Maybe the mods closed this AAVE thread because it was in GQ instead of GD, but some of us didn’t think it was over.
So, if you want to address some of the things said, maybe a debate forum will stay open longer.
The last few things said were about the origin of AAVE and the view of some (or one) that it is the result of lazy speech.
Thanks for linking the other thread. Great read. I am a bit surprised that no mention was made of Gullah, the language of blacks on the south east coast. It is absolutely beautiful. I am not a linguist but having heard a bit of Gullah, it must have influence over some of the dialects heard today.
Actually, Sternvogel posted a link to it.
Blivit writes:
> I am a bit surprised that no mention was made of Gullah, the
> language of blacks on the south east coast.
Say what? Gullah was mentioned by three people in that thread.
That reminds me: I read once, I’m pretty sure it was in J. L. Dillard’s 1972 book Black English that started this whole Ebonics ball rolling, that the say in the popular Ebonic expression “Say what?” comes from a pronoun in an African language — se, meaning ‘that’. Wish I could remember which language it was supposed to have come from.
On the shift of /[symbol]q[/symbol]/ to /f/ — this isn’t only in Ebonics and Cockney. It’s also a feature of Russian names that came from Greek origin via Old Church Slavonic.
’[symbol]Agaqh[/symbol] Agathê --> Agafiia
’[symbol]AqanasioV[/symbol] Athanasios --> Afanasy
[symbol]QaddaioV[/symbol] Thaddaios --> Faddei
[symbol]QeodoroV[/symbol] Theodoros --> Feodor
[symbol]TimoqeoV[/symbol] Timotheos --> Timofei
etc.
However, this pattern is only found in names that came through Old Church Slavonic. Non-church words of Greek origin show /[symbol]q[/symbol]/ > /t/, as in mathematics=matematika, theory=teoriia. I imagine the change of theta to f would be found also in common nouns relating to the Orthodox Church, but my Soviet-era Russian dictionary doesn’t have any of those.
The shift of interdentals to labiodentals is more complete in Cockney, as that includes the voiced sounds too. E.g. bovver < “bother.”
Wow. See what I get for being out in the field for a week? I missed all of the excitement!
While I cannot condone the attitude of some posters who insist on perpetuating the “AAVE=lazy” rhetoric that has plagued the subject since the Ebonics fiasco, I am fully aware that the idea is one that is quite prevalent among the general public.
I find it astounding that one can continue to put one’s fingers in one’s ears while chanting “It is laziness, It is laziness” in the face of well-documented linguistic research.
The following link is to the transcript of a radio address that Geoff Pullum of the University of California, Santa Cruz did for the Australian Broadcast Corporation.
So, where did this idea come from? Or is it just a remnant of racial prejudice? Because some of the people who have said this to me before and posted on this board, I wouldn’t label as racist. Since this “Street Speak” (as some have called it) is so prevalent in rap music, a form that many people disparrage, even campaign against, could that be partly resposible for this misconception? Sorry for the round about way of asking this.
On a different tangent; how is SEV evolving in the face of AAVE and Spanish and various Oriental languages being spoken by more and more people in America?
(I’m really more intersted in the second question, but any answers are welcome. I’ve just realized I have an intense, though amature, interest in language studies! WooHoo!)
One more tangent, then I’ll just read all y’all’s posts for a while.
Here is a thread about idioms that is slighly related (maybe). Can a language evolve in this way? Is AAVE perhaps an evolution of native Africans learning American English in a non formal setting (I mean, not in schools) during Slaving times? I realize that is probably way oversimplifying it, and it may have been answered and I overlooked it. But, am I anywhere close to getting it?
So, with this Q and the above post, I guess I’m up to three questions. Like I said, I’m shuttin’ up now and waiting for some answers.
To be honest, I think it boils down to the stubborn idea that blacks are ignorant, uneducated, and lazy.
