It’s been almost 3 years since I uploaded this video and it got really popular all of a sudden! Welcome to all the new viewers and subscribers. I did notice several of you commenting that the music was too loud. I appreciate the criticism and I assure you I have become a much better editor since publishing this video. Cards on the table, I am experiencing a little bit of burnout right now, which is why I haven’t published anything recently, and I haven’t made a video on this topic in quite some time because it kind of let me down the path to burning out, but your comments are giving me life, and making me want get back to it. Thank you all so much for choosing to click on this video and I’ll try to make you something cool in the future
I’m speech language pathologist and it’s part of my job to evaluate language for the presence of a disorder. I can’t tell you how many times students are (wrongly) recommended for speech therapy services due to AAVE with the goal of communicating in standard American English (SAE), and then I have to exit them when I find that they’re missing class to come to speech therapy for something that is clinically considered a dialectical difference. It’s literally illegal to pull kids out of class for a dialect difference. The skill of code switching encompasses different situations from young person talking to an elder all the way to switching cultural dialects when necessary… something “we” and others who come from linguistically diverse backgrounds know all too well.
Wow, I never thought about teachers/administrators misdiagnosing students on the basis of them using/preferring AAVE. This is why it's important to a representation among school staff that align with the student body.
I subbed one day for a girl who had trouble on word lists with the a in cat. She said a as in car. So I asked her family heritage. It was Turkish and German. So the next day I brought word searches I found on line in those languages. She had no problem pronouncing words in them both. I say enough calling people special Ed for having other languages in the family.
Because of your job I'd expect you to have better grammar. Did you go to college for this work or did you just stumble into it because nobody else wanted the job? Maybe you think faster than you type, I do that all the time and forget words?
@@lennybuttz2162”Better grammar?” His video is literally a miniature video grammar lesson contrasting black American dialect and standard English. Not sure what else you’re looking for.
I started to work in the US after I was educated with standard English for many years. I didn't know that AAVE existed (I'm Japanese). My new work place, I have many co-workers who speak AAVE, and I couldn't understand what they are saying to me. It was a big problem. This video helps me to survive my life here. I hope ESL classes offer AAVE classes. Many English learners want to pay for AAVE classes to survive, and I wonder why ESL classes don't offer it. I hope you teach at ESL classes in colleges for English learners. Thank you so much.
Unfortunately, AAVE is seen as "lower class" than "standard english" and thus "inappropriate" in an educational setting. This tends to happen with foreign language classes in general; you tend to learn very formalized, "upper class" forms of the language which, while certainly worth learning, can leave you having difficulties understanding the way typical speakers of the language actually talk
@@MyNameIsntNina i am on my grandparents' land given to the by the Freedman Bureau. That land was taken from my great great great grandfather, a slave holder. In fact, he was the largest slave holder in Mississippi. I am the product of slavery. My father's grandparents fled the plantation in the Mississippi Delta at gun point. My people made this vernacular. They still speak it today. The ones without education. I hate to say this, young one but you are speaking to a witness. You won't find anyone else on Beyonce's internet with more knowledge of US Slave history. In fact, my sister and i were researching slave narratives last night. I was reading about the Civil War. Can you tell me what the US really called the Civil War? It wasn't "civil." It started with an "n." Don't go by my AI generated profile picture. I have the blood of the West African. Let me know if you'd like to learn more twisted US history. Black people, please don't think this type of language is cool. My grandfather, a former sharecropper and blues singer, tried his best to speak proper but they were not allowed to attend school. He imitated the white people he worked for the best he could. Nearly all Blacks in the US are from Mississippi and left during Jim Crow. Another thing, they always taught me not to respond until i did my own research so i didn't look uneducated.
@@MoncœrCoyoteSmith As a Black person myself, I believe that AAVE is a significant part of our cultural heritage. While it's true that AAVE has roots in the experiences of our ancestors during and after slavery, it has evolved into a complex and fully developed dialect that expresses the unique identity and resilience of Black communities. I see AAVE not as a symbol of a lack of education, but as a vibrant and expressive part of our culture. It represents our history, creativity, and the ways we have adapted and thrived despite systemic oppression. Referring to it as “slave talk” dismisses all of that. Thank you for sharing your perspective and family history. I respect the experiences of your ancestors and I get how their circumstances have shaped your views.
A lot of negativity concerning AAVE on this post coming from people who fail to realize that American English is merely a dialect of British English. No matter how you characterize AAVE, it is here to stay as evidenced by the continuing colorful additions to American English 24/7.
@@WhatsGoodEnglisha Japanese person here for business pointed out the reason this push for a regional and social dialect is flawed. He could not understand his coworkers who speak English this way. Many other English speakers in the workplace cannot communicate with this creole or subdilect. While it should not be looked down upon more then a surfer dialect or valley girl it will remain unprofessional when the spoken business world because it is hard to understand outside the given community. That is the entire, very un racist but possibly classis, reason for the "proper" English of business communication. Much like the southern accent and other regional accents that have been disappearing this dialect should fade naturally if there is not a nostalgic push to create relevance.
@@TonyMarselle mate, just learn the dialect! it's a lot easier and more morally correct to learn a slightly diffrent version of a language than it is to just force a bunch of people to speak a certain way
I had a friend growing up, Richard Williams. His family was from Trinidad. Richard was incredibly smart and linguistically gifted. He used language to blend in with whatever group he was hanging out with. He could speak fluent AAVE (though, I don't think that's what it was called back in the 80s) when he was hanging out with the black kids, and mainstream American English when he was with the white kids. I loved visiting him at home, though, because there he spoke Trinidadian with his family, and I just love the sound of that!
Yeah i love the english creoles of the Caribbean. Because they are a creole of a creole. The Trinidadians (and many Islands on that side) originally spoke Patois (the original patois. It was the name for french creole and still called that In billingual Islands) but when they had to learn english, they just kept the grammar of Patois (french creole) it's 90% the same as the language in Martinique and Haití. Which shows just how much they all come from the same roots.
As a language buff, I really enjoy your postings. I've always been in love with our African-American vernacular and since I've been living in Europe, it's the only thing that I miss about the States. I love how narratives and stories become so colorful when it is being used. I hope that this positively contributes to the discussion (remember that concept, discussion? listening, understanding and then speaking) about the importance of bilingualism. When we speak the vernacular, we aren't speaking (standard) English, we're speaking a colorful variation of it; African-American English. Just like Jamaican English, Carribean English, Indian English, Australian English...these are all different languages related to and based on standard English. With this comes the awareness that, because many people don't understand this language variation, that I, in that case, should switch to standard English. What's good English? It's all good!
