De assumed audience be lilly white mutha fuggas dat tink dey know ever mutha fugging thang. Dey ain’t careful, I bust dey mutha fugging head or pull my gat and bust a cap in dey mutha fugga ass.
[Guy who remembers two things from a college linguistics class]
This is called code-switching, by the way.
[/GWRTTFACLC]
Of course it’s possible that you also don’t speak that dialect. 
Harking back to the OP. I’m not surprised about the translators. It doesn’t mean that the defendents can’t make themselves understood to normal people, it means that this is a courtroom where specialized language is used in very precise ways. The defendents would have to make two shifts, one from Legalese to SAE, then from SAE to AAVE, while listening and the reverse when speaking. It’s an added opportunity for confusion.
I’ve heard that one of the biggest pitfalls when dealing between AAVE and SAE is the verb tense rules. Both AAVE and SAE speakers know that there is a difference, but the normal assumption is that both use the same rules, just in a different form. This is false. The rules are similar, but not exactly the same. It’s been awhile since I read about it, but one example of confusion was a teacher asking when a student’s mother would be home. The student heard and answered the question “when is your mother usually home,” not knowing that the teacher wanted to know “when will your mother be home today.”
In the classroom, that minor miscommunication is an irritant and if it keeps building it can have a detrimental effect. In the courtroom, it can be critical. Even if corrected once the miscommunication was identified, it would sound like someone was changing their story. Better to keep things straight from the start. There’s a legal difference between “he usually pulls a knife when we argue” and “he pulled a knife that day, just before I shot him” that shouldn’t get lost or muddied.
My guess at the distinction would be that slang is something you can vary the dosage of to any degree, but a dialect is the entire pattern that you either are speaking or aren’t. Is that anywhere near correct?
I learned Ghetto from an expert.
Guys, there’s an Airplane*!* reference in post #3.
So… Ebonics is now called African American Vernacular English?
How were they supposed to know? They don’t speak jive.
Great example of code-switching. This reporter goes from his tv voice to ghetto in an instant. Its a blooper and funny, but its also a real example of code-switching under stress. That fake tv voice gets totally lost when he gets angry.
skip to 3:00 and its about 10 seconds long
Nothing really new. The term AAVE has been around since at least the early 90s. Before that, “Black English Vernacular” or “Black Vernacular English” was probably the most common. “Ebonics” exists since 1972, but it’s not a term that really got much traction until that whole Oakland school district controversy in 1996.
This is actually my favorite difference to point out. I often hear imitators of AAVE say things like “She be walkin’ ove’ theya,” but they don’t realize that the ubiquitous infinitive-participle construction (be walkin’, be workin’, etc.) is actually used for continual-habitual aspect, not simple aspect. That is, “He be workin’ at the mill” is a response to “Where does he work?”, not “Where is he?” It’s for describing things that are done repeatedly as a habit or ongoing things, not for things occurring just at the present moment.
This is one reason I’m so adamant about it not being called slang. It’s not just a substitution of an informal word for a formal one. It’s not just saying things like “blingin’” and “bus’a cap”. There are internally consistent rules that aren’t easy to discerne at a glance.
If you’ve got the time, you may wish to peruse all the blue links in the wiki on pragmatics. It’s fascinating to me because it studies how words don’t really mean what their face-value is. It ranges from the familiar (Can you pass the salt? = Pass the salt; Want to come inside?=Want to have sex?) to the foreign (He’ll meet you in a few more minutes = He’s not even here).
Never heard that one before.
How do they communicate that he really will be here in a few more minutes?
(Same way I’d communicate, I guess, that I really do want the time…)
It’s Arab culture. It’s rude to flat-out say that you or someone can’t or won’t do something for someone else. When making requests, you’ll get a lot of “Maybe tomorrow, God willing,” which means “No.” It’s also rude to acknowledge that they can’t or won’t do something for you. You can’t just say “You’re never going to help me, are you?” without insulting them, for example. I’m not really sure how they’d tell you that the person really is coming in a few more minutes- I’ve never encountered that! I suppose it’d be, like you said, more direct or have some “No, really.” clause in the sentence. Paul in Qatar can probably answer that for you.
Jive ass dudes don’t got no brains anyhow.
Shiiiiit.
[Moderator Note]
Please pay attention to which forum you’re in, Kimmy_Gibbler. Save the snark and borderline insults for the Pit.
[/Moderator Note]
The extra workload carried by the school teachers is nothing compared to the spectacular scores of the basketball team.
Alla manna dun bump gully, dun gwan mek fe chatta props, 'fa manna kna’e afa do.
Seen?
[spoiler]Anyone who can speak ghetto, can speak properly, if they know they have to do it.
Understand?[/spoiler]
[spoiler]
There’s nothing improper about ghetto. If you’re in the ghetto, speaking ghetto *is *speaking properly.
Understand?[/spoiler]
Thanks DrForrester, I was just about to head off to google AAVE, to figure out what the hell it meant. Of course I still have to Google ‘kick-doe’ now was well.