The Top 5 things the EXPERTS wish you knew about African American English/AAVE (Not what you think!)

In this video, I interview four experts on African American English: Dr. Sonja Lanehart, Dr. Hiram Smith, Minnie Quartey Annan, and Christopher Hall, to learn what they wish the public knew about African American English. Their responses weren't what I expected! They discussed everything from who speaks it, to what we call it (with discussion of AAL: "African American Language").
In our wide-ranging discussions, 5 themes emerged:
1. Not all Black Americans speak it and not everyone who speaks it is Black.
2. AAE is systematic. It has rules!
3. The fact that it has rules means that you can get it wrong.
4. The reason it is stigmatized is not about linguistic facts, but are because people use language as a proxy for racial discrimination.
5.It has multiple registers, including a formal register (sometimes called African American Standard English, AASE)
Dr. Lanehart's book, The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, is available for purchase here: amzn.to/3tU1mSx
I will add a purchase link for Dr. Smith's book when it becomes available.
More of my interview with Dr. Lanehart is available here: • Interview with Dr. Son...
The Corpus of Regional African American Language can be found here: oraal.uoregon.edu/coraal
Other recommended reading:
African American English: Structure, History, and Use: amzn.to/3FWFA2X
African American English: A Linguistic Introduction: amzn.to/343KKNt
The study with the "cookie monster" test: link.springer.com/chapter/10....
T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs here: languagejones.creator-spring.com
Book links above are amazon affiliate links.

[@yzwariij]

This makes me thinking about Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" which people seem to read as "if you have no woman in your life, you will never have any heartbreak, and therefore no reason to cry." Everyone's happy without a woman in their life." But what it actually means is that it's plea to the woman "please woman, don't cry". It's Jamaican Creole English.

[@paganjoe1]

"No Woman, No Cry" was a song by Bob Marley; Stevie Wonder "samples" it but it is Marley's song.

[@yzwariij]

@@paganjoe1 yes you are right! Sorry, I mixed the names. I wasn't even aware Stevie Wonder had sampled it. I'm just not good with names and often confuses them. I will edit. Thanks! 😇

[@bogusmcbogus2637]

No one ever explained that meaning to me, but I inferred it from the feel of the song. Idk, the meaning just jumped out at me. "No, woman; don't cry." I've never interpreted it having the other meaning you said.

[@helio3928]

that would be "no, woman, no cry"

[@M4TCH3SM4L0N3]

It was so crazy to me when I learned that many people misunderstood this about the song. It's just such a clear message with clear inflection and the rest of the lyrics support it: "so dry your tears" and "little darling, don't shed no more tears" are clearly not meant to advise men to abandon intimate relationships with women.

[@ogawasanjuro]

I am Black and I totally failed the "Cookie Monster Test". The PhDs are right! AAL is a social thing!

[@Densoro]

The Cookie Monster test was such a perfect crossup. The distinction between AAE and AAVE was also enlightening. I had learned to engage with it as a _system with consistent rules,_ but I didn't realize I still had such basic misconceptions _within_ that.

[@merrytunes8697]

Yes, Cookie Monster for the win!

[@stacyguffey6743]

Those are the five things I wish people knew about the variety of English I grew up speaking, and many people still speak, in the mountains of Southern Appalachia. I'm glad to see videos like this. These kinds of conversations, hopefully, will lead to less stigmatism around varieties of English.

[@Muhahahahaz]

Oh, I think I saw a video of your dialect on KZbin! Never heard it before, and I was surprised to discover it. The clip was short, but I don’t think I was able to understand the speaker (Though there were several other English dialects in the video, so I can’t remember for sure)

[@Spvrinnaeli]

"What's the thing you wish people knew about AAE?" "It's a thing." Hahaha, I love it. Perfectly said. It's exists, it has rules, and it's as legitimate as any other dialect of English.

[@nickpavia9021]

No, AAVE is fake. Black Americans don't talk any one particular way.

[@gillablecam]

Christopher Hall's point about people caring more about the way something is said than the content of information conveyed is absolutely correct. There's the extremely relevant cases of the same idea being accepted when said by a white person but denigrated when said by a person of colour, but I also see it in my work. I'm a doctor, and more doctors are sued here in Australia over poor communication than malpractice. You get very different responses to the same content (e.g. the death of a loved one) based on the characteristics of the speaker, word choice, and paraverbal cues

[@ZaZaZoo22]

I somewhat disagree. I have seen this many times when white people write grammatically incorrect sentences. I have experienced this myself and have argued the same thing about the understanding of the content and not nitpicking about the delivery of the message. Though I have definitely seen discrimination against aae speakers no matter who’s speaking it but it seems to be directly related to black speakers.

[@venomousbluefrog]

Just for perspective, if you go to Jamaica you will see considerable ethnic diversity, and the use of Jamaican patois is not limited to any particular ethnicity. It's a cultural feature.

[@zenonandries5872]

This is great! The guests were interesting, and you're a knowledgeable and articulate host. Would love to see more diverse linguistics videos coming from this channel. Keep it up :)

[@languagejones6784]

More to come!

[@JNC7]

The point that not all black people speak it is right on the money. I would also add the point that not all black people can speak it well. I grew up in a predominantly white area so I wasn’t exposed to AAE/AAL as a black kid growing up in Atlanta might (I live in North Texas for context). However, I due to having black/mixed parents I was always plugged in and exposed, to some degree, to AAL. Kind of like an accent, my AAE comes out stronger when I’m happy/sad/mad/with black friends, but I’m not the best at it, as I use ASE (American Standard English) more and have to codeswitch to that more often. Because of this I might view the grammar of the Cookie Monster test through ASE (I.e., I selected Elmo instead of CM, although I also understood the AAL form of the question). I want to connect to my roots and black side of my bloodline, so it’s something that I’m still learning.

[@vergespierre4271]

A vast majority of "black" Americans do and understand via environment. Not foreign blacks

[@BeautyAnarchist]

It’s really important to acknowledge the validity and legitimacy of a language because I got offended when someone said that a language that is specific to Ivorian people called Nouchi was broken French because I saw that as a personal attack on my identity. People rarely talk about the ties between language and identity but also our relationship with that said language. I often speak about the different relationship I have to different languages that I have spoken and 2 that I continue to speak, I lost my mother tongue btw so that’s really tough but people that only speak one language look at me like I’m odd for having this deep way of thinking about language not saying that there’s not people who speak one language that don’t do that but it’s been my experience that people happen to be really clueless about what I’m talking about.

[@connormurphy683]

Aren't there a lot of Dioula words in Nouchi?

[@ssmovassmova563]

It's not a language, that's the whole point...

