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I think Garrard McClendon makes an excellent point, though I fear it will and has been taken the completely wrong way. He's talking about knowing when to use the dialect of English that will benefit you most, but I think a lot of people will take (and have taken) it as knocking down African American Vernacular English (or Black English or whatever you want to call it). I also agree with him that equating being academic with "acting white" in the Black Community needs to change as well, because as long as there is one black person who wants to go to school (which there are many many more) then going to school is no longer a "white" thing.
Interestingly, even I could tell the guy in the video is black even if I had never seen him. Some vowel sounds give him away
I could tell he was black right away too, without any visual cues. (I was listening to the video without looking cause I've been using my computer eyes-closed lately.)
When I was blind, I could often (not always) tell someone's race not based on how they were using English but by the texture of their voice. It's not a fail-proof method but I do think there are general differences in black voices and white voices and mixed voices on a purely biological level that go beyond dialect--just as there are general differences in skin complexion that go beyond cultural identity.
My "beef" is about the fact that the phonological and articulation disorders by US born Hispanics and Asians is ignored (or denied) in many of the statements by some of the posters in this thread. Just because you personally may not be exposed to this issue amongst the various other populations does not mean that it does not exist.
There are often dialectical differences in other subcultures within the U.S. but they're not disorders. They are more or less consistent across speakers and the difference in articulation isn't due to a pathological inability to produce the sounds. It's due to a cultural and linguistic variation.
Any newborn child can eventually learn to speak any of the world's language without any accent at all. There are no biological differences in the mouths or brains of speakers of different languages. The differences in the repertoire of sounds a language uses and grammatical structures a language uses are learned. Having differences in pronunciation across languages or dialects isn't a matter of a speech disorder or other biological problem. It's a result of a cultural learned difference. An American baby born and raised in China would learn how to speak just like a Chinese baby born and raised in China.
The dialectical differences in the English spoken in various Black, Hispanic, Asian, and White communities is a result of flavoring the language culturally. Children learn to speak the language the way the adults around them are. So if the adults around a child speak a type of English flavored by a Chinese language or Spanish, for example, they will learn to speak that same form of English (even if they grow up not speaking a word of Spanish or any of the Chinese languages). It's because many of the adults in their life speak English as a second language so their sound production and grammar are flavored by their first language. When people learn a second language, the second language is often flavored by the sound production and grammar rules of their native language, which is how accents arise. (Sometimes the adults in the child's life speak English as a first language, but they themselves learned English from mostly non-native speakers and pass down the same dialect of English, and this is how you can end up with English speakers who sound like they speak Spanish or another language but in actuality only speak English.)
Language is culturally inherited, not biologically inherited. This trait has been extensively studied in the field of linguistics and has been shown to be specific to humans.
I can't believe that "ax" was EVER the correct pronunciation of "ask" like the guy says it was. Maybe it was among blacks but I can't believe that the English ever used ax to mean ask.
appologies for not having read the entire thread, but I have a take on this that may be unusual.
As an educated white woman, who has worked with both educated and less educated black women and men, I have a personal "rule of thumb".
I believe that because "ax" is such a prevelant pronunciation in the black community, and because even the most educated black people will ocassionally use the term when a conversation is highly emotional, it is the polite thing to do, to accept it without question, and even to use it myself (in the same conversation) to avoid embarrasing the person I am speaking with.
I value proper english, but cannot honestly fault people for using their native "dialect".
Being a Latino I am constantly dealing with this issue in my profession. I have Mexican Nationals working for me that speak better English than some of my native American born Latino employees.
appologies for not having read the entire thread, but I have a take on this that may be unusual.
As an educated white woman, who has worked with both educated and less educated black women and men, I have a personal "rule of thumb".
I believe that because "ax" is such a prevelant pronunciation in the black community, and because even the most educated black people will ocassionally use the term when a conversation is highly emotional, it is the polite thing to do, to accept it without question, and even to use it myself (in the same conversation) to avoid embarrasing the person I am speaking with.
I value proper english, but cannot honestly fault people for using their native "dialect".
Pretty condescending and patronizing, and don't think the other person doesn't realize that you are putting on. Then they are left to wonder if you are secretly ridiculing them.
Why do so many people fixate on the sociocultural dialect differences for African Americans yet ignore them with other groups?
Some African Americans have a distinction in speech pattern in which there is a phonological inversion (ie ask becomes aks) and /th/ is replaced with /f/ (ie bathtub becomes baftub) In the Hispanic community, some will pronounce words ending -ing with a -jing (ie lying becomes lyjing) or there is the addition of /e/ in front of /s/ words for native Spanish speakers (ie school becomes eschool) With many Asian communities there is a tendency to replace /r/ with /l/ (ie rise becomes lize) and there can also be a tendency to delete the final consonant in words (ie step becomes ste or lid becomes li)
There are numerous articulatory and phonological "disorders" or difference that exist for each ethnic group (not to mention the ones that exist for Whites based upon regional dialects) yet somehow Blacks are the only ones with the "problem"
Why do some blacks want to keep other blacks down, and prevent them from self improvement? Is it a strategy for wiping out the competition?
Pretty condescending and patronizing, and don't think the other person doesn't realize that you are putting on. Then they are left to wonder if you are secretly ridiculing them.
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Spanglish