Bilingualism is really important but it's something that's not really promoted here in the States which is a shame because other variants of English are super fun and interesting. Thanks for commenting!
i would like to add that this "colorfullness" you mention seems to come from our african roots, as i have detected in some african lenguages and also in variations of other languages like spanish or portuguese when black people modify them
Well maybe you should study the land where you're at. AAVE comes from England. It's poor, rural speech. it's not a dialect. It's an etholict or sociolict. So you're educated on Standard American English but you wish to promote a slave ignorant dialect. Can't make this shit up!!!🤣
I can't wait for the next video in this series! I learned a ton and I hope you continue to spread the word about the importance of understanding what AAVE really is.
I am a US-born African American who learned AAVE in late childhood. No one in my family spoke it, nor did my friends, neighbors, or classmates. During my early childhood in the 60s and 70s, it wasn’t spoken on television nor in any of the films that I saw. My family has been from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and the Caribbean since colonial times. I am a first generation Californian. When I was still in school, we moved from Santa Monica to L.A. It was then that I heard AAVE for the first time. I not only learned a new dialect, but new expressions, accents, and non-verbal vocalizations that signaled approval, disapproval, disgust, surprise, affirmation, etc. After moving to Los Angeles, I had Black friends for the first time, the majority of whom were either born in the South or had parents who were. I was routinely teased by my new Black friends and classmates for the way I spoke and was constantly asked why I “spoke so proper”. Eventually, I picked up AAVE through mimicry. I wanted to fit in. I also felt more welcomed than I had in Santa Monica. Although I had friends there, I was always made to feel as if I were different, and not in a good way. Nevertheless, to this day, there are certain non-standard words, expressions, and pronunciations I do not and will not use. I refuse to pronounce “ask” as “aks”, for example, or substitute “sleep” for “asleep”. I do, however, often find myself code switching. It’s automatic and subconscious. I’m almost never immediately aware I’m doing it until it’s gone on for a while. My siblings never picked up AAVE, but I did so deliberately. After all these years, I no longer have my deep and distinctive “Valley Girl” or “surfer” accent. Prime examples of which would be the Wally character on Leave it to Beaver and Marsha Brady on the Brady Bunch. Both actors hail from Southern California. I later understood how and why AAVE is not only rooted in West African languages but early modern English as well.
@@petrushka1611: That’s great. And I use a lot of AAVE in certain settings. But I never have and never will say “aks”, “aksing”, or pronounce “asked” as “axed” or “assed”. 🚫
AAVE was for me one of the first types of English i got to interact with on the internet (thank you black Twitter ♥️). It always felt super natural to me, though i was a ESL student. I kind of think that growing up in the 90s and early 2000s in eastern Europe (could), surprisingly, give you a lot of exposure to black culture through music, films and series. AAVE and black American culture are what made me study American studies at university
Same zero copula feature in Jamaican Creole. Even “am” is nonexistent. I’ve always found that JC is more readily translatable into African-American Vernacular than into standard english. New sub! Good to meet ya.
No, not zero. We replaced our copula with "a". Him a learn, dem a learn. You can hear "Dem learning" but a little more unnatural and is partly from readding a little "proper"ness to the sentence.
@@burnblue , I was speaking of the english copulas. But also, that’s not how “a” is functioning in those examples you gave. In basilect JC, we don’t do the “ing” suffix on verbs to show something happening currently. We keep the root verb as is and add “a” as a prefix to it. Even in the mesolect variety where we speak more english, we would simply say “dem learning” or “him learning”, not “him is learning” or “dem are learning”. The letter/ word “a” or “ah” is probably the most versatile word in JC and does act as you say in certain cases, but just not in those examples you gave.
Oh man, I totally relate to Imposter Syndrome However, as a white dude, all I can say is I’m really glad you’re out here making content like this! I honestly didn’t even know about AAVE until 5 or so years ago… Then it all clicked. “Oh, it’s literally just a dialect of English! But our racist society decided to make it seem like ‘bad English’ instead of recognizing its legitimacy” Anyway, despite my awareness of AAVE, I know very little about it. Unfortunately, I don’t know any black people IRL (and I’m not particularly social to begin with), so I love being able to watch your content You’re truly doing the lord’s work, so to speak. Don’t ever forget that!
Read some Thomas Sowell if you actually want to understand the history of this "dialect". It goes all the way back to Southern UK. Even words like chitlins. It is bad English and it's not racist to say so, it's racist to glorify it
I had a coworker once try to imitate AAVE by saying "Done don't do does did"... as if there were no rules to the language at all. It has a grammar! You can't just say anything and have it make sense. I'm happy to see more and more people understanding that it's a valid language and not just a series of grammar mistakes...
@@lindsaypaige4628 Certainly a version of English, but with slightly different rules of grammar. I think we don't think of it as a dialect because of the way in which people migrated after the Civil War. The language originates in the South, but as people fled slavery, they brought it with them to communities across the USA. It ends up not being associated with any region in particular, but with people of African extraction.
This is all so interesting. In St. Croix, we say: (In St. Croix, we do(es) seh:) "I running late." "Who they be?" "Who he be?" "You know where dey deh?" Or "You know which pah dey deh?" I love dis an I done subscribe an' I gon' watch more.😊
Well hear nah, in Trinidad and Tobago 🇹🇹 we does say de same kinda tings inno. “I eh go reach early” “Who is dem?” “Who is dat?” “Which part dem is?” Like you I now reach 😂 ah goin an subscribe now!
As an African girlie, I'm impressed by my ability to just know exactly what you mean before you even explain it. It just seems to make perfect sense, this type of English. Has a cool way abt it. And it just makes sense to a person who speaks an African language. This is how they are constructed. Hard to explain in words.
@@nonameforprivacyreasons5158 swahili. East African, bantu languages. I grew up reading lots of Nigerian/west african books, watched nollywood as a child, was exposed to Pidgin this way
@@nonameforprivacyreasons5158 i dont know where my initial reply went. But i said, I am East African. Swahili speaker. Also othef bantu languages. But I grew up watching and reading Nigerian movies and books like most Africans
Nice to know: American Sign Language (ASL) and Black Sign Language (BSL) do not use "IS", "ARE", "THE", "BUT", and I'm sure some other less than useful words because they're not needed for completely coherent sentences. 😊
This is one of the dopest videos on UA-cam! Very satisfying and validating. Take your time. And when you're ready, make another one. And know that this video will never get old❤.
@@FLAMINGBABYHEAD Okay, good luck sending out a resume typed up like what I just did and landing an interview. I swear, people on the internet will stoop to the most unfathomable levels of nonsense just to make their point. We may as well return to hieroglyphics by your own admission.
@@Professor_Utonium_ I understood everything you originally wrote including the self-righteous sarcasm. Despite your efforts to make one point, you've made the opposite point. Do you regularly use "Thee", and "Thine" in your vocabulary? No, you don't, and your ancestors would be aghast at your gutteral vernacular. Languages grow and change. Your way isn't the only way. Get over yourself.