[@kahlilbt]

Love this. As a Black linguist, this made me so thirsty for continuing scholarship on our languages. I want to add one. Black peoples' language ideologies and social concepts of language aren't the same as mainstream / white perceptions of language. And that's okay. An example, "profanity" in our language/community doesn't follow mainstream rules. But there ARE rules. They're our own rules. We don't tend to look at terms themselves as obscene, we have contexts where they are obscene. My Black family never told or modeled that certain words were taboo. Instead they told me where certain speech was or was not allowed ("in my house" / "the streets" / "school" / "with your friends" / "outside" / "in front of me"). My white family instructed me that certain words were "dirty" or wrong, and that certain words should never be used in any context. They didn't necessarily DO that, but that was the language ideology that was passed around. I even had a Black pastor admit unashamedly that it was okay to cuss at home watching the game! Our culture treats language different.

[@bogusmcbogus2637]

I loved the video, too. One thing I thought when it ended was the different registers (not a linguist, sorry if I get the scientific terminology wrong!) used in music. Like, hip hop is today a huge mainstream production with a multiracial audience. I wonder how the form of AAE in big records differs from the AAE in music or art where the audience is predominately AA, or if there even is a difference.

[@nickpavia9021]

Profanity isn't a "white" or "black" thing. There are plenty of black people who tell their children that using profanity is wrong, and there are plenty of white people who don't care about their children using profanity. Your very limited personal experience doesn't make your very broad claims about race true.

[@DavidLindes]

Ooh, having contexts for where certain words/phrases/whatever are appropriate, rather than hard rules to never use certain coinages, strikes me as such a better way to think about it. Good stuff.

[@kaitlyn__L]

That’s really interesting, I notice the same thing among Scots and English people in the UK. “Not at school” here is “that’s a bad word” in England. People regularly use all sorts of “forbidden” words in casual conversation, to the point they’re often the highest compliment _in the right situation._ English tourists have a hard time not being offended at being “insulted” up here even when they’re actually being heavily complimented, because it’s a “bad thing” to be called. At most they might use it “ironically”, but never sincerely.

[@kahlilbt]

@@kaitlyn__L I love this!

[@comradewindowsill4253]

The point on linguistic stigma is interesting to me, because I think you can find, for every established language, with its own linguistic institutions and dictionaries, a corresponding set of stigmatized forms of speech, dialects, and related languages which are viewed as simply incorrect forms of that language without any linguistic basis- and all of them have in common an associated general stigma of identity. For example, in russia, there is a sizable and genuine sentiment that ukrainian is simply bad russian. the associated south russian accent is also viewed as uncultured, and the reasons for this are not linguistic, they are historic and sociopolitical.

[@fairygoat15]

Right, this is making me think of Canadian french a lot...as well as pretty much any dialect of french spoken outside of France. Which, the more I think about it, the more I think may also have ties to Black culture.

[@unapatton1978]

Same with German dialects.

[@inigo8740]

I'm sure my grandmother is not the only Spaniard to say that Catalan is badly spoken Spanish.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@inigo8740that’s interesting, my dad always made a point to say Castilian rather than just Spanish. But then he lived in Catalonia for a few years right after the civil war interviewing tons of people in Catalan, Castilian, and everything in between.

[@escarlit]

great comment. this dynamic definitely exists among spanish speaking cultures.

[@jkfecke]

One of the best changes in the way we talk about language now compared to when I was a kid is that we have gotten away from the idea that there is a "correct" form of speaking. We can discuss standard American English, and the rules that generally hold, and we can discuss AAE/AAVE, and the rules that generally hold, and they're both "right" in their own way. Also, the invariant be is something we should have in standard American English.

[@cathybroadus4411]

The sad part is not being able to convince my own Black family that AAE/AAVE is a codified language.

[@Thrilla4romManila]

I learned so much, thank you and your guests for shedding light on this topic.

[@stevenglowacki8576]

I once worked at a place that heavily employed African American people that weren't 100% aware of what all the standard English forms for their idioms were, and I remember it caused a bit of confusion when one of them asked me where I "stayed". I answered with something that made no sense based on what I thought she was asking, and she had to paraphrastically come up with what she meant, because she didn't know that in standard English she would ask where I "lived". That's 100% a usage issue and not a grammar issue, and it's somewhat like the difference between a car's bonnet and hood, but instead of living an ocean apart, she was from an area less than 20 miles away.

[@aleaaerktyka1052]

What? How she could not know that and also you? Haha strange

[@rafaellazanchet5452]

Great video ! I'm going to be teaching english as a second language and I want to discuss these social , cultural and linguistic topics, that most times you don't really see on these types of classes. I think learning a language is also about learning culture and history, because after all, everything is intertwined

[@fluffymcdeath]

The sociological things are interesting but on a pragmatic level, when teaching a language to people it serves the student best if you teach them the version of the language associated with the highest income earners in the destination where they intend to use the language.

[@kitkatcasey427]

@@fluffymcdeath I disagree! I think it depends on what the students want to use the language for (for business, for friendships, to enjoy media, out of linguistic curiosity, and plenty of other reasons), and also, I'd expect that people are definitely capable of learning and differentiating between multiple forms/dialects/etc of a language. the Spanish-as-a-new-language classes I took taught both formal and informal vocabulary, Latin American and European Spanish, etc etc, and my ability to actually communicate in Spanish has benefitted immensely from it.

[@RosalioRedPanda]

Love this video. I was looking for info about AAVE just last year and felt disheartened by the lack of video material. I feel enchanted to learn about this wonderful thing that I grew around.

[@pluflop]

I was always under the impression that the name just sort of evolved over time going back to Ebonics. I didn't realize that AAE was more than just an updated name for AAVE

[@dawahaddict]

The question about which I was the most interested and the most hopeful for its inclusion was actually the first one that was addressed! Thank you again for another wonderful video and thank you to all of the scholars who participated.

[@willbaren]

Fascinating and enlightening. Thank you to you and your guests. Cheers.

[@marthaking6779]

Thank you so much for this!! Thank you!!!

[@guilhermedantas5067]

Great video, Dr. Jones!

[@sananton2821]

Three things I'm interested in knowing more about: 1. More grammatical features like the ungrammaticality of "ain't be," and not just the well-known stuff like habitual markers, double negation, copula deletion, naked possessives, etc. The use of "come" as an indignant discourse marker is the kind of thing I mean. 2. Some of the rules for when the letter s is absent where it is present in Standard English. I hear Black speakers very often delete s's when speaking Standard English in positions that surprise me, and it seems to me to be related to more basilectal AAVE. Things like "Jone" instead of "Jones" or simple plural s deletion. Overgeneralization from absent s in possessives? 3. The level of articulation in the language. I often find myself unable to understand Black English in real life because of what I'd describe as extremely weak articulation. As a Scot, I've noticed the same thing in speakers of many varieties of Scottish English: the articulation is simply extremely weak. I have almost never seen papers on this phenomenon, but it is possible to clearly articulate and to indistinctly articulate the same speech sounds, and it seems to me that some cultures articulate very weakly as a general rule (AAVE, Scottish varieties, maaaaybe Danish and Stockholm Swedish?) and some articulate very strongly (Standard German). You often get situations where higher registers are articulated dramatically more clearly than lower ones, and in general, women articulate much more clearly than men in all languages (Russian is a notable example among the languages I speak). Just to flesh out what I mean.