But here’s an interesting anecdote: A friend of mine who is a recent immigrant from South America, considers himself black, and who ironically comes from a place where people regularly use dialects spun off from the colonial language, told me he thought American blacks spoke differently just so that they could be different from everyone else, as if the speech was fabricated for the purpose of setting its speakers apart from the mainstream. [As if dark skin isn’t enough!] In addition to that rather interesting (to say the least) hypothesis, he also feels that laziness is to blame for AAVE’s existence and therefore should be stamped out.
Most of his feelings stem in large part, IMO, to a sense of pressure that harkens back to the feelings expressed by Biggirl’s “Self-Hating Negro” thread. As a new guy in this country, he’s in the process of sorting out his racial identity and what it means to be black. Since arriving here he’s decided that black people can’t afford to act differently than whites because historically, difference has been equated with inferiority. Many people in positions of authority still think that way today. So from what I can tell, his underlying beef with AAVE ultimately has nothing to do with where and how he thinks it came about; he doesn’t like it because it makes black people that much more different than whites, thereby giving racists that much more justification for discrimination.
Sorry if that was a hijack. Just thought it was interesting.
It was. It all is, really. Thanks.
Ok, here goes…
If you think that AAVE is simply “lazy English,” you are wrong. Whether you are racist or simply ignorant is another matter.
When Dolly Parton say “Y’all come back, y’here!” she is just a southern girl with some cute regionalisms.
When my neighbor from Oklahoma describes an icy road as “Slicker’n toad snot.” his is simply from the rural midwest.
When the old woman who cooks at Los Vaqueros says “Aye mijo, finish your frijoles.” she is speaking Spanglish.
But if Jerome on the corner speaks anything by standard English as exemplified by our eloquent television personalities then he is lazy and ignorant. He speaks the way his family and community speak. If you want to hear something funny, ask a group of black people to speak like white people. That’s hilarious.
Rap music is generally performed by individuals who speak AAVE as their primary dialect. Would Dr. Dre and Snoop be as popular if they rapped in standard English? I don’t think so. Hip-hop grew out of urban areas where AAVE is spoken. It could be partly responsible for the general ignorance out there but I think that the association of rap/hip-hop with young black men would be closer to the truth.
However, the realization that AAVE is not “lazy English” does not change the fact that speaking standard English is required in many arenas including education, business, and politics. I think that if the Oakland school board had pursued this avenue and attempted to develop a curriculum that addressed this problem, they would not have faced the controversy that they did.
Maybe this is silly, maybe it is wildly appropriate. I consider it to be somewhere inbetween, the best place to be.
So what if theres an internet dialect that the grammar police get all pissed about constantly? I mean, I’m not saying there is, but given the peculiarities of text-only speech, what could qualify as a dialect?
And I don’t just mean things like LOL or what have you, either, but constant misspellings and so forth. Because, let’s face it, if we all spelled like we spoke most of the words would be missing letters, extra would be added, some would be switched, and so on. These people are just lazy typists, right? (Serious question, I know it sounds silly)
This is sort of a definitional question, then. What qualifies a dialect? How far does it stretch? Do punks and skaters also have a legitimate dialect? Valley girls? I’m sure the border is fuzzy, but let’s just get a fat brush and lay one down anyway for little ol’ me, please.
Also, anyone here in Massachusetts know what so many of the blacks here speak? It sounds french-like in some respect, but I wouldn’t really know. Where I used to live in Cambridge I was surrounded by this. This I would clearly call another language, even if it does sound a little like french. I mean, depending on the person Italian sounds like Spanish (it does to me, but not the way it is spoken rather than the words themselves are quite similar). Dr Dre I would call a lingo like skaters or artists or race car drivers. Or Trek fans 
But maybe rappers aren’t the best example? I understand their meaning more or less fine, minus what I would call jargon particular to any group that shows mild solidarity, you see what I mean?
Do they speak the same way (vocabulary AND syntax AND pronunciation, etc.) whether they are hanging out with their buddies in the same group or ordering food at a restaurant or answering a policeman at a traffic stop? If some huge percentage of them do so, they may be on their way toward developing a dialect (although I would suggest that they need to continue this speech throughout their life, rather than use it only for the short period while they are members of a particular group). Otherwise, what you are observing is not dialect but jargon or argot: language that serves the dual purpose of setting up “admission barriers” to allow only the initiated to enter the group while providing specialized vocabulary that allows both shorter descriptions of specific actions and more elaborate explorations of certain phenomena based on the new meanings or created words to express those phenomena.