@Professor_Utonium_ You're on a comment thread where you have a massive amount of socialy illiterate people that belive with such conviction that sounding like you haven't graduated 3rd grade is something to be proud of. This is the definition of self inflicted pain. Word of advice, sit back and appreciate their genius🤡 from a distance. You aren't qualified to interject.
I totally accept that AAVE is a dialect - and did years before I knew linguists were studying it as AAE or AAVE. What I think is still lacking in the (limited) conversation around it is a realistic assessment of what its role in society should be. It's mutual intelligibility with the other "standard" American English and dialects is very high. There's no danger of it being lost, so it doesn't seem to need any protection as an endangered language. But the question of it's role in education, commerce, the workplace etc is unanswered. Personally, I feel that Europe already found the best solution to this kind of situation. And they have had the benefit of their dialects not carrying the burden of racial politics, which tends to cloud people's judgement, I find. Take Italy or Germany and their many dialects/languages (many of which are actually quite distant from the standard form). They now celebrate and try to preserve their (regional) dialects as part of their cultural heritage. In some cases, they are even taught in schools ALONGSIDE the standard form. But they recognize the need for a standard national lingua franca (and the current global lingua franca of English too). I would favor this approach for AAVE. Give it the respect and official acknowledgement it deserves as an important part of American cultural history and identity. Teach it in schools as a distinct dialect but make sure students know that (1) a dialect is not equivalent to a race (2) it has a distinctive grammar of it's own (3) you need to be able to NOT misunderstand people speaking AAVE (4) you need to be able to use speak and write standard American English, even if AAVE is what you prefer at home and in everyday life. None of this should be controversial. But of course it will be, because of our terrible history - and because we do sometimes put our cultural politics ahead of finding practical solutions these days.
If you want to make sure a dialect is not equivalent to race like you say, the first step would be to not call it AAVE. African-Americans are not the only ones to use it
I am helping a friend from Mexico learn about English slang. I'll be honest: I'm a white person and I told her that there's an English slang spoken by Black people here that I don't and won't teach her. I'm glad I came upon this video because I will be sharing it with her because it blew her mind and she can't comprehend it. Thank you for taking the time to create this.
Not all Black people talk like that. Plus, there is no such thing as AAVE it is just poor white talk that they are trying to say is AAVE. This is crazy and it sounds a little KKlanie. WOW!
This is NOT African American vernacular. This is English learned by black people from white people that was never corrected over time due to a denial of eduction. I do not include slang terminology, which is something every group has based on their community. This is primarily Southern English that was migrated to other regions. The fallacy of this being Black English is negated by the fact that many white southerners in very rural areas speak the same way. Are they black? No, but they also suffer from generations of poor education. This is not only a southern issue, but one that spans the nation where black people and others learned poor English speech patterns from whites. Access or denial to proper education is the difference. I encountered a so-called teacher who is white who said, “As a white woman, I don’t feel it is my place to correct the English spoken by [black] children because that is how they probably speak at home”. The way she said it made it seem as though she was considering the wellbeing of black children, but it is the opposite. She admitted to consciously neglecting to teach black children based on speech that has not been corrected for generations. She, and others like her, are part of the problem. They perpetuate this false perception of Black English by continuing to deny proper education to black children. I work with black educators who are also victims of poor eductions in proper English vernacular. I have heard white teachers make fun of those black teachers and I have also been criticized by black teachers when I have tried to correct them. This notion of Black English is a racist trope that white racists revel in because it reinforces the stereotype of black people being uneducated. The English my ancestors learned was the English spoken by white people. Those fortunate enough to have access to proper education or take the initiative to learn on their own broke the cycle of ignorance. It I an insult when people, both black and white, say we “sound white”. I have never heard of another group of people that this saying applies to. Be careful with what you label things as. Those labels stick and are hard to get off.
This is NOT African American vernacular. This is English learned by black people from white people that was never corrected over time due to a denial of eduction. I do not include slang terminology, which is something every group has based on their community. This is primarily Southern English that was migrated to other regions. The fallacy of this being Black English is negated by the fact that many white southerners in very rural areas speak the same way. Are they black? No, but they also suffer from generations of poor education. This is not only a southern issue, but one that spans the nation where black people and others learned poor English speech patterns from whites. Access or denial to proper education is the difference. I encountered a so-called teacher who is white who said, “As a white woman, I don’t feel it is my place to correct the English spoken by [black] children because that is how they probably speak at home”. The way she said it made it seem as though she was considering the wellbeing of black children, but it is the opposite. She admitted to consciously neglecting to teach black children based on speech that has not been corrected for generations. She, and others like her, are part of the problem. They perpetuate this false perception of Black English by continuing to deny proper education to black children. I work with black educators who are also victims of poor eductions in proper English vernacular. I have heard white teachers make fun of those black teachers and I have also been criticized by black teachers when I have tried to correct them. This notion of Black English is a racist trope that white racists revel in because it reinforces the stereotype of black people being uneducated. The English my ancestors learned was the English spoken by white people. Those fortunate enough to have access to proper education or take the initiative to learn on their own broke the cycle of ignorance. It I an insult when people, both black and white, say we “sound white”. I have never heard of another group of people that this saying applies to. Be careful with what you label things as. Those labels stick and are hard to get off.
AAVE/AAE/AAL (African American (AA) Vernacular (V) English (E)/AAE/AA Language (L)) are NOT slang. Slang is defined as “a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.” AAE is used across contexts (formal and informal) and in writing and spoken language and is used by more than African American ppl … As an aside African American Language is expansive to the point that there’s even a Black American Sign Language (BASL).
I’m sure that learning these rules will help the community succeed in international business dealings. Saying you don’t have time to speak properly shows you cut corners and do things your own way for personal gratification.
Great video! Reminds me of how Russian is a zero copula language in the present tense, and that's why so many people that have Russian or similar as their first language often drop them when speaking English. Everyone knows exactly what they mean because there's no loss in information, it's just not what we're used to, so it sounds "improper." The more I learn about my own language (English), and languages in general, the more I've accepted that there is no "proper" way to say anything - just regional and cultural differences within a broad spectra of how to communicate information in languages that are ever-evolving.
To be always confused me when I was learning english as a second language. Exactly because we can say stuff like he learning and its perfectly normal in my mother language
Love this! Ordinarily I’d say “he’s learning”, “who’s he”, “what’s up”, and only use “is” if its to communicate at work in international English for the sake of international colleagues and students. At home and with friends I speak old school New York English.
As an English language teacher, I’m always interested in learning more about the English language. I think your video was very concise, clear and useful! The examples and skits you put in here were funny and helped highlight the language in use, especially with the colour subtitles.
Check dr. Geoff Lindsey’s channel. He’s a linguist and his videos on the English language are the best on UA-cam. Hugely interesting both for native speakers who want to know their language better and for not native learners. Can’t recommend him enough.