[@krtierney]

number 2 fosho

[@indef2def]

#2: I don't think that's some kind of morphological generalization, but rather phonological: final consonant cluster reduction, which generally applies when the place of articulation and voicing are shared. (Since the "s" in "Jones" is of course a /z/.)

[@erichbrough6097]

Side issue: does the verb/noun 'jones' come from AAVE as I've assumed it does?

[@CJLloyd]

Very interesting. Thanks. I've been noticing more qualified people talking about AAE/AAVE in the past few years, and it's really good to see. Now I'm wondering if there is a similar effort for engaging the public in the reality Multicultural London English. In England (not the rest of the UK - see Scots and the Celtic languages), dialectal prejudice is usually more about class than about race, but I think in the case of MLE, it's much more comparable to the situation with AAE. But maybe I'm way off here.

[@AAA-fh5kd]

The roots of AAE are Scots , Hiberno and colonial english dialects. habitual be and other forms of is/be, ain't ye-aw Ye'all. etc All from Scots via Ulster. This entire video is a joke, Every feature claimed as 'standard' is the grammar of Appalachian English (Scotch-Irish english). Why the pandering to only AAE as being somehow more relevant or unique or more 'persecuted' based on contrived 'racial' lines applies to all other "white" languages not taught or used widely in the u.s. today. Scots is the root. It's the SCOTS language and older /regional dialects of ENGLISH in England that give AAE its core. From the isle of wight to west country, to ulster. AAE is used all over pop culture and widely celebrate, in Hiphop around the world.. u.s. "Southern dialect" also celebrated worldwide in Country music fans. It all originated with the diasporas of britain/ireland.

[@HiiipowerHabits]

@@AAA-fh5kdtop weirdo nobody copying that shit.

[@nickpavia9021]

​@@AAA-fh5kdExactly. Most of these "black" regional accents which get grouped under AAVE are just southern dialects (which are also used by white people in said regions, so people need to stop making it racial)

[@AAA-fh5kd]

@@nickpavia9021Yep, But that isnt discounting the unique(and shared) aspects of (great migration)AAVE< I absolutely hear+see the things that are similar in terms of lexicon/grammar+ accent features(but I know this from firsthand lived experience some decades ago, Pre net/youtube etc) 'slang' and evolved features exist in modern 'appalachia' as must as the regional disaporas of "AVE" speakers but the language stems from the original dialects. There was nothing passed on via 'dna' just as the case for any human being. Reaching further into caribbean/african creoles is all agenda driven study, not based on any logical linguistic evidence. The agenda is to find some source that is "non-white" (already a flawed term) but "non-european/anglic etc".

[@justin.booth.]

Well I think the big difference with MLE is that it's ... multicultural. As in not an accent perceived as completely restricted to a single racial group the way AAE is.

[@lewessays]

As a non-native English speaker, I always thought I was using slang. Thanks for the dose of knowledge ☺

[@nickpavia9021]

A lot of it is slang. I would suggest avoiding it. Despite what the maker of this video says, it is NOT correct English, and it will make your communication very unclear in most situations.

[@tatherva7387]

Ignore that other guy. They're just bitter that linguistic prejudice is falling out of fashion. A native speaker can understand you just fine, provided that they want to understand you.

[@nickpavia9021]

@@tatherva7387 Stop lying to this person. You call me "prejudiced", yet you are setting this person up to fail.

[@jojbenedoot7459]

​@@nickpavia9021you don't have a background in linguistics, do you? No one variety of English is more "correct" than another, some are simply more *standard*. AAE doesn't always comply with the rules of Standard American English, but neither does any other regional or cultural dialect or even idiolect. While it may be true that mixing in elements of AAE might make your English less understandable (since it's further from the standard), that does *not* mean that AAE is "incorrect," and any linguist worth their salt will tell you that

[@nickpavia9021]

@@jojbenedoot7459 AAE isn't real. Most people who study linguistics formally are morons.

[@wolf1066]

This was fascinating, thanks.

[@lazygardens]

Love your channel! It would be interesting if you could do a video and trace some of the features, such as the use of "no" as an emphasis marker back to their origins. As a 100% not AAE native speaker ... I have no problems understanding it as long as it stays out of the deep weeds of slang.

[@artugert]

Please do a video about what the difference is between a language, dialect, accent, pidgin, creole, etc.

[@HippocraticHustle]

AAL and all of its variants are a beautiful language, along with the accents. It’s an amazing example of language that is living and evolving. I wish more people would appreciate it at this level.

[@timmcdaniel6193]

I got this video as a KZbin recommendation, having seen a few others by languagejones. The terms AAL, AAE, and AAVE were used at the start of this video, but I think I got a general idea of what they mean, but only by inferring from context towards the end. I think I would have been helped by having that framework from the start.

[@candlespotlight]

Great video!

[@FR4NKYEtheIV]

The Cookie Monster test is brilliant

[@nixonmanuel6459]

You should do language and phrase comparisons for AAVE and SAE like for example some linguists do comparing Scots English and London English.

[@humanperson8418]

I don't just think it's a race thing. I think we should also look at it through a class lens. In England, we have something similar with regional accents. As a kid, I was taught to speak in RP, being told that a regional accent made me seem less intelligent. That qualities such as the glottal t made me sound lazy. All people have unconscious biases, an the way others talk is one of them.

[@RobespierreThePoof]

I'm fairly sure that any non-native learner of English would immediately recognize AAE as a dialect. It is only Americans who are confused about this.

[@darkstarr984]

Yeah. As a kid I always just thought of it as “well that’s how people talk in these areas, it doesn’t matter that it’s not formal English. Nobody speaks in formal English.” But I am a native English speaker. It’s more that I grew up in an area where people speak in a fairly wide variety of ways.

[@marcusknutsson2118]

If one wanted to look at/study the grammar, phonology etc. of AAE, where to go? Anyone have tips for learning reasources or documentation?

[@llareia]

I'm not going to say that racism doesn't play a factor in stigma against AAL or AAVE as it obviously does; But I will add that from my own experience growing up in rural "white America", I distinctly get the impression that a bigger factor in the instinctive reaction rural white Americans have against AAVE is because those rural white Americans grew up being constantly told that their OWN vernacular was bad and wrong, and being constantly "corrected" by teachers, and it feels like a double standard to them to have it one way for white Americans and another way for black Americans. Again, I think this is just one factor in a multifactor issue.

