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Difference between black american english and american english
African American English
African american vernacular
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African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the formal variety that is known as Black English Vernacular with sociolinguist researchers, and usually called Ebonics outside the academic community. AAVE was born in South America, and shares many features with Southern American English. However, It has come up with the ugly history of slavery in the United States. Black Americans did not move to North America with like-minded people who participated their language and cultural background, as British, Germans and others. Rather, people from different cultures and languages were retiring from their homelands into slavery. Slaves in the US were systematically divided into racial or ethnic groups from speakers of their own languages, lest they …show more content…
While there are some words lexically special and unique to AAVE, for example, "crib" and "homey," the contrast with the other dialects are usually in phonology and grammar. AAVE does not have a vocabulary disconnected from other English varieties. However, AAVE speakers do not use the same English words from the standard dialects and they use some words that are not found in other varieties. There are many of origin words used in standard English may be found in AAVE or at least in the West African languages that helped AAVE's development for example, banana (Mandingo). The AAVE vocabulary can be seen to be collected from (a sound signal) and a meaning. In some cases, they take from West African sources, both the form and the meaning. In other cases, the form is from English, but the meaning seems to be derived from West African sources. There is also a range of vocabulary contributed to the expression of a complex idea by using a combination of two words. In AAVE these African words have been directly translated the same concept and used to express the same meaning by using English words. Standard English pronunciation and AAVE are sometimes completely different. People commonly attach significance to such differences in pronunciation or accent and in sociolinguistics, this study of phonology is considered as an important part. Usually, when two consonants come at the end of a word for instance, the /nd/ in 'hand', they are often reduce and the final /d/ becomes silent. This happens, so far in every variety of English including standard ones. The consonant In AAVE cluster is reduced variably. Also, it does not happen every
This was an issue in the days of the Bible and continues to be an issue in the mid 1800's. The divisions in the country brought about by slavery seem to be categorized into two main groups, abolitionists, and slave holders. These two groups also were divided geographically for the most part due to the South's need of slaves. for cheap, and reliable man power, and the North, as it was not an. agriculturally based economy and needed little in the way of unskilled laborers.
These passages not only provide excellent examples of the distinctive features of AAVE mentioned earlier in this paper, such as using done for resultatives, consonant clusters, and substituting the /d/ for the /th/ sound, but they also demonstrate how, no matter what the social occasion, Janie does not alter her speech patterns or dialectic utterances.
In the essay if Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? by James Baldwin and Mother Tongue by Amy Tan both shows idea of uses of slang and language in different context. In the essay if Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? Baldwin states that how language has changed and evolved overtime, Baldwin describes how black English were used as white English, in civil rights movement where blacks were treated as slaves and the used slang language to communicate so that the whites won’t understand. This slang was taken from black language and now everyone uses to make the communication short. In the essay Mother Tongue Tan explains that how language could affect people from different culture. Tan states that how Asian students in America struggle in English. Tan also states that her mother is smart but she couldn’t communicate in English. Tan thinks that’s a big disadvantage for her mother and people coming from different countries cannot show their talent because of their weakness in communication.
and America, groups of slaves sharing a similier heretage were broken apart to prevent any since of community or bond between them. With no connection beyond the tortures of slavery, the slaves had little chance to establish any relationship to their
While some features of AAVE are apparently unique to this variety, in its structure it also shows many similarities with other varieties including a number of standard and nonstandard English varieties spoken in the US and the Caribbean. Speakers and writers of this dialect use some distinctive aspects of the phonological, lexical, and grammatical traits associated with this dialect. Many sociolinguists would reserve the term AAVE for varieties which are marked by the occurrence of certain distinctive grammatical features.
Ebonics, also known as Black English, is a nonstandard dialect spoken in many homes in the inner cities of America. This nonstandard language is often looked upon as low-class or lazy talk. This is not the case, however. Due to consistencies found in the dialect, there seems to be an order. It has been found that, when learning English, African-Americans adapted the language using some of the structure and rules of their own native tongue. This Black English has carried on through slavery and then freedom for hundreds of years. Although there is a coexistence of more than two dialects in our society, those in power forget the flexibility of our language and see no other way than the use of Standard English.