I’m just gonna say this in my best AAVE texting My guy. I ain’t never heard it put this good. You really out here cold switchin on quo and ain’t lose a beat. I always end up losing a step when I don’t get around folk often enough. I got to work on that though, cus I really feel like I’ma do my kids wrong if I don’t code switch enough around them. You gave me some peace on this. Bless.
I know many ESL speakers who struggle to understand AAVE speakers when they go to the US for the first time. It’s a whole dialect and culture not taught about, and it deserves as much respect as UK vs American accents. I want to share your videos with everyone I know. I hope you rest up and keep making this series when you are ready!
@@danjquiroz This country has 330 million people, one would expect a few regional dialects here and there. The Germans also say what you said about Bavarians, the French say it about the Libyans, the English say it about the Irish, and the Spanish say it about the Basque.
@@danjquirozSlaves weren't allowed to learn to read. Black schools were underfunded. Educational opportunities were scarce for non-whites. Why should people be ashamed if their ancestors weren't given the opportunity to education?
@@johnnyearp52While I agree with the principle of your message, I feel like it needs to be added that modern black youths do have access to education, so why is AAVE still a thing?
@@Professor_Utonium_ Black people speak like their parents speak and their community speaks. Just like white people. Why do white people from Boston speak with a Boston accent? Because they grow up around it.
@@philosophyofiron9686 oh ho! The venn diagram of Robwords, LanguageJones, and Tom Scott with What's Good English . . . but now I have to go check Storied and Geoff Lindsey, thank you very much.
Ok… now that I did watch the video (still thinking about the t-shirt), damn the algorithm that took 2 years to bring me here. Excellent topic and development, and yes, we need a lot more like this….
I grew up in the environment that AAV was just English mistakes. Honestly, it's really hard for me to unlearn that erroneous lesson. I think this video will help a lot of people like myself. I saw videos on Scotts (which is another dialectic) before I came here, which also helped. I suppose your channel's title is extremely apropos. It's a little difficult to parse just what Good English looks like. There's a lot of self-centered bias out there. Thanks for the great video.
Me, too, because I come from a teaching family, but in College English, I learned that languages are for communication, so if the other person can understand what you say, then you're saying it right! In anthropology class, I learned that a dialect tells where you're from, and slang tells who your friends are. As a cartoonist, I find that both are handy for creating characters! 😁🤓
@@dakotahrickard Ok, please explain how you actively stop remembering something. Neurologists would love to also hear about your deep understanding of the mind. Sarcasm aside, there is no "unlearning" something, you simply learn a new behavior and make that a new habit/automatic response over time. It doesn't magically erase or undo what you've already known and experienced.
As someone learning Spanish from actual speakers here in Florida, this seems similar to how “yo” and “tu” are usually dropped. But it makes sense in both cases; it’s just extra bulk.
i aint even know AAVE was a thing til high school, to me it was just english. as a romanian immigrant living in six mile detroit and as the only white kid in class, hearing my friends talk was just how i learned. so it's wild to me hearing other people act like it's not proper english when that was just normal ass english to me
I also grew up in detroit and didn't know this was it's own language until college. I thought it was just a detroit accent. I literally have to remind myself I can't say "where you stay" to people out the area.
@@CRBungalow yeah fr after moving to colorado i had other white people ask me why im tryna sound black so i was like wym lmao this just how we speak in detroit and that's when i figured out oh wait issa whole dialectical difference
I’m an English language buff. Yep. I’m the guy who actually read the front part of the Merriam Webster dictionary. Some fascinating stuff in there. But there was never anything about AAVE. I took grammar from Sister Mary Richard (woman still lives rent free in my head) and I speak such proper English that it rubbed off onto my kids. My youngest (no a full grown man) is black. He knows Sister Richard English but when he brought home what I called “lazy” English I was disappointed. But now at age 71, I find I am still able to learn things. Like this. Thank you. (I still say hwen, hwat, and hwite and I still do my best to not end a sentence with a preposition and to use proper vowel conjugation. But I will split all the infinitives I want. Take that Sister Richard!)
White guy here. I don't speak AAVE but I understand 100% with zero effort, and I am certain that my black friends understand me 100% with no effort. It's weird, we have 100% mutually intelligible ways of speaking but there are differences. I want to say the kids these days cross over without as much code switching now. I wonder if the differences will go to zero in another 50 years, which is probably gone happen considering how far apart they was 100 years ago.
@@benh715 that was before the internet and all the technology though. It's hard for a language group to be isolated anymore, hell the entire world is converging onto English as a lingua franca with Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese being the few that aren't being actively displaced. You know how weird it is for me to go to Europe and 90% of them speak perfect English?
If you can't understand AAVE and are a native English speaker, you have some issues critically thinking. It really isn't difficult to understand at all
@@Professor_Utonium_I don’t think anyone truly has trouble understanding it, there’s just a lot of people who like to have a superiority complex about how it’s “wrong” as if spoken languages aren’t constantly evolving
It's almost as if AAVE comes from the American south, or something. That would be silly to think, tho. As we all know, nothing happened in American history that would cause a large concentration of black people in the south.
According to historians a large part of what we typically think of as black culture in the south came from original red necks from Scotland and Ireland. That’s according to Thomas Sowell and he may be controversial but he’s very well researched
The small details like the little speed up before "we aint got time for all this nonsense." really added a some flare even though it was subtle. Hahaha and picking between is/are hahaha. Great video.
@@WhatsGoodEnglish I've tried my hand at video editing so I definitely feel that. Gives me a different perspective and appreciation for the people who put in that effort. 💪🏾
True irony that "ain't" is a contraction of "*are* not" which coincidentally is also being misused in this sentence. The correct word would be "don't", which would then at least subscribe to his own broken rules of not using "are" and "is".
I grew up on the edge of detroit, so I didn't actually know this was it's own language until I studied languages in college. I literally just thought this is how we talk in detroit.
Hey EK, found you on TikTok. I'm a Spanish teacher at a predominantly Black school. Since the class relies so much on translation to understand certain structures, I feel it may not be as effective because these structures are absent in AAVE. I would love to see what you thought about Spanish SLA in AAVE speakers. For example, Spanish uses two words (ser/estar) to mean "to be." What is it like going from a zero copula language to a two(?) copula language?
¡Hola! Honestly it’s something I still get mixed up from time to time. I do think the issue has more to do with relying more heavily on translation than communication. What got me to make less mistakes was regularly conversing with people who were saying it correctly all the time because they were native speakers and little by little I was able to reproduce the grammatically correct version more regularly.