[@edwardjohnson3547]

I remember being in. Sixth grade and not being able to understand my black math teacher witch caused me to struggle trying to understand what he was trying to teach

[@christi2054]

Thank you for making this video, educational indeed thanks again... Peace!

[@lazuli2199]

Thanks!

[@Keelsman]

Wunderbar!

[@jamesfox-exelby111]

Really interesting thanks for making this video, I found it through r/linguistics. I'm in the UK and so don't know much about AAE or have much exposure though there are similar ethnicity based dialects here. One thing I have been curious about is the emergence of AAE terms and/or features into the wider English language sphere, due to its prevalence in popular culture. Personally I'm noticing things like "X be..." being used, even by myself.

[@languagejones6784]

There's definitely a video in the works on that topic. What's especially interesting to me is that those borrowings often obliterate the tense/aspect/mood distinctions in AAE, so they end up meaning something different.

[@jamesfox-exelby111]

@@languagejones6784 I noticed that on the video and it's definitely true. When I use and hear the construction it's always present tense, and it's always in that simple form i.e. no tense it negation. Looking forward to future videos on this, thankyou for taking the time to make them.

[@dawahaddict]

@@languagejones6784 can’t wait!

[@Arkylie]

This is just making me want a video going over several of the unique features with use cases and actual clips of people using them in context (like Youglish does for standard English). ...of course, I also want to see that for Hiberno-English and how that plays out in Irish-American dialects, and one for Hawaiian Pidgin as well, if that's possible. The fuzzy edges between languages is endlessly intriguing. (I just had to think whether to use "is" or "are" there, and I think "is" because I'm referring to the whole set of fuzzy edges, rather than referring to them as discrete things with separate forms of interest. But I'm questioning my usage.)

[@j.s.c.4355]

I watched a video from Eat Sleep Dream English, which is a british presenter presenting primarily British english to non native speakers. He had a video about the difference between American and British slang, and something I noticed repeatedly was that most of his American slang came from AAVE, particularly that from the 90’s. I think maybe he heard it all on Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I wish that people, british or American, had more appreciation of how much of our language today comes from African American roots. Did you know “tote” is a borrowing from an African language?

[@jaymag87]

At the 10:37 mark you state “if you say double negatives are wrong, but you say French is sophisticated or that you love Russian Literature, then you are not being consistent.” Linguistically, is it possible for double negatives to be wrong or inappropriate in one language (as we were taught in grade school and HS school English) but correct or appropriate in another language (like French or Russian)?

[@dactylntrochee]

I'm not so sure I buy Dr Anan's point that prejudice is against the face-type and not the language. I'm in a difficult position insofar as my language is mid-Atlantic "newscaster", a kind of Received Pronunciation for America. For that reason, my form of English seems "standard" to me. Gotta be careful about that, since I've identified quite a few idiocies in our form of English. While I wouldn't call my position "prejudiced", it's definitely affected by speech -- regardless of face-type. There's a classic working-class accent found around New York (where I live) that's often called the Brooklyn accent. Its speakers are usually of European descent, and it registers on me during a conversation, while "newscaster" is transparent to me (that is, I register only content, and not presentation.) Now, I'm not stupid. I know there's more to trust and good citizenship than group affinity, but speech other than my own way sets off a marker in the negative direction for me. It's a small marker, but it's still there. I don't know that it's any different in degree from when I hear AAE. A black face registers on my system, but if the person in question is speaking college English, the matter of ancestry is almost imperceptible. To put it differently, I'm much more comfortable with Black people who sound like me and my gang, than I am with Europeans who speak with "deeze, dems, and doze". If I had to extricate myself from a difficult situation, I'd surely rather have the help of a Black person who speaks as I do, than a White one who's "not on the program". (Sorry, but that's just how I am. WE came here and learned to "do as the Romans", and I AM MOST AT HOME with others who have done the same.) I don't think I'm alone in this. Here are two specific examples for my own case: 1) My mother went to college (1945) and took speech classes, with both before- and after- recordings. Her sister didn't go to college. My mother taught the sound and usage to my father, who believed in the value of her higher education. My aunt's family always sounded a little ghetto to me (Jewish ghetto. My great-grandparents didn't speak English, though they lived in New York. They arrived as adults.) My cousins also [still] sound a little ghetto to me. We're not close. 2) I had a Black high school friend who was the son of immigrants. He, like most of the immigrants' kids I went to school with, spoke like Walter Cronkite. (Most of my second-generation classmates came from southern or eastern Europe. This fellow's folks were from the Caribbean, so they were probably, though not necessarily, Anglophones.) It's of secondary, but notable importance, that while most of the Black kids in my class self-isolated and took vocational classes, my friend took academic classes and had a White girlfriend. In other words, he chose not "be different", and he was, to the best of my knowledge, not treated differently. I always assumed -- without statistics to back things up -- that his status as "regular guy" came from his speech, and not his appearance. My sample of one is hardly good science, yet I suspect lots of others have similar perceptions. It's for these reasons that I don't think Dr Anan's observation is necessarily true. Visual input is important, for sure, but speech is the strongest determinant of my level of comfort with strangers. Curiously, if I consider not strangers -- but people I actually know and interact with -- then my comfort level depends ENTIRELY on action and content, and speech & appearance nearly disappear from my formula. In that case, the only thing I demand from speech is clarity and non-ambiguity; everything is up for grabs and immaterial to me.

[@internetphia]

Good stuff.

[@What_Makes_Climate_Tick]

I am an upper middle class, well educated white person. I was brought up in a small town with a considerable range of socioeconomic levels, although not much racial diversity. I have to catch myself, though, from stigmatizing people of whatever race who use non-standard grammar or have a strong accent, even the strongest examples of the accent I was brought up around ("Minnesota accent"). I.e. I don't think that such stigma is only racially based. One of my pet peeves is the use of "alls" instead of "all" (mostly because I associate it with a particular person who did this a lot). Maybe someone has done a study on this, but I suspect that there are rules about when this is done, and I suspect that at least one rule is that it goes at the beginning of a sentence when it is separated from the word "is" by one or more words. Ex: "Alls we have is..."

[@merrytunes8697]

I have never heard ‘All’s’ the way you used it in a sentence. And I grew up with very country people.

[@isajames6000]

Question/observation: my African American ex-husband was a Canadian teacher and mostly spoke the locally "acceptable" english. But when he was with family from Philadelphia, he would speak what I once referred to as "home speak" (no disrespect intended). He was more animated, more at ease, more expressive. Is that a thing too? Or just restricted to specific individuals? (It was beautiful to observe.)