For many years linguistics have treated AAVE as a slang because they didn't want to give African American slaves right to their own language. This all changes December 1996 when the “Oakland school board recognized AAVE as the primary language of its African American students, and take it into consideration to teach them standard english”(Monaghan 1997). Despite all the negative feedback that the Oakland school district has gotten from parents and the public, they didn't stop the process in finding materials to teach African Americans standard english so they can code switch between AAVE and standard
MacNeil, Robert, and William Cran. "Bad-Mouthing Black English." Do You Speak American? Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. 115-49. Print.
Speech is a very influenced africanism in America. A word commonly used today by all races in America is the word “okay”, a Mande and Wolf term that means “that’s it” (Holloway 57). Ebonics is often tied back to african roots of west african language. Both lack the sounds and final consonant clusters (e.g. past), and that replacing or simplifying these occurs both in US Ebonics and in West African English varieties spoken in Nigeria and Ghana. Moreover, they argue that the distinction made between completed actions ("He done walked") and habitual actions ("We be walkin") in the Ebonics tense-aspect system reflects their prevalence in West African language systems and that this applies to other aspects of Ebonics sentence structure.
Since 1619, when the first slaves were brought to North America, race has played an important role in everyone’s life; especially those who are different from what people would consider “American”. According to the textbook, “race is defined as any group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographical distribution” (pg. 59). People are placed into different categories instead of all being considered human beings. Although we do not have slavery, that we know of, in the United States today, this does not mean that race is still not an issue. However, race in this country has taken a turn over time and has now, “taken on a meaning that refers to differences between people based on color” (pg.
The African influence of American English can be found as far back as the Seventeenth century. Although its influence may have began that far back, the influence of African American slang has arguably reached its peak (so far) in the last half on the 20th century. Evidence of this can be seen in magazines, music, television, and films. Perhaps more importantly, evidence can be seen in the way that people of ethnic groups, other than African American, have changed their speech due to this influence. The Equal Rights Movement lead to a paradigm shift in African American linguistic consciousness due to Black intellectuals, scholars, activists, artists, and writers deliberately engaging in a search for a way to express Black identity and the particular circumstances of African American life. Although there had been strides in Black pride in the past, this was the first one to call for linguistic Black p...
The way the experiment was set it; the researches got college students to learn a list of foreign words that they have never seen before. They were given a bunch of words in Swahili-English words. The list contained 40 wor...
The Constitution guaranteed it as a freedom to them, and white slaves were virtually nonexistent. Slavery was so deeply engrained as a “black race” attribute, that it came to be used as a descriptor to further lower the status of African Americans. Free of these racial tensions, whites seemed to enjoy freedom without conflict. However, in reality, not all whites had access to equal freedom. “Freedom” often meant the ability to have equal opportunity, as the purpose of immigration to the colonies was often based on a desire for economic independence. Equal opportunity was not the case in a hierarchical, socioeconomically-divided America. Land ownership or religious affiliation were often required to vote or run for office respectively. In many ways, slaves were actually subject to less forced social structure on large Southern plantations, where they could develop their own private communities. The Gullah language is an example of a creole of English and West African dialects. Religious syncretism often resulted in African-influenced versions of Christianity, far more culturally-mixed than what Puritanical Massachusetts mandated its citizens adhere to. These cultural features served as a “glue” for many African Americans, and reflects the complex facets of the word “freedom” The phrase should therefore be modified to account for the fact that
...nglish.” (Rickford, 1999) The ultimate goal is to produce readers and writers of standard English, as the conventional education system is not doing its job teaching many AAVE speaking children. To address the legitimacy of the language, linguists argue that it is impossible to call Ebonics slang. Although there is controversy over it being a language or a dialect, linguists whole-heartedly disagree with the notion that it is not a “full-fledged linguistic system.” (Rubba, 1997)
1.2. PHONOLOGICAL BACKGROUND. This part of the first section presents the inventory of Hasawi phonemes as a good reference for Results section.