I’m currently learning Spanish as well (though I’m white, and I don’t know AAVE) I agree with Mr. What’s Good. I think the literal “translations” are basically just a shoehorn to get students started, but they don’t really have much to do with fluency or true understanding When I’m studying, I need to be able to think directly in Spanish. There are many grammatical differences, even from “standard” English, and all I can do is roll with the punches. Not all of it makes sense immediately, but as long as I understand the individual words, I’m more than happy to jam them together however Spanish tells me to!
OK, I’m only 2 minutes in, but what you’re saying is the dropping of the be, at least as an auxiliary verb, just makes AAVE more like pretty much every other language I know anything about, which is, I grant, a small set. Je mange is I eat, I am eating,mI do eat. There's no Je suis mange, Je fais mange. There are auxiliary verbs in other tenses, but no need in present tense. I guess I have never learned how English developed such a dependence on auxiliary verbs. I don’t hate it, but it certainly is a difference.
It’s the same in Turkish. We don’t say „is“ and „are“ either, but I can’t explain the differences as well as you do. It’s a bit complicated in Turkish since we conjugate at the end of the word. We also don’t gender in our language, there is no „he“ „she“ „it“ there is only „o“. I speak 3 languages and it’s really hard to explain Turkish because I have no comparison to other languages because of the way we conjugate. But it’s cool to learn about other languages.
😍 New subscriber! You awesome! I've always loved this vernacular. So cool! You're helping me in my academic endevours too. Thanks so much for your super interesting content. 😊
Oh this is so cool. My parents are from a major us city, but like, from the city-city, so my mom (as most women often do with any language) carried AAVE through her formative years way back in the 70s/80s and passed her language knowledge down to me (obviously lol), and this is literally so cool cause I have always wondered why that was the case, cause I 100% am the walking literal SNL sketch of "I just talk like that", but, forreal and except I'm a chick and not a man, and I 100% am reading the comments of people saying that they found this interesting how seamless you code-switched, and, IDK, it's weird cause I guess I took understanding AAVE for granted and didn't realize I was code-switching as well when I was understanding it, cause, I can code switch on the fly (which I know some people take as inauthentic, but, everything I do is authentic, and if it's not, you'll know cause my eyes give it away--i'm autistic, my facial expressions are not masked well lmao). What a wild ride of enjoying a video, gaining knowledge, comparing to my own life, self-reflection about my knowledge that I've had my entire life, and then realizing that I likely owe my love of language to AAVE. Seriously, I 100% mean that, because code-switching is not something I have to think about at all, in any capacity, my brain will just do it for the necessary situation/person, no matter who that person/situation is (like, old person, crying child, formal business meeting, to just casual talking), and, IDK, this was just an amazing video that was extremely thought provoking. Thanks for this video, also, omg, your shirt is amazing, peace!
As a european ESL with no experience of AAVE outside of random pop culture examples, this is tremendously helpful. I can usually suss out what is being said when I run into it, but the underlying rules of the vernacular tend to escape me because it’s just so unfamiliar.
Man, I loved this. (As for why it's blowing up now, I dunno--it just showed up in my "recommended for you" feed--I did watch a few Simon Roper videos about the evolution of English accents since 1500.) Having very little patience for Proper Language mavens, I greatly enjoy seeing someone explain how "incorrect" dialects (i.e. those not used by the dominant/privileged caste) are actually internally-consistent variations. Liking and subscribing!
@@Dovelunalove I've been Black for 54 years and the only times I've ever heard "you is" have not been from native speakers but from American television shows and movies not written by native AAVE speakers. These media products create a distorted version of the language and then are exported and consumed by foreigners who don't understand that the 'is' in "you is" isn't necessary. Isn't that why you're here? The most cringe worthy example I can think of is from the movie The Help, in which Viola Davis's character gives her young charge affirmations by telling her "You is kind, you is smart, you is important." The novel the movie is based on was written by a white woman who probably thought she was constructing those phrases correctly when she wasn't, and those phrases are now used by our community as an inside joke.
@@IndomitableAde I do wonder to what extent this really applies across the entire US rather than just portions, because this does not sound like how I heard my black friends talking when I was a kid. It's been quite a while, but while there was no copular be, it was pretty much always replaced with the habitual be or one of the phrases that he listed in the video. Just outright skipping the verb entirely was not something that I ever noticed being done and certainly not as consistently as the video implies. I don't know if that's just my memory, or if that's just a regional variation.
@@Dovelunalove allow me to apologize. I'm recalling a famous song by Louis Jordan titled "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby", so while it's true that some African Americans do say "you is" and ask "is you?", by and large we don't, and what I explained earlier about corrupted AAVE being an export of American media stands.
This seems normal of all people in much of the South and Appalachian regions, even Ohio. Cincinnati Bengals - Who day? and New Orleans Saints - Who dat?
I just stumbled upon your channel while doing some research about AAVE and it's one of those channels that make me go “what, only 4k subscribers”? Very positive and educative content there, thank you so much for your work!
This is not just for AfroAmericans. This way of talking initially comes from our families being poor and widely uneducated in European society. However, poor EuroAmericans ALSO speak like this. Wealthy POC only talk like this to be "relevant" to poorer POC. Sometimes, I have to talk like this so as to not offend my fellow POC, who think that my speech is too "high on the horse" (AKA "white" 🙄). I cannot stand dummying myself down just to spare others of embarrassment, especially the elders.
I did a cultural exchange in the us and I found it extremely hard to understand African American speech. At the time I couldn’t explain it to myself and I thought it was about my English level not being good enough. When I later learned about AAVE and how it’s a separate dialect of English it all started to make sense. Thanks for explaining this to all the confused foreigners out here!
This is the kind of thing that makes me wish I was younger just to have time to enjoy the knowledge that people are spreading for free. Love your energy and enthusiasm as well as your knowledge. Subbed.
I guess it boils down how you were brought up in the way you speak, regardless of your ethnicity! I was born in Mississippi, but I grew up in California, and have used "is" and "are" frequently in conversation.
I'm from a poor white area and we spoke English incorrectly. Fortunately, I noticed it early (how could you not with access to basic news channels, movies, etc) so I corrected it fairly easily. Obviously for casual, local situations it is perfectly fine, but it's important for people to break out of the little tide pools of stunted offshoots and be able to speak properly. It definitely helps communication.
Sadly, instead, people like this celebrate their poor use of language and give it a positive label to make it sound more qualified. All this will ever do is hold people back.
There is no "correct" English dialect. There's just what academic institutions have decided is correct, and a lot of it is arbitrary nonsense, like not using split infinites or whatever.
@@helxisyour understanding of linguistics is poor. Though in this age ignorance is not only prevalent it’s actively sought after. So I’ll leave you be.
No disrespect, but it still sounds unedicated no matter if its cultural appropriate or not. Why not just learn the acceptable way to speak just like everyone else? Why try to be different, and then wonder why you are looked at differently?