[@noahlomax1]

It is a thing. Our language is our identity and that is also our culture. So when we're "home" (and it doesn't have to be the physical location but a call or pop up with family), our language becomes the familiarity that may have been missing in our day-to-day. So when we're speaking to family, we're speaking to hearts, memories, traditions and love that brings joy unto us.

[@tedcrowley6080]

I can easily understand spoken AAE, but I would never try to speak it. The same is true for "southern" and for rural Texan.

[@Cadcare]

You wear contacts. I just noticed. Maybe six videos in. I also wear glasses but have never liked wearing contact lenses. I prefer the cleanliness of my shower to merely suspicious. I like your channel. I didn't know about AAE. Thank you. And if I am wrong about you wearing contacts, then it's for the Algorithm's utility. I'd love to hear what you think about what I would naively call 'Aboriginal Australian English'.

[@latashatate7224]

I'm really trying to wrap my head around that there was an actual legitimate name other Ebonics for how black folks talk. This is why black children should have the opportunity to attend HBCUs for at least black cultural education, because if you leave it to society they will make you feel stupid, uneducated, and improper for being you. We will even condemn ourselves and other black folks for it. My grandmother was a proud AA woman, but was always on me about speaking the King's English. I completely understood because she grew up in a time where assimilation was a necessity. I speak it at home with my sons and they are aware that the ability to code switch is also a necessity in most work environments. However, I don't condemn them for using it because I use it, their family uses it, their black friends use it, etc. When they hear me code switch on the phone, they think it's the funniest thing in the world. They be lightn me up! 😂

[@enysuntra1347]

How does "Jive" fit into this? My English book definition of Jive could also describe AAE, so when is it Jive, when is it AAE, and what's the difference between the one and the other?

[@noahlomax1]

Jive is no different than saying Ebonics, which is also no different than saying AAE or AAVE. How Black Americans talk is the takeaway.

[@mobo7420]

So I find the case of Rachel Dolezal quite fascinating, especially because to me it looks like one person's personality issues being turned into a political debate caused by herself (basically she speaks for others who didn't ask her to). I recently watched the Netflix documentary about her and just found it sad. In any case, you show her three times in the video whenever you say that people can do AAVE wrong. Can you give some examples of her mistakes?

[@christophermichael5764]

3:09 I enjoyed that reference lol

[@YoungPiK1]

Would u ever talk to John McWhorter?

[@ldmtag]

Would've been great if you had shown some examples if various registers of AAE and told the difference betwern AAE and AAL instead of just repeating that AAL exists.

[@poissonpuerile8897]

Was Walt Wolfram, one of the world's top two or three experts on AAE, not available? Or does he just have the wrong skin color?

[@theprincesscrown1509]

Great video! I’m interested in why it’s not referred to as Black American English instead of African American.

[@nvdawahyaify]

I'm confused about "she ain't be doin' that " being incorrect. I hear people using that kind of phrase frequently. It might be a very local variation. I live on the central coast of California.

[@shawn9210]

I am also from California and I have also heard that used. I think it might be a regional variation. The point still remains that there are rules because "She be ain't doin' that" would sound incorrect to me. But "she ain't be doin' that" would clearly mean to me that the subject has never done whatever that is referring to. The construction would also imply that the speaker is negating an accusation.

[@MyWissam]

I don't suppose I can learn AAE on Duolingo. Any suggestions?

[@johaquila]

I believe Jive is a variety of AAVE? In any case, regarding Minnie Quartey Annan's comment at 10:44, the Jive scene from "Airport" obviously needs to be mentioned in this context. This scene is easy to find on KZbin, as is an interview with Barbara Billingsley.

[@AskMiko]

Jive was slang / street language. The movie “Airplane” premiered 43 years ago which highlights how no one uses Jive today. The dialect became popular in part of the blaxploitation movement in cinema. Those who spoke in Jive didn’t speak it as a primary language… it was a dialect amongst themselves or close knit group. The movie made it a parody. It’s not included widely because it occurred during a specific period of time.

[@stevencarr4002]

If I use 'They are here' to refer to one person in AAVE , am I breaking any grammatical rules?

[@itim777]

Not for AAVE, no.

[@itim777]

In AAVE, “they here” could be used to refer to a single person or multiple persons.

[@corylanza2307]

I thought this type of English was normal honestly half my life and I’m white im around this race more then my own and honestly I wouldn’t want it any different culture in my city is mostly African American and Hispanic this type of English is very common here you grow up in it it’s normal to you crazy I get alone with other races more then my own I guess it’s all about who you grow up around

[@fairygoat15]

What I've been trying to figure out is at what point a term becomes apart of AAE. Is it any word that a Black person invented? What if it was one Black person in a predominantly white community? Or, does it only become AAE once it is widely adopted by a predominantly Black community/group of people? I can't seem to find any information on this, and I think it would clear a lot up as far as the line between terms that are "slang" and terms that are real parts of AAE.

[@stephenspackman5573]

At what point does a word become part of English? Culturally, we don't tend to have language bureaux in the English speaking world to tell us when a word is ‘official’, and if you look to Oxford words are apparently dated just from the first time they appear in print (though they may have to achieve a level of currency before they are backdated to that point). But there's certainly no requirement that a Black person have _invented_ a word. There's plenty of vocabulary overlap between AAE and other languages-most notably, but far from exclusively, English. Languages are just what language communities agree them to be, regardless of origin, and each community, large or small, has its own language.

[@HiiipowerHabits]

You’re still thinking about it in slang terms…when AAE are things and rules of language that Black people have been using through generations…a lot of “slang” or AAVE can clearly be rooted back to Black people and our subcultures with Black culture as a whole

[@noahlomax1]

Every language has slang. AAVE/AAE does as well. The connotation we give to words and/or phrases based on shared experiences, being cool, finding a shorter way of saying something verbose, creating a new word or phrase altogether and how all of these things are done by different AAVE/AAE speakers in different regions of America is how slang works within the confines of AAVE/AAE. When it finds its way to mainstream society, possibly through Hip-Hop, a meme, a gif or a video of users of the slang, then it may put on as many faces and races as people who listen or absorb the slang. If you watch enough Black TV, or have AAVE/AAE using Black people around you, you'll see and hear words and phrases within AAVE/AAE's slang that will start to pop up online and soon outside of the Black community.

[@juniper617]

I’m pretty sure I (white person) learned all of these points in the 1980’s while studying under Bill Labov at U Penn. it’s kind of depressing that we still have to be trying to get the point across to people, 40 years later.

[@karenwatson5732]

Take the "have to" out. Ijs.

[@user-fm5eh1fi5z]

Would it be offensive if I learned the AAVE as a foreigner?

[@hilariousname6826]

I'm not African-American, but since it's been four weeks now, I'll have to do till an African-American comes along. I don't know if it would be "offensive", but if you started mastering AAVE, you would risk coming across as someone who is "trying to be" African-American, and being derided by people of all races. You would be better off mastering standard 'American English' or standard 'British English', and, if you have the opportunity to become immersed in an English-language environment, to accept whatever the accent and usage of that environment is.

