in Atlanta, Miami, and NOLA especially which were mentioned in the thread that what people think of as a "typical" southern accent is not how black people who are born/reared in those areas speak at all. They have a very unique accent, centered mostly on annunciation of words and they also have a southern drawl that is very prominent to the area.
So when I see on this thread that people think that "most" blacks have a southern accent, to me I think of how black people in the south speak. And anyone who has lived in the south in any of the cities above and have been around black people in those cities know that black people in the Midwest, West, and Northeast do not speak like southern blacks at all.
On educated black people not utilizing BVE, I think that that idea is false. I would go out on a limb and generalize and state that "most" black people do use BVE regardless of education level. They just do like many immigrant families do and speak it primarily with family and friends. More and more black educated people also, such as myself, see the cultural influences of BVE in regards to its roots in West African dialects in regards to tense and word placement. Many black West Indians have their own pidgin language, similar to BVE as do many Africans due to the colonization of Africa by Europeans. I worked with a lot of Africans (mostly Nigerians, Cameroonians, Ghanaians,) in Atlanta at a call center in college and they would speak their pidgin language and after about 2 weeks, I understood everything they said due to its similarities to BVE in word usage and placement. They were pretty shocked and we had a good discussion about the similarities of their pidgin to BVE. I also am pretty quick to understand West Indians (especially Jamaicans) due to similarities. Many educated black people recognize this and a few other cultural similarities in the African diaspora and study it and promulgate it rather than submerge it. Ironically, it was easier for me to understand my African co-workers versus native black Atlantans due to their lack of annunciation of words.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee
That's never going to happen. Most educated Black people will continue to use AAVE, they just won't use it at work or other settings where it's deemed inappropriate.
I didn't say that you stated BVE/AAVE is an accent, only that some people mistake it for being "southern" when it is not.
What specifically do you mean when you mention "glide deletion." Are you speaking of specific words?
Do you have any documentation that white people in NY or Maine don't say "y'all?"
That is an odd question.
I personally know people from Maine and I know people who live in upstate New York and I have visited many regions across the country.
I live in NW Ohio and so am only 10 minutes from MI and MANY people in MI say "y'all" and "ain't" and other Old English variations of speaking.
"Y'all" is not a southern creation.
I also asked if you were speaking of leaving off "-ing" from words. Leaving off -ing does not equal "southern" either.
I personally am pretty convinced now that you don't really know what an accent is. I am from Ohio. I have a NW Ohio/SE MI accent. People from here, we know our own accent, especially if we leave and move somewhere else.
I lived in the south over 15 years. I was a customer service manager when in college at a bank that serviced only the south and I can tell you for a fact that all southerner's have different accents depending on where they are from. People from TN and southern KY are similar in accent (sound kind of like Dolly Parton). People in SC have a different accent than NC. People in GA have a different accent than AL. And people from Atlanta, GA have a different accent from those in southern, GA.
I'm not going to even go into the FL accents, they vary extensively.
So I don't even see why you are trying to "prove" that black people in America speak with a southern accent, most of whom have roots in this country longer than the majority of whites and all of us are not from the south. FYI, there was northern slavery in the US too and there have been free black people in America since the 1500s.
Makes me think that you don't know many black people. I actually am giggling to myself thinking about my "valley girl" roommate in college from California. She was SOOOOOO not southern!! Neither were most of the guys I knew from California. My other roommate was from Queens, NY and she had an immigrant mother from Costa Rica but she had NY accent and a pretty strong one at that. I knew black people from Boston who had a Boston accent. I knew black people from NJ who had a NJ accent. Black people's accents, as stated, primarily reflect where they grew up. Somebody's grandma being from MS is not going to make someone who is 20 years old speak with a southern accent unless you think that black people just don't ever encounter anyone else except for other "southern" speaking black people. If you think that then there is no reasoning with you.
This. We've also been in North Amexum (what's called "North America" today) for much longer than the 1500s as well. That longevity of our presence here in the New World pre-Colombian/pre-slavery may have some influences in our speech patterns in some way too.
That's never going to happen. Most educated Black people will continue to use AAVE, they just won't use it at work or other settings where it's deemed inappropriate.
AAVE will disappear among the most educated faster than the Southern influences in speech patterns.
I Many black West Indians have their own pidgin language, similar to BVE as do many Africans due to the colonization of Africa by Europeans.
This.
The very pressures to conform has forced even informal AAVE closer to standard English than is the case in West Africa and the Caribbean, where there is a more defined space for the dialects. One can see a very different structure of the Gullah dialects, from standard AAVE, as they are an isolated group.
The reality is that the AAVE spoken informally by educated AAs, is a much more mesolectal variety than that spoken by the less educated. And that person will not use it, EVEN among other blacks, in business settings, so it isn't just about conforming to "white" standards. Because a high % of their speech will not be in arenas where they can use full fledged AAVE, then the gap between their formal and informal speech narrows. I suspect this being especially true for the millennial generation.
In fact even among educated Caribbean people their informal speech is much closer to standard English than that spoken by those with less education. It is mesolectal than basilectal.
BTW I am not that convinced that most well educated AAs really are deeply interested in African or Caribbean cultures, at anything other than a superficial level. Its a more intellectual crowd who might be, but they are the minority. So use of AAVE isn't going to be because of its West African (heavily Igbo and Twi) base.
The very pressures to conform has forced even informal AAVE closer to standard English than is the case in West Africa and the Caribbean, where there is a more defined space for the dialects. One can see a very different structure of the Gullah dialects, from standard AAVE, as they are an isolated group.
The reality is that the AAVE spoken informally by educated AAs, is a much more mesolectal variety than that spoken by the less educated. And that person will not use it, EVEN among other blacks, in business settings, so it isn't just about conforming to "white" standards. Because a high % of their speech will not be in arenas where they can use full fledged AAVE, then the gap between their formal and informal speech narrows. I suspect this being especially true for the millennial generation.
In fact even among educated Caribbean people their informal speech is much closer to standard English than that spoken by those with less education. It is mesolectal than basilectal.
BTW I am not that convinced that most well educated AAs really are deeply interested in African or Caribbean cultures, at anything other than a superficial level. Its a more intellectual crowd who might be, but they are the minority. So use of AAVE isn't going to be because of its West African (heavily Igbo and Twi) base.
I remember you saying that you were West Indian and maybe due to that, you are not aware that most black people actually do speak in BVE at home and with family/friends even those who are highly educated. I am pretty highly educated, as are most of my family. I associate primarily with highly educated black people and all of them know how to "wear the mask" in regards to speech and when we are hanging out or they are with family, they do delve into BVE in their speaking patterns.
Most of my family, one would consider "black bougoise/boogie" and they do not speak BVE most of the time and they do/have spoken ill about it, especially the older generation (aged 55 and above) but even they will go into it during specific times - when they are angry, when they want to make a specific point, when they are being overly sweet to grandchildren, etc. These situations and the use of BVE in those situations, I don't see on the decline.
Many consider me a millenial (born 1979 though I consider myself a Gen Xer). I have cousins born from 1980-1994 and all of them use BVE in the situations above and especially when relaying some funny or outrageous story or when they are angry. So again, I don't see it diminishing. Children in black families grow up with it at home being used in particular circumstances and heavily used during family gatherings/barbecues, celebrations, etc. So I don't see BVE diminishing in use in the millenial generation or going forward. BVE is also highly used in American entertainment in regards to rap music and hip hop culture which branched away from being a primarily black American art form more than a decade ago. More Americans in general sing/rap songs using BVE, especially younger generations.
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