Another important point is that zero copula isn't unique to AAVE. Arabic, Lithuanian, Russian, Japanese and a bunch of other languages are also zero copula to some degree. So it's not that AAVE "lacks" something that makes it inferior. It's just one language among many that simply doesn't have it. Same as how English doesn't have grammatical gender but a lot of other languages do.
“Who you?” is most often used to request an individual to identify themselves. “Who is you?” generally expresses two distinct questions and a statement that are dependent on the context of the situation when it is used. Context 1. A situation where someone appears to be acting within their authoritative capacity. Meaning 1. From where (what title or position) does your authority derive? Context 2. An individual asserts authority of which the speaker does not recognize or refuses to submit to. Meaning 2. Who do you think you are? What authority do you claim to possess? You do not hold the authority that you are attempting to assert within the context of the situation and/or over me.
As I learn more about our history and our world today, I realize how programmed I've been to see the world from a perspective used to control me and control others, especially black people in America. As I clean the mud out of my eyes and ears, I can finally understand beauty, your video helped me see it.
The entire globe uses standard English for the air traffic control system. No matter what your native language is, you must be able to speak standard English to fly for the airlines and use the airports. Everywhere you land with a control tower, standard English is spoken. It is also the standard language for many international organizations such as engineering and physics. So, I would suggest that while AAVE may be used by a fraction of English speakers, not knowing and being fluent in standard English can be an impediment to advancement in many fields. Also, some people may judge those using AAVE as having less intelligence.
Well, yeah. Very important to keep in mind if I’m going to become a pilot I guess. In the meantime, the “entire global” will continue to use many variants of English: Australian, New Zealand, Indian, South African, and Caribbean to name a few.
Im an english teacher that works with spanish studens and DUDE this came in SO helpful when they asked me question at what at the time I didnt know was AAVE. I would just say it was slang or urban english. Thank you so much man. This channel is not getting the love it deserves
@@eve3363 Just natural acquisition. If someone is around AAVE, they will pick up the rules. If they are around AAVE more than Standard American English, but both are just called "English"... well, that can get confusing for obvious reasons.
@@eve3363 You should get out more ;) Seriously though, it isn't common for someone who is "white" to speak AAVE, but happens. In fact, there are some white folks who learned AAVE as their native language, but there are more who speak it alongside something like Standard American English. Even some folks who learn it as adults. It is just a dialect, nothing particularly special or difficult about it. PS: Of course, "white" isn't a particularly well defined term. Some folks might not consider a light skinned Caucasian growing up in an AAVE speaking community as really being "white".
@@Kemetyu-Centered36 No one? Really? How do you think that works, are the brains of folks of European ancestry sufficiently different from Blacks that they literally can't learn the same languages/dialects even if they grow up in the same environment? Or do you think it is some critical physiological difference between races? Nah, humans just learn whatever languages they are exposed to.
What he saying is technically true but we use “is” “are” and such, but since most of us talk so fast, you don’t hear it or it’s gets skipped. We might hear “who dat?” But you’re more likely to hear, “who dat is?” Hopefully this helps a lot of people
thank you for the engaging video about AAVE grammar. looking forward to watching more of your stuff. also, i really love that you included audio cues for each example on the screen. really helps the viewer follow along and distinguish your spoken explanations from the examples.
The problem with AAVE (colloquially known as Ebonics) is that it's a less functional, inferior form of English. It make deciphering meanings more difficult, and typically disregards academic words, or higher level English words in general. I was taught that assimilation was essential to America's flourishing, but the opposite school of thought seems to be more popular nowadays. It's really unfortunate.
@@Musicdudeyoutub If you respond to me, I'm gonna respond back. You don't have to want a discussion. It's pretty arrogant to say this is your opinion, you know how things work, and you're shutting off all other ideas. My point is that believing everyone has to do things the way you see as proper, and that your way is the de facto normal, is entitled and arrogant. English wasn't even the language of the land not that many years ago.
@@xjr.0 English has been the language of the land for the whole existence of America. Pockets of people have always spoken other languages, and we have always encouraged them to speak proper English and become accustomed to the dominant culture. That's what assimilation is. There's no argument about a definition
TLDR: It's crazy that there are still American people who don't understand basic AAVE. I'm white, so of course there are some words I don't know, but at least I get the basic structute & can tell most words by context. AAVE has always seemed very intuitive to me. It's very pervasive all throughout American English, to varying degrees. A lot of non-black people don't even know they are borrowing from (or straight up appropriating from) AAVE. Even good old American words like "rock n' roll" came from AAVE. (Not to mention the music, itself and the dances that went with it!) So it's always been crazy to me how so many white people could possibly not know it! Back in the 90's when I was in high school Spanish class, the students (a mix of white and hispanic kids) were talking in groups about Spanish and English dialects. AAVE (fka: Ebonics) came up. My group members were laughing and saying Ebonics isn't a dialect and I said "yes it is." They didn't believe me. They thought I was just trying to fool them, until our teacher, Miss Tom (a sweet black woman), overheard us and came over and said "yes, Ebonics really is a legitimate English dialect." My group was just like "Really? Oh, ok. Wow. I didn't know that. Wow." Miss Tom smiled at me. I think she must have been happy that at least one of these kids had some respect for her culture. I felt half proud and half sad. Proud of myself for knowing, but sad that no one else around me had known, and some of them still seemed like they didn't really believe it. I'm glad that now adays a lot more people are finally starting to give AAVE the respect it deserves.
it’s really interesting to see how people play around with AAVE. while it shares the same fundamentals, everyone has their own personalized way of using it, because it’s a part of their identity. i love linguistics.
@@sunnybhai1904I made it through high school just fine using it, and with a high GPA as well, so it would be best for you to shut your snooty, pretentious little mouth. It amazes me how ignorant some people can be
1:44 That's actually a really good point. The sentences can be understood entirely without the additional words. Now I'm kind of curious why we use them at all. There must have been some reason.
You don't want to get rid of copulas. Standard English is necessary for literature and formal speaking. But, that don't mean ya'll can't use dat slang, sometimes.
Standard or formal English is used to reduce ambiguity or misunderstanding. Everyone "code switches" in the sense that they have a casual way of speaking in private, and a more formal way of speaking in professional settings. Think of formal English more of a way for all English speakers, regardless of accent or dialect, to understand each other rather than a "correct" way of speaking or writing.
It’s been almost 3 years since I uploaded this video and it got really popular all of a sudden! Welcome to all the new viewers and subscribers. I did notice several of you commenting that the music was too loud. I appreciate the criticism and I assure you I have become a much better editor since publishing this video. Cards on the table, I am experiencing a little bit of burnout right now, which is why I haven’t published anything recently, and I haven’t made a video on this topic in quite some time because it kind of let me down the path to burning out, but your comments are giving me life, and making me want get back to it. Thank you all so much for choosing to click on this video and I’ll try to make you something cool in the future
take your time and care of yourself but if this wave can help you flow and glow you've got my fingers crossed
Why do you say aks instead of ask?