[@Fred_BLN]

What I just don't understand as an outsider is the point: "AAVE makes you different from mainstream society and if you feel excluded from mainstream society, or mainstream society doesn't want to give you a job, then why do you say mainstream society is ignorant or racist? You just try to fit in better" For me in Europe, where we have several languages ​​and we also have English as our main language, everyone always tries to get so good that there is no longer any difference between to a native speaker.

[@B-System]

As was mentioned here, but n great part that is down to the specific context of chattel slavery in the United States, and the circumstances of its abolition and subsequent treatment of black Americans. It's not directly replicated in Europe, although you can contrast the reception of white western Europeans or Scandinavians with the reception of Africans in Europe for a picture that isn't dissimilar.

[@Serenity_Dee]

I'm also a white person who grew up in an AAE community; I very consciously avoid using it in mixed groups, as a rule, because I don't want to encourage cultural appropriation, but I can code-switch into it at the drop of a hat if I'm in the right group.

[@bogusmcbogus2637]

I grew up in heavily mixed Latino and Black neighborhoods all my life and went to a black high school. First girlfriends were all black. I totally get this.

[@tonesaucer1399]

You're not appropriating our language or culture when you grew up in the culture. It's not about your skin it's about where you came from. With that being said I understand why you choose not to when you are around strangers because of the backlash you may get from both sides.

[@erichbrough6097]

I, too, find myself code-switching a bit when in the right company - mostly things learned from being around black classmates. A decent amount of AAVE has become mainstream as it is.

[@nickpavia9021]

AAVE doesn't exist. If someone has a problem with the way you speak due to your race, that is THEIR problem. Not yours. Don't change to please others.

[@FirstName-zt2my]

What's the difference between AAE and Ebonics? I know it was mentioned that this isn't qualitatively bad English but didn't a culture of low education create this to begin with?

[@timflatus]

It would be interesting to compare other African diaspora forms of English. I'm much more familiar with BEV / LME etc. as I'm on the other side of the Atlantic

[@you6382tube]

very important point: 12:00

[@thewordsmith5440]

People think they can say weird things like "You be finna do" and they are speaking black but that actually doesn't make sense.

[@languagejones6784]

100% (although we could probably make that exact string work -- "you (always) be finna do something stupid when he get you mad, so you should be glad she's always there to talk you down.")

[@joshcortezmusic8697]

I find African influence on language so interesting, such as Creole and AAVE.

[@lohphat]

Professor John McWhorter notably missing.

[@languagejones6784]

He doesn’t speak AAE and is adamant in multiple places that he hates being asked about it and hates the assumption that he speaks it. If I want to discuss a minority opinion on the history of English in England, I’ll think about hitting him up.

[@DavidLindes]

Something I'd wish for: some classes in AAE/AAL (or even AAVE, though I'm now much less likely to use that term, at least until I have a greater understanding of the difference, and then only to refer to the more specific concept)... Like, I came into this video knowing the "be" thing (from other media that helped inspire my newfound interest in AAL), and you laid out a few other things in this video, and I presume more in the other video ("What is AAVE?", which is in my queue to watch after this), but... I presume there's much much more, and I'd like to know about it all! Because I'd like to be able to speak it correctly, or at least understand it better when I hear it.... Any resources you could recommend?

[@patja89]

Point #3 sounds kind of prescriptivist, doesn't it? You can get it wrong in the sense that it won't really sound native or even close to it but to classify language as correct or incorrect seems sort of contrary to what most linguists teach these days.

[@SkullLee_Christiaan]

I found it interesting that you treat AAE almost as a new language and not just a dialect. I wonder if you would do the same with South-African black English. Some of the older speakers still swap gender in pronouns. They do the same for Afrikaans, and funnily if I chat with one like that I tend to do the same.

[@eritain]

I'll take this opportunity to plug "Language in Society," a picture book about language variation, centered on and narrated in AAE, written by my grad-school colleague, Dr. Nandi Sims. It even has a mini research activity for learning about language attitudes by asking people to read a short paragraph in parallel AAVE and Standard English versions and talk about how they imagine the writers. As for what I myself wish people knew: Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, though written in dialect, are not the minstrelsy that misused stereotypes of that dialect. Nor are they Disney's Song of the South that borrowed them while painting some sort of fond, voluntary postbellum servitude over top of the plantation system's cruelty. Harris was so careful as to transcribe different accents of Black speech with different spellings, and he published only stories he had two independent sources for. Uncle Remus is no Uncle Tom; he has a kind relationship with White children, but slave narratives recorded in the 1930s confirm that such a thing was common enough; and in any case it falls to his own credit, not to slavery's.

[@jerotoro2021]

I love learning about AAE, but as a Canadian looking at the White/Black segregation down there, I can't help but feel sad that this simple difference of color has had such a profound effect that it has caused a divergence of dialect in a population who lives in the same space. I can't think of any other situation in history where people who live in the same country and interact with each other daily would keep themselves so separate that their dialects would split like that. Normally you see the opposite, where different dialects and even languages would merge with constant interaction.

[@eritain]

It's under-acknowledged that the varieties of AAE and the varieties of English spoken by White Southerners had plenty of mutual influence, but it's true that on top of that foundation there is plenty of suspicion and hostility that have kept Whites and Blacks not only socially but even spatially separated. De jure segregation is dead, but its legacy in practice and circumstance has helped to maintain it de facto. (Of course, it was never wholly about skin color, either. Although human beings have invented plenty of forms of classism and coercion, chattel slavery -- enslavement that is heritable, lifelong by default, and fully without distinction from mere property -- is rare and unusually harsh. Those who established it in the Americas in the early modern period took rare and unusually strong steps to protect it. I don't think it's an accident that they imposed heritable slavery on people with a heritable, visible difference from themselves, or that they promoted exactly the stereotypes of Black sexuality and concepts of racial purity that maintained the usefulness of color as a marker of slavery (with a violent fear of cross-racial rape that would result in freeborn mixed-race children, and a lie that cross-racial rape that would result in mixed-race slave children was no rape at all). I know it's no accident that they cultivated division, fear, and hate toward them among other low-status people who weren't so easy to distinguish from the would-be nobility, or that they invented ideas about a race naturally suited to and happiest in slavery, who would only seek for things like self-determination or reward for their work if they were ill and dangerous. And so many other ideas about natural dispositions, intelligence, purity, and everything else, that made Black people seem less-than, that got Black people mistreated and ill-resourced, that resulted in the kinds of life circumstances that Whites could point to to endorse those ideas again. Long story short, chattel slavers got 339 years to install a self-perpetuating meme complex in America about Blacks, and we haven't even been winding it down for half that long yet.) There are benign forms of community language distinction too, even in Canada. I recall a study of IIRC Nova Scotian fishermen whose usage ranged between more standard and more dialectal English, depending whether they were getting things done with outsiders or affirming local belonging.