Note that, while proficiency in a dialect may or may not provide social barriers (with non-speakers effectively excluded), the dialect is not artificially constructed in the way that jargon or argot is created. Any small child growing up in a black neighborhood will learn to speak AAVE; the child does not have to seek permission to join the group in order to be taught the language in the way that s/he would need to seek admission in order to be accepted as a punk or a valley girl.
Fascinating.
Thought: could this argot be the, say, seed for a dialect, then? Consider that skaters and punks are a recent phenomenon. But skaters hang with skaters, and they get similar jobs (more or less), same with punks, and they hang out with each other… I mean, it really is a subculture (not that anyone thinks otherwise). And a lot of them never leave (the crusty punks of yore!) the group. So it is conceivable that there could be a genuine shift here?
What has always fascinated me was the huge variations in speech much of Europe sees in really short distances. Is this just a function of population density?
It’s a function of the dialects developing way before it was easy or necessary to travel even short distances. People are a lot more mobile than they used to be.
Is it possible that what people are labeling “laziness” refers, not to the grammar or pronunciation of Black English at all, but rather to the tendency of some speakers of Black English to use it exclusively?
My original response to this thread was a brilliant and inspired work of staggering genius. The hamsters ate it. I nearly wept. Here’s my second much later attempt, which probably will not be so blessed by the Muses. Luckily tomndebb has already covered many of the points I considered most important.
**
I touched on this just briefly in the other thread, but it is very important to avoid confusing speech with writing. Writing is not just a different language, it is a different kind of language. This is easier to understand if you consider the case of written Chinese. If I wrote down a Chinese character and asked a Mandarin speaker, a Cantonese speaker, or even a Japanese speaker to read it aloud, they could all do it. But they would not all speak the same word!
Writing is not at all the same thing as speech. A good portion of the meaning in speech is conveyed by tone of voice, inflection, body language, and other verbal and non-verbal cues with no written equivelant. That is how people can get away with saying things that make no sense when transcribed, things like “Uhmmm…ha ha…no…well, you know…ha ha…yeah!” Writing has its own special features, such as spelling (when spoken aloud there is no difference between “no” and “know”, but in writing they are distinct) and punctuation.
Mastery of these special features does not come naturally. It is a foreign language to everyone. That’s why it takes so much more work to learn to write than it does to learn to speak. Many people never learn to write very well at all. These people may try to write with the features of speech, just as people speaking a foreign language may fall back on the vocabulary and syntax of their native language. Such writing is thus much closer to a transcription of normal speech than is usual. The awkward omissions, repetitions, non-standard grammar, and spelling that reflects pronounciation (including things like the use of “4” for “for”) are the signs of people who are far more experienced with speech than writing.
This is not always a problem. Typing “definately” instead of “definitely” does not change the meaning of a sentence. Mixing up “their”, “they’re”, and “there” can, though. Years ago I read a post on neo-Paganism by someone who spelled “witch” and “which” the same way, something “witch” greatly confused the author’s message about witches! Omissions, repetitions, non-standard grammar, and a general lack of consistency make matters worse.
To put things briefly (and it’s about time!), a legitimate and intelligible written language requires much closer attention to perscriptive rules.
It is extremely unlikely. First, there is not sufficient group coherence and isolation. Second, these argots do not have unique grammar, and what little unique vocabulary they possess consists almost entirely of jargon. These terms are useless in ordinary conversation, although they are very useful when “talking shop”. Even if old punks “talk punk” forever (and I have never observed any differences between punk speech and vernacular English, aside from slang and jargon) and raise their own children to speak that way there would be little to distinguish that speech from the speech of others. Languages are not formed this way. If they were, we would already have languages that originated among guild members, secret societies, and other historic groups much more tightly organized than punk rock fans.
I’ll bet all those foreigners with their weird ways of talking could speak proper English too, if they weren’t so damn lazy.