@@tommy2nes🤭🤭🤭🤭
awww man you're beautiful
You tube burnout is a real thing but it sounds like it’s time to come on through again
I’m speech language pathologist and it’s part of my job to evaluate language for the presence of a disorder. I can’t tell you how many times students are (wrongly) recommended for speech therapy services due to AAVE with the goal of communicating in standard American English (SAE), and then I have to exit them when I find that they’re missing class to come to speech therapy for something that is clinically considered a dialectical difference. It’s literally illegal to pull kids out of class for a dialect difference. The skill of code switching encompasses different situations from young person talking to an elder all the way to switching cultural dialects when necessary… something “we” and others who come from linguistically diverse backgrounds know all too well.
Wow, I never thought about teachers/administrators misdiagnosing students on the basis of them using/preferring AAVE. This is why it's important to a representation among school staff that align with the student body.
I subbed one day for a girl who had trouble on word lists with the a in cat. She said a as in car. So I asked her family heritage. It was Turkish and German. So the next day I brought word searches I found on line in those languages. She had no problem pronouncing words in them both. I say enough calling people special Ed for having other languages in the family.
Because of your job I'd expect you to have better grammar. Did you go to college for this work or did you just stumble into it because nobody else wanted the job? Maybe you think faster than you type, I do that all the time and forget words?
@@lennybuttz2162”Better grammar?” His video is literally a miniature video grammar lesson contrasting black American dialect and standard English. Not sure what else you’re looking for.
@@JdBa2 I was talking about ebonyr.b.'s grammar.
I started to work in the US after I was educated with standard English for many years. I didn't know that AAVE existed (I'm Japanese). My new work place, I have many co-workers who speak AAVE, and I couldn't understand what they are saying to me. It was a big problem. This video helps me to survive my life here. I hope ESL classes offer AAVE classes. Many English learners want to pay for AAVE classes to survive, and I wonder why ESL classes don't offer it. I hope you teach at ESL classes in colleges for English learners. Thank you so much.
Unfortunately, AAVE is seen as "lower class" than "standard english" and thus "inappropriate" in an educational setting. This tends to happen with foreign language classes in general; you tend to learn very formalized, "upper class" forms of the language which, while certainly worth learning, can leave you having difficulties understanding the way typical speakers of the language actually talk
We don't speak this way. This is slave talk.
@@MoncœrCoyoteSmithit is NOT slave talk 😂 bold and wrong 💀
@@MyNameIsntNina i am on my grandparents' land given to the by the Freedman Bureau. That land was taken from my great great great grandfather, a slave holder. In fact, he was the largest slave holder in Mississippi. I am the product of slavery. My father's grandparents fled the plantation in the Mississippi Delta at gun point. My people made this vernacular. They still speak it today. The ones without education. I hate to say this, young one but you are speaking to a witness. You won't find anyone else on Beyonce's internet with more knowledge of US Slave history. In fact, my sister and i were researching slave narratives last night. I was reading about the Civil War. Can you tell me what the US really called the Civil War? It wasn't "civil." It started with an "n." Don't go by my AI generated profile picture. I have the blood of the West African. Let me know if you'd like to learn more twisted US history.
Black people, please don't think this type of language is cool. My grandfather, a former sharecropper and blues singer, tried his best to speak proper but they were not allowed to attend school. He imitated the white people he worked for the best he could. Nearly all Blacks in the US are from Mississippi and left during Jim Crow.
Another thing, they always taught me not to respond until i did my own research so i didn't look uneducated.
@@MoncœrCoyoteSmith As a Black person myself, I believe that AAVE is a significant part of our cultural heritage. While it's true that AAVE has roots in the experiences of our ancestors during and after slavery, it has evolved into a complex and fully developed dialect that expresses the unique identity and resilience of Black communities.
I see AAVE not as a symbol of a lack of education, but as a vibrant and expressive part of our culture. It represents our history, creativity, and the ways we have adapted and thrived despite systemic oppression.
Referring to it as “slave talk” dismisses all of that.
Thank you for sharing your perspective and family history. I respect the experiences of your ancestors and I get how their circumstances have shaped your views.
Calling Ghostbusters an AAVE song is one of those things where I always kinda knew but never actually put it together lol
"I ain't afraid'a no ghost"
"I AM NOT AFRAID OF ANY GHOST". 😂😂😂
@@NicoEl119Now that’s beautiful.
@@Pro-Diletante 😂
I never even considered this until I saw this video, and man its exactly right.
"What is you doing" is words I would often hear right before a whooping is imminent.
Yikes..
“Our language is beautiful and deserves to be respected” hit me
A lot of negativity concerning AAVE on this post coming from people who fail to realize that American English is merely a dialect of British English. No matter how you characterize AAVE, it is here to stay as evidenced by the continuing colorful additions to American English 24/7.
I couldn't have put it better myself
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
@@WhatsGoodEnglisha Japanese person here for business pointed out the reason this push for a regional and social dialect is flawed.
He could not understand his coworkers who speak English this way.
Many other English speakers in the workplace cannot communicate with this creole or subdilect.
While it should not be looked down upon more then a surfer dialect or valley girl it will remain unprofessional when the spoken business world because it is hard to understand outside the given community.
That is the entire, very un racist but possibly classis, reason for the "proper" English of business communication.
Much like the southern accent and other regional accents that have been disappearing this dialect should fade naturally if there is not a nostalgic push to create relevance.
@@TonyMarselle There's no push. This is a documentation of how people have spoken informally for years. This is just how people talk.
@@TonyMarselle mate, just learn the dialect! it's a lot easier and more morally correct to learn a slightly diffrent version of a language than it is to just force a bunch of people to speak a certain way
I had a friend growing up, Richard Williams. His family was from Trinidad. Richard was incredibly smart and linguistically gifted. He used language to blend in with whatever group he was hanging out with. He could speak fluent AAVE (though, I don't think that's what it was called back in the 80s) when he was hanging out with the black kids, and mainstream American English when he was with the white kids. I loved visiting him at home, though, because there he spoke Trinidadian with his family, and I just love the sound of that!
Yeah i love the english creoles of the Caribbean. Because they are a creole of a creole. The Trinidadians (and many Islands on that side) originally spoke Patois (the original patois. It was the name for french creole and still called that In billingual Islands) but when they had to learn english, they just kept the grammar of Patois (french creole) it's 90% the same as the language in Martinique and Haití. Which shows just how much they all come from the same roots.
