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AAVE is a dialect the same as Haitian Creole and Jamaican Patois. It's 400 years old, and came about organically. It has been studied and has logically consistent grammar.
Every other black ethnic group has their own dialect. Why not American black people?
Exactly. There are dialects all over the world. Certain people just have issues with Black Americans and want to make AAVE into something problematic. There is nothing new about the emersion and existence of AAVE.
Yep, i also said that if people want to speak any way they want around their peers, family, etc, but they ought to learn "proper English grammar" so they can speak in that way when that level is needed.
What I'd like to know is, when white guys who normally have no accent, go down south and they suddenly adopt a southern accent, Biden did this when he went to South Carolina, and Hillary Clinton also. I think they want to make the people there feel like they are kinfolk.
I used to live in rural Connecticut upstate and I've seen tons of young White dudes speaking with fake Southern/Country accents. It was kind of funny.
When I was growing up, my family went on trips to different parts of the USA and SE Asia. When we went to New Orleans to visit some of my dadd's military friends, only my dad seemed to understand what his friends were saying. To us the white guys sounded like the blacks. My brother comes from Chicago. When he speaks normal English he doesn't even have an accent. Then when he switches to what he calls the hood none of us can understand him. Finally my dad made a rule. Like politics, no hood at the dinner table. Later my brother admitted that he only did it to get a rise out of my father. My brother seldom does it anymore. He says blacks have it hard enough without letting their N show. His words, not mine and he is black. He compares it too white trash talking like Deep South rednecks, but as soon as they are with someone they want to impress, suddenly they can be understood again.
This discussion is about dialect, not just accents. Many people often have stronger accents when they are around their own. It has nothing to do with color.
Oh, goody, look folks another black person slamming thread in C-D. And with the prerequisite disclaimer in the original post.
Google dialect, please.
This is a pic of me from Saturday.
I'm Black and that wasn't the purpose of this thread at all. We just need to grow some balls and be willing to listen to different perspectives.
And Black threads always do numbers on here cause it attracts people who would say things they would never say to Black people in conversations in real life so you get the unadulterated, un-PC POV's and I like that.
Those are proper dialects. The so called "aave/ebonics" is not really. No matter how much some people wish to mythologize it as such.
What ebonics really is. Derived from an old, deep south rural hillbilly speak, that was once much more prominent among southern whites. Modern White southerners have largely diverged and been influenced by the speech of an urban middle-class. Which is why they dont sound identical to black southerners. But you can still find remnants of it among some populations of very rural, backwoods types of whites.
Those dialects are no more proper than AAVE/Ebonics. AAVE is far more diverse in origin than simply being a derivative of old white hillbilly talk. It is influenced by the various languages spoken by African groups brought to the U.S. You can find some of the same grammatical patterns in English Creoles in the Caribbean but it’s just that the accents are different.
Let me clarify: I'm not "supporting" Ebonics at all. I'm highly educated and speak proper and I own a tutoring side business.
I just wanted a concrete, bi-partisan definition of what it even is.
Based on the posts here, I now understand that Ebonics is not an actual dialect but is just uneducated Blacks speaking improper English being disguised as a dialect.
My next question is: If uneducated Whites/Hispanics speak improper English, is that also Ebonics or is that called something else?
I am going to suggest that you not base your understanding of linguistics (or any other field of studies) on what a group of randoms say on the politics and other controversies forum of city-data. Just a thought.
I agree with everything you say. I can only conclude that Ebonics is not a real dialect like Patois and is just a Leftist tool to excuse illiteracy in poor people.
Answered my question.
You meaning Jamaican Patois because Patois in most other islands refers to Kreyol/French Creole. The latter is an actual language.
Disagree with you on Ebonics. If you pay attention, there are similarities to dialects in the Caribbean. It just that the accents/pronunciation is different.
Accent and dialect are often linked. In my mother's native land and where I live now, you have true dialects that are based upon the historic language of the region. Those dialects are completely different than Ebonics vs English. Then you have accents. The accent from the north is completely different than mid country and far different than of the south. I speak 4 languages including my mother's. I struggle with the southern accent/ dialects. Perhaps you should define what actually is the difference between slang/ accent and dialect?
In the case of the USA there are those who argue that Ebonics is more than just a lot of slang and is in fact a dialect. I guess everyone is entitled to their opinions.
Linked but they aren’t the same. You can find people with strong accents that speak excellent English in terms of grammar, although some struggle to understand them.
An accent refers to the specific pronunciation/intonation.
A dialect is the subset of a language which has specific pronunciations, vocabulary (often with other linguistic influences) and grammar.
Ebonics / Black English doesn't bother me because I don't speak it, no one in my circles does (not in my presence anyway), and because, frankly, I don't care for it.
In addition to English, in 2021 America, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Tamil, Arabic, Farsi, and a host of other languages are spoken. Yet, when it comes to the white-collar world where my career and my work move and have their being, the only language that matters and the only language which one can afford to speak if one wants to get ahead is English - and while not every email or conversation between colleagues or with clients must be characterized by flawless Queen's English, I speculate that speaking/writing Ebonics / Black English is not conducive to getting promoted/rising the corporate ladder.
The only time I recall encountering anybody either writing or speaking Ebonics / Black English in the workforce was when, in a previous job at a very large U.S. corporation with branches all over the world, in an email chain, a black woman wrote an unprofessional and unpolished email (with me cc'd on it) to the effect of "there is a personal named xxxxx who never picks up their phone and doesn't answer their email" - but the spelling was laden with errors and even without reading that person's name, it was clear this was a black person.
I was angry and offended because this person was saying I wasn't doing my job and promptly called the black woman's boss, who was also cc'd. He gently calmed me down and assured me he knew I had done nothing inappropriate.
As long as whoever wants to speak Ebonics / Black English does it in his/her private time outside my work-related interactions, I have no problem with it. And I must admit that black Americans whom I deal with in even the most casual settings speak fine English when I talk to them. If it is like a dialect to them which they can turn on and off like a machine, that's fascinating. I simply happen to believe very strongly in learning a language properly and that includes correct grammar and diction.
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