[@stephenspackman5573]

@@eritain Even today, it's pretty disturbing when you move here, to the US. Every official form asks about race, and there's mandatory workplace training that-in the guise of combatting it-reinforces the racialisation of, well, everything. Working in an environment where (I think) the majority are immigrants, it's quite noticeable how mandatory ‘sensitivity’ training makes everyone less comfortable and more defensive, and how it deflects understanding away from issues of wealth, class, culture and education to a one-size-fits-all racial analysis. It's truly loathsome, and pervades the entire political spectrum.

[@vergespierre4271]

​@@eritainyou who was slaves again?

[@stephenspackman5573]

May I be baffled? How does any of this-the broad points, not the actual linguistic details like the points about ‘be’-need saying? Surely anyone who comes here knows how language works, and what the word ‘vernacular’ means? I'm also not sure I believe you about French and double negatives-the ‘ne’ particle is embedded in the preverbal complex, and if you think it's an independent word I want a stronger argument than orthography. Not that there's anything cross-linguistically ungrammatical about double negatives, it's just that in French it looks more like agreement than redundancy. Not that I'm a linguist. One nit: I'm not sure you can assume that the basilect is the ‘most divergent’ form. Most divergent from what? From the acrolect, perhaps, but there's nothing to stop someone adopting something closer to the basilect as the ‘standard’ dialect-that's purely a matter of politics.

[@watching7650]

Why do some of you say "Standard English" when obviously referring to some (or a collective of) non-AAE American dialect?

[@bogusmcbogus2637]

I'm not an expert, but non-AAE could refer to other English dialects in America that are not AAE. Think about Louisiana and Texas. Maybe there are dialects there that are also not "standard English."

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

Are you not also a white word nerd? I am, and I also made a video about AAE, though I used the term AAVE, since that’s what the expert I worked with called it. Judging from many of the comments below, there is lots of ignorance and bigotry around this topic. Those of us who know that all languages are rich and valuable should stick together. We don’t get anywhere by dissing each other.

[@languagejones6784]

I am, hence my stare at the camera when I said it. But also, there's a saying in AAE Dr. Smith is fond of: "a hit dog'll holler." I've also heard "if the shoe don't fit, you ain't gotta wear it." Don't get sidetracked by defending yourself against things that aren't about you, and keep fighting the good fight!

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

@@languagejones6784 I’d interpreted the stare differently, but I can see what you mean. Thanks for the excellent advice!

[@artugert]

4:19 “Every black person doesn’t speak AAL.” That would mean that zero black people speak it. I think she meant to say “Not every black persons speaks AAL.” Or is this sentence itself AAL, and fits into some other grammar rules I don’t know about?

[@languagejones6784]

quantifiers can move but leave negation in situ and still take their original scope. In AAE you get sentences like "every black person doesn't speak AAE" meaning "not every black person does." Famously, there's an expression "Everything that glitters isn't gold," meaning "not everything that glitters is gold." There's also "All skin folk ain't kin folk" meaning "not every black person necessarily has your best interest in mind by virtue of being black alone."

[@artugert]

@@languagejones6784 That's interesting. I guess as long as a speaker is consistent in speaking that way, the meaning would be unambiguous. And honestly, people unfamiliar with AAE would usually be able to understand what meaning was meant. I was just being pedantic.

[@hilariousname6826]

That "every" meaning "not every" - or, more commonly, "all" meaning "not all" - usage really irks me. However, it is just another of those "misuses" (I have to be careful: there are linguists lurking!) that you and I can't do anything about. It is widespread; in fact, I'm surprised by the implication that it has a particular association with AA English. Co-incidentally, I was watching a Richard Pryor show last night and was struck when he said, "All Italians aren't Mafia", as I'd never noticed that "all" for "not all" (mis)usage from an African-American before; I first started encountering it from British people on the internet, and thought it "must be a British thing", then started coming across it from Americans (who for one reason or another I was certain were white). I'm Canadian, and I don't believe I've heard it yet from any Canadians, but I'm unsure now. My impression is that it's becoming more common.@@artugert

[@hilariousname6826]

I've always heard the expression as "all that glitters is not gold"; I assume "Everything that glitters isn't gold" is a regional variation? Of course, Shakespeare put it as, "All that glisters is not gold". Incidentally, but relevant to our more general topic, this is from Wiki: 'Arthur Golding, in his 1577 English translation of John Calvin's sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, used the phrase "But al is not gold that glistereth" in sermon 15', which is pretty darn close to "Everything that glitters isn't gold".@@languagejones6784

[@artugert]

@@hilariousname6826 I am really into linguistics, but I don't agree with the notion that seems to be common nowadays that there's no such thing as incorrect usage of language. I think that if you take that idea to the extreme, it is nonsensical, as basically anything could be considered "proper English".

[@timseguine2]

I never really understood the AAE verb forms until after explicitly learning about them as an adult.

[@Wandering.Homebody]

Isn't that usually the case though, that more divergent forms of language get stigmatised? I m pretty sure that, in, say, a German context, Austrian, Bavarian, Saxonian etc dialects are stigmatised to an extent, even though their speakers are the same race as standard German speakers. Just like having a Southern French or a Canadian French accent, or a Cretan Greek accent, etc etc, might get you looked down upon. And all these do sound really harsh, and "uncultured", somehow, if you will, to a huge chunk of the respective populations.

[@TheRationalPi]

You can totally have non-standard dialects that are seen as having *more* prestige, like dialects commonly spoken by royalty or aristocracy.

[@Wandering.Homebody]

@@TheRationalPi yes, obviously. I said "usually", not "in every single last instance".

[@mobo7420]

In Germany because of the federal nature and the long time it took to unite the country, there is considerable less social stigma on dialects than in other countries, BUT that's mostly true for Western dialects. There is some stigma towards Saxonian. Austria is a different country with a different culture though. (not looked down upon though)

[@Wandering.Homebody]

@@mobo7420 Well, I ve definitely witnessed derogatory remarks being made about Bavarian, Saxonian and Austrian etc dialects over the years. And Austria may be a different country, but it's the same language, and my point was about language. So I m not sure what point you are trying to make. Same language, same race.

[@mobo7420]

@@Wandering.Homebody Well, the concept of "race" is kind of weird anyways, but if we agree on "ethnic group" than Austrians and Germans are different enough to be different ethnicities.

[@Arkylie]

Four minutes in... hang on, why would anyone expect all Black people to speak a specifically American language? That's weird that this even has to be said. Obviously there are Black people in the world who don't even speak English, let alone some specific variation of English that arose within America! (I would also assume that not all African-Americans speak African-American English; I'll wait to see if that gets expressly stated in your video.)

