Doesn’t sound very extreme from the quote.
It really depends where you are, who you are, and who you are talking to.
An extreme example would be the song “Straight Mobbin’” by Seagram Miller where it is really a whole other language (but still English).
Never heard of AAVE, I always thought it was just Ebonics.
Funny, I first ever heard of “Ebonics” in the context of the 1990s Oakland Schoold District reports and afterwards only in the ensuing mocking commentary, even though the references say the term was coined in the 70s but just was never adopted by academia. OTOH I have always heard and read “AAVE” in context as the official, accepted term.
My experience is many people just don’t want to be told they have a dialect. They’ll either claim to have a full distinct language or they’ll insist it’s only an accent/slang/Regional Vernacular Form of the standard tongue.
Random trivia: this distinction also exists in Hiberno-English, carried over from the Irish language (although here, the habitual would be constructed as “he does be working at the mill”). It’s a bit colloquial but the meaning would be understood.
This thread makes me…uncomfortable somehow, and I’m white. I feel like either most US posters come from other parts of the country or are very sheltered or something.
I wouldn’t even refer to a lot of it as AAVE, its just USA slang, I mean hoopty is not well known?
Proper… English?
Those who speak “ghetto,” (“patois” usually, by most of the black people I see every day…) Can speak proper “international” English when they know they need to. You know, the way the Spice Girls sound when they sing, or well spoken Al-Jazeera reporters tend to speak?
Trust me on this one, most “ghetto” people don’t exactly walk up to the judge and say:
“Ya, lissen a dis rudebway, bus’aff a badman stay jus’ t’a likkul ting, ya kna? M’aff run dem tings, 'ear m’nah?”
Unless they’re stupid, or from another country, for the most part.
Someone who walked up and said that to an American judge is definitely from another country 
Someone who said that to an Australian judge would be looked at blankly and asked if he required an interpreter 
YES! Proper English in the African American Vernacular Dialect. Just like Channel 5 News has people (of all races) speaking proper English in the Midwestern version of the General American Dialect (which is not spoken by everybody, despite it’s name, rather it’s UNDERSTOOD by almost everybody without effort or training, which is what makes it “General”,) and JFK spoke proper English with a Boston Dialect and the Queen of England speaks proper English with a Received Pronunciation Dialect.
Englishhas dozensof differentdialects, and they’re *all *proper English.
You may ask then, “Well, what is improper English?” Improper English is English that unintentionally breaks the rules of the dialect you’re attempting to communicate in. “I has two cup of coffees under the morning,” is not, as far as I know, proper English in *any *dialect. Therefore, it is improper English, even if you could kinda-sorta figure out what I meant to say.
I have never heard the term “hoopty” before. Raised in D/FW, lived in southern California and Indianapolis as well. Heck, I teach mostly low-income black folks, actually. (But of course they’re much less likely to use AAVE intentionally when addressing teachers here than each other.)
But it’s true that many aspects of AAVE are imported into the slang usage of non AA communities.
Wonder if there’s a Scotland–>SouthernUS–>AAVE migration/linguistic borrowing pattern being reflected here.
The people you’re communicating with must learn to accept it as correct if it feels correct to you, mustn’t they? After all, each of stands as our own equally precious linguistic snowflake.
WhyNot didn’t say that, nor did he imply it. (In fact he strongly implied the opposite). So are you articulating your own position, or what?
Thanks. It feels correct to say WhyNot’s got girly bits, though. 
Yeah, Koxinga, a most emphatic no. You don’t get to decide what’s proper English - the people you’re speaking with do. If they can understand you and adopt your style of speech and it spreads, then the dialect has changed a bit, at that point it’s become part of proper English in one dialect. But they certainly don’t *have *to understand you, and even if they understand you, they don’t ever *have *to incorporate your special snowflake word/construction into their own speech, so it may never become proper English.
I doubt anyone’s going to pick up on my “two cup of coffees” construction and insert it into the prevailing dialect, for example. It will remain improper English, even though of course I am a special snowflake!
I absolutely agree with this part, although I see I forgot to say that when I replied to your first bit.
I think, maybe, you’re under the assumption that I (and others) think that a person can only speak one dialect. That is not correct, and is in fact the underlying question in the OP. Every AAVE speaker I’ve ever talked to personally was fluent in at least two dialects: AAVE and General American.
So I agree with you. Yes, all? most? “ghetto” people are bidialectal, if that’s a word. They can speak perfectly proper General American dialect when they want to and the situation calls for it.
The only part I disagreed with was the notion that AAVE isn’t also perfectly proper English. It is. They both are.
Hmmm, perhaps I cam off as condescending with the “Understand?” at the end?
“Seen” used to be a VERY popular word for “you dig?” “know what I mean?” and the like. BITD, every sentence would end with “seen?” sometimes replied to with a long drawn-out, approving “Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!”
Where I live, it’s a common joke amongst people, black and white, that “back in school, we didn’t learn cursive, we learned graffiti.” One is expected to know what a “duppy man,” “batty fish” and a “fassie hole” is before about grade 6, lest you misinterpret what someone says, piss them off and get your head kicked in for some trivial issue like wearing the wrong colour while walking through the wrong housing project. (Scarborough, East Toronto Suburbs. There are places very close to my house I would not go alone after dark, and I’m 6’ 200 lbs, with an intrest in BJJ and MT.)
I don’t mean to come across as thinking everyone else does NOT know what I have stated, more of just highlighting the fact for the op. I think most people from the inner city/suburbs are probably aware of this! That’s entirely my point.
For “proper,” I suppose we have to agree to disagree on a semantic issue. I can accept your definition of proper in the “when in Rome…” sense. Although, myself, I wold never coin patois, AAVE, jive, as proper under any circumstances, much like I would not call a Newfie accent, or cockney rhyming slang proper english.
Hey, Slate! Give us a shout-out next time.