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What I'm saying is American black folk all sound more like each other than they do they're respective states. A few exceptions like NYC notwithstanding.
Go up to Buffalo and you'll hear a completely different sound than what you hear in NYC. We all have regional accents to some degree. I think what's common are the words we use and our inflections and gestures.
I've had enough. Blacks speak in Ebonics, which is not even proper English in the first place.
since we're going there...
ebonics is (IMO) a bull**** label put on black ppl when it really shouldn't be. ebonics is SLANG. period. but lets not go there for a sec.
what do you have to say about all of the non "blacks" that speak "ebonics?"
also what do you have to say about the fact that black people were not allowed to learn how to read and write, at one time, and the lack of quality education, which is the root cause of the broken english that went on over time and that persists today with some black ppl?
this was not that long ago. my mother was born 4 years after the civil rights movement started which is 9 years before it ended. i'll be 27 this year. she remembers books with faded text, being called monkey, going to school hungry, all of that.
*Edit*
despite the above, she and many others were among the smartest in their classes. i'm not using the above as an excuse but there is a such thing as cause and effect.
also what do you have to say about the fact that black people were not allowed to learn how to read and write, at one time, and the lack of quality education, which is the root cause of the broken english that went on over time and that persists today with some black ppl?
I mean, come on. Really? That was 100+ years ago and blacks have had PLENTY of access to education since then.
I've known Chinese children who were illiterate in their own language and then brought over to America (adopted) and now speak perfect English. In the SAME GENERATION. You cannot blame the Ebonics of today on what happened 100s of years ago.
Blacks speak Ebonics for one reason, because they want to. It's part of their cultural identity. And that's fine. But don't blame it on something that happened 100 years ago, that's just silly.
I had an African-American roommate in college who had family (also African-American) who lived down south (we were in MD at the time) and she said she couldn't understand half of what any of them said.
I can see what some people are saying though. Relative to itself, the black american english accent sounds more similiar to itself (regardless of the state of origin) than it does to other English accents (white american, irish, scottish, etc.).
Also, Latino accents (from Latin American Spanish speaking countries) sound more similiar in English regardless of the country the Latino is actually from.
That being said, slight tweaks as well as grammar can tell you if a person comes from where you grew up. I can go up or down a state and tell if another person came from my state, based solely on grammar and word usage, if they're speaking freely and not trying to sound uber-professional or formal.
That's what I said in past postings on black peoples's accents. I don't agree about Latino accents. You can usually tell the country of origin of Latino's through their accent. Latino's from Argentina sound very different from Mexicans who sound very different from Puerto Ricans.
I don't agree about Latino accents. You can usually tell the country of origin of Latino's through their accent.
If you speak or understand spanish fluently then yes. But most don't. Most can't tell the difference between Italian, Portoguese or Spanish.
Its like if you travel down to Miami some inner city Cubans speak in the LA Chicano dialect. But the only people who are going to pick this up are either fluent speakers or people who grew up in multilanguage communities.
That's what I said in past postings on black peoples's accents. I don't agree about Latino accents. You can usually tell the country of origin of Latino's through their accent. Latino's from Argentina sound very different from Mexicans who sound very different from Puerto Ricans.
I didn't say you couldn't tell the difference in Latino accents.
What I said was that Latino accents sound very similar to EACH OTHER in English when compared with other accents in English. As in, a Mexican speaking English sounds more like an Argentinian speaking English than an American black person speaking English.
Nothing really earth-shattering here; people that speak the same language have a similar accent to others who also speak that same language.
I mean, come on. Really? That was 100+ years ago and blacks have had PLENTY of access to education since then.
I've known Chinese children who were illiterate in their own language and then brought over to America (adopted) and now speak perfect English. In the SAME GENERATION. You cannot blame the Ebonics of today on what happened 100s of years ago.
Blacks speak Ebonics for one reason, because they want to. It's part of their cultural identity. And that's fine. But don't blame it on something that happened 100 years ago, that's just silly.
I'm glad to see that someone here is making sense. I said it before and I will say it again, I don't need to look at the person to know when a black person is speaking. The accent and sentence structure is so similar throughout the country. It is not ebonic that makes them sound similar but but something iin their history of speaking American english is still apparent in the black comunity. The same isn't true for Asian and Latinos that haven't been brought up in ethnic enclaves. There are many AA that have their region's traditional accent. However because blacks have a tendency to live in segregated communities they have retainrd an accent that is all their own. Weather you want to call it ebonic, AAVE, broken english or just slang, you have to be partially deaf or in denial not to realize it's there.
The woman who is the office manager at my company's Westbury offce has never used slang or been unprofessional on the phone. I've never met her but I can tell she is black by certain words she pronounces snd some of her sentence structure.
Why pointing this out makes some posters accuse me of racism is beyond me but I'm starting to see why whites shy away from race sensitive issues around blacks.
chinese ppl didn't go through slavery, jim crow and the aftermath of it.
they weren't broken like the american black person was.
so yes, really.
cause and effect is real.
the education system in our country has never been equal. of course we have more opportunities today but the playing field is still not equal.
think to yourself, there is a reason as to why the status quo is the way it is.
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