[@notabrand6283]

Are your videos supposed to be more for linguistics experts or a general audience? Because I like the topics but you speak quickly and use a lot of jargon, so a lot of it is going over my head.

[@timflatus]

So this shows there is a link between genetics and language but it's a weak link. LME demonstrates this, being spoken by people of European, Asian and African descent. LME is so new that some people still call it "Jafaikan". Any divergence from RP is considered lower status and in all cases there are cultural reasons for this. People who use hifalutin' loan words from Greek and Latin always sound posh and words with French roots come a close third. There are historical and political reasons for this (as I'm sure you're aware). Multicultural dialects of English give us a chance to study this phenomenon from a more recent perspective innit?

[@kudjoeadkins-battle2502]

How does this show a connection with language and genetics?

[@timflatus]

@@kudjoeadkins-battle2502 the point I'm making is about how weak it is. We know IE languages originally spread via Haplogroup R1, People tend to talk about the genetics of west Africa in terms of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speakers, but we know that learning languages is a process of cultural assimilation, so your L1 language is whatever you grew up with regardless of genetics.

[@poissonpuerile8897]

About the only link that exists between genetics and language are aphasias, which can be inherited.

[@vergespierre4271]

​@@timflatuslol babbling

[@theskintexpat-themightygreegor]

I wasn't going to say anything about this except for your last sentence. There was something in this video that always bothered me. It's sort of a pet peeve, and it was "committed" by Minnie Quartey Annan. She said that "every black person doesn't speak African American Language..." This is immediately, obviously, and absurdly incorrect. I was going to say "wrong," but I knew what she meant. Non-native English speakers may not. What I'm pretty sure she meant was that not every black person speaks AAL. She did it again seconds later, and I'm a little surprised to hear a linguist talk like that. All that glitters is not gold. Nope. All things not on sale. Nope again. It's such an easy thing to fix. If you addressed this in a video, I'd be very interested in seeing it and hearing your take on this.

[@sanyo_neezy]

Why do you specify the N-Word as "yes, that one"? And what are "Other N-Words, but not that one"? Sorry, foreigner here. Just having fun with linguistics on a hobby level :)

[@sanyo_neezy]

do yo by any chance mean n*gro? I can see how it might not be too easy to answer my question, without getting some hate on yt 😅

[@sanyo_neezy]

So the term 'other' n-words refers to other names for African-American people?

[@sanyo_neezy]

@@fringedemographic the "yes" part I understood right away even before your answer, but the "not that one" part I didn't 😅

[@sanyo_neezy]

@@fringedemographic oh okay, thanks a lot! I think I'd have never figured that out by myself :D

[@AnnoyingNewsletters]

Might I suggest, *_Black Talk,_* taking into account *Black Lives Matter* and what opponents of African American English are really saying when they criticize it: _Don't B(l)ack Talk me._ Sorry, not sorry, Karen, that my casual speech is different than yours and affects your tender sensibilities.

[@maxonmendel5757]

as a ,leftist, I love hearing Chomsky get name dropped

[@neddyladdy]

It would be far easier if you used a well recognised language. What the stuff is AAVE ?

[@neddyladdy]

@Vatson I had never heard of it before now, I will probably never hear of it again. Not slang? Vernacular is in the name for christ's sake.

[@BGTuyau]

A lot of these assertions are not news, but the examples enrich the presentation. That said, I disagree about the source of stigma. I believe that any stigma is largely a consequence of certain behaviors and attitudes associated with some speakers of AAE / AAVE / AAL. And not all AAE, &c., is stigmatized. For example, many turns of phrase in the lyrics of R&B songs have long been admired and adopted by non-AA folks for their unique expressiveness. Interesting video.

[@ye5331]

I thought they don't want to be called African Americans...

[@languagejones6784]

That depends entirely on the individual. Dr. Smith (far right on the thumbnail) doesn't prefer that term. But also talks about "African American English" in some publications because that's the dominant term in the field right now.

[@krtierney]

This video made me cry thinking about how racist our country (America) is now, and has been.

[@AAA-fh5kd]

"Be" and "Bes" is a standard STANDARD feature of HIBERNO-English, Ulster-English and Scots. The language brought to the u.s. Habitual or in any other form. This is not an invention of AAE.

[@HiiipowerHabits]

Cap, they didn’t bring the American “be” to AAE…AAE and even our pronunciation is a mix between our people learning the English language along with things that come directly from African countries and pronunciation…y’all always wanna take credit lmao

[@AAA-fh5kd]

@@HiiipowerHabits Yes they did, well documented. Afamericans are speaking a varian of "appalachian' of "Scotch-irish" english with obvious unique features over time. Without an imput source for transmitting your accent, the accent is nothing more than southern-american (and that's the post civil war where over 20,000 confederates left for Brazil and out of the u.s. so appalachians moved south.) You're absolutely nuts if you think any U.S> AfAm person gets their 'accent' from Africa or via Dna. Looney tunes.

[@HiiipowerHabits]

@@AAA-fh5kd no they didn’t y’all irrelevant…you and your opinion aren’t worth shit Karen move around and stay outta Black people’s business

[@devconley9483]

It wouldn’t have to be a completely new invention, in order to be distinct, that’s not how languages work.

[@AAA-fh5kd]

@@devconley9483 It's not new, nor is it distinct, despite "aave/aae" having unique features, the core grammar and use of verbs/etc are all rooted in scots/english colonial dialects. all regional variations of ANY language be it foreign or native to America< has and continues to evolve. Native americans, Latino-americans, asian americans all speak foreign/native languages which contantly evolve and often speak English/Spanish/French varieties of )colonial) language in the americas which are diverse and also influence each other. That's how language works. But calling "AAVE" a 'thing' as if it isnt basically southern english< dialect or appalachian in grammar etc is purely sociol-political, not objective linguistics.

[@cosettapessa6417]

Wow. You really need melanin to teach aave 😂

[@languagejones6784]

It's not that deep. I just wanted to share a few colleagues who all speak it and research it. There are PLENTY of people who research and teach it who don't speak it -- both Black and white.

[@cosettapessa6417]

@@languagejones6784 cool

[@HiiipowerHabits]

@@languagejones6784it’s is that deep..and you minimize it as not that deep of an issue. That’s why Black people take it serious, and it’s definitely deep that’s why Black people get upset when other people culture appropriate our words, culture, style and language.

[@languagejones6784]

@@HiiipowerHabits I said what I said because it sounded like the other person was criticizing me for only interviewing Black scholars, or acting like only Black people value AAE. But also, I get that "melanin" is a shorthand, but I know Black folks with albinism who definitely take issue with that framing. I agree with you that imitation and appropriation are serious.