Trini English is truly gorgeous. ❤
As a language buff, I really enjoy your postings. I've always been in love with our African-American vernacular and since I've been living in Europe, it's the only thing that I miss about the States. I love how narratives and stories become so colorful when it is being used. I hope that this positively contributes to the discussion (remember that concept, discussion? listening, understanding and then speaking) about the importance of bilingualism. When we speak the vernacular, we aren't speaking (standard) English, we're speaking a colorful variation of it; African-American English. Just like Jamaican English, Carribean English, Indian English, Australian English...these are all different languages related to and based on standard English. With this comes the awareness that, because many people don't understand this language variation, that I, in that case, should switch to standard English. What's good English? It's all good!
Bilingualism is really important but it's something that's not really promoted here in the States which is a shame because other variants of English are super fun and interesting. Thanks for commenting!
i would like to add that this "colorfullness" you mention seems to come from our african roots, as i have detected in some african lenguages and also in variations of other languages like spanish or portuguese when black people modify them
Well maybe you should study the land where you're at. AAVE comes from England. It's poor, rural speech. it's not a dialect. It's an etholict or sociolict. So you're educated on Standard American English but you wish to promote a slave ignorant dialect. Can't make this shit up!!!🤣
I live in Europe too, but when my family came to visit, the aave flew out of me 😂
We ain't African
I can't wait for the next video in this series! I learned a ton and I hope you continue to spread the word about the importance of understanding what AAVE really is.
Salve! Ego videre te hic non expecto!
I've already got a good idea for most of my scenes are gonna be. If it all comes together right it'll be really interesting
I am a US-born African American who learned AAVE in late childhood. No one in my family spoke it, nor did my friends, neighbors, or classmates. During my early childhood in the 60s and 70s, it wasn’t spoken on television nor in any of the films that I saw.
My family has been from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and the Caribbean since colonial times. I am a first generation Californian.
When I was still in school, we moved from Santa Monica to L.A. It was then that I heard AAVE for the first time. I not only learned a new dialect, but new expressions, accents, and non-verbal vocalizations that signaled approval, disapproval, disgust, surprise, affirmation, etc.
After moving to Los Angeles, I had Black friends for the first time, the majority of whom were either born in the South or had parents who were.
I was routinely teased by my new Black friends and classmates for the way I spoke and was constantly asked why I “spoke so proper”. Eventually, I picked up AAVE through mimicry. I wanted to fit in. I also felt more welcomed than I had in Santa Monica. Although I had friends there, I was always made to feel as if I were different, and not in a good way.
Nevertheless, to this day, there are certain non-standard words, expressions, and pronunciations I do not and will not use. I refuse to pronounce “ask” as “aks”, for example, or substitute “sleep” for “asleep”. I do, however, often find myself code switching. It’s automatic and subconscious. I’m almost never immediately aware I’m doing it until it’s gone on for a while.
My siblings never picked up AAVE, but I did so deliberately. After all these years, I no longer have my deep and distinctive “Valley Girl” or “surfer” accent. Prime examples of which would be the Wally character on Leave it to Beaver and Marsha Brady on the Brady Bunch. Both actors hail from Southern California.
I later understood how and why AAVE is not only rooted in West African languages but early modern English as well.
"Aks" goes back a long ways, though. John Wycliffe used it in his writings in the 1300s.
@@petrushka1611: That’s great. And I use a lot of AAVE in certain settings. But I never have and never will say “aks”, “aksing”, or pronounce “asked” as “axed” or “assed”. 🚫
English was nowhere near the language It is now,
700 years later.@petrushka1611
70s-80s? Wut'chew talkin' 'bout Willis?
So you were treated negatively for speaking properly. How typical, how sad.
AAVE was for me one of the first types of English i got to interact with on the internet (thank you black Twitter ♥️). It always felt super natural to me, though i was a ESL student. I kind of think that growing up in the 90s and early 2000s in eastern Europe (could), surprisingly, give you a lot of exposure to black culture through music, films and series.
AAVE and black American culture are what made me study American studies at university
Finally I've found a channel by a black creator who breaks down the intricacies of AAVE for the rest of us! Subscribed!!!
I needed you. Brother you are a breath of fresh air. Needless to say I’m fluent but now I study the patterns and cadence.
Same zero copula feature in Jamaican Creole. Even “am” is nonexistent. I’ve always found that JC is more readily translatable into African-American Vernacular than into standard english. New sub! Good to meet ya.
No, not zero. We replaced our copula with "a". Him a learn, dem a learn. You can hear "Dem learning" but a little more unnatural and is partly from readding a little "proper"ness to the sentence.
@@burnblue , I was speaking of the english copulas. But also, that’s not how “a” is functioning in those examples you gave. In basilect JC, we don’t do the “ing” suffix on verbs to show something happening currently. We keep the root verb as is and add “a” as a prefix to it. Even in the mesolect variety where we speak more english, we would simply say “dem learning” or “him learning”, not “him is learning” or “dem are learning”.
The letter/ word “a” or “ah” is probably the most versatile word in JC and does act as you say in certain cases, but just not in those examples you gave.
Oh man, I totally relate to Imposter Syndrome
However, as a white dude, all I can say is I’m really glad you’re out here making content like this! I honestly didn’t even know about AAVE until 5 or so years ago… Then it all clicked. “Oh, it’s literally just a dialect of English! But our racist society decided to make it seem like ‘bad English’ instead of recognizing its legitimacy”
Anyway, despite my awareness of AAVE, I know very little about it. Unfortunately, I don’t know any black people IRL (and I’m not particularly social to begin with), so I love being able to watch your content
You’re truly doing the lord’s work, so to speak. Don’t ever forget that!
Read some Thomas Sowell if you actually want to understand the history of this "dialect". It goes all the way back to Southern UK. Even words like chitlins. It is bad English and it's not racist to say so, it's racist to glorify it
@@thelostforager It is stupid to think that a dialect can be "bad" and so it would be unsurprising if Sowell (a stupid person) made such a claim.
@@thelostforager okay bud 👍
Cringe
Dude there's no excuse or reason to normalize lazy ass talking
I had a coworker once try to imitate AAVE by saying "Done don't do does did"... as if there were no rules to the language at all. It has a grammar! You can't just say anything and have it make sense. I'm happy to see more and more people understanding that it's a valid language and not just a series of grammar mistakes...
So ebonics?
@@susanfudge1737 Yes, it's also known as Ebonics.
I don’t really see it as another new language but maybe can be considered a dialect?
@@lindsaypaige4628 Certainly a version of English, but with slightly different rules of grammar. I think we don't think of it as a dialect because of the way in which people migrated after the Civil War. The language originates in the South, but as people fled slavery, they brought it with them to communities across the USA. It ends up not being associated with any region in particular, but with people of African extraction.
English teacher here-your content is brilliant, thanks.
This is all so interesting.
In St. Croix, we say:
(In St. Croix, we do(es) seh:)
"I running late."
"Who they be?"
"Who he be?"
"You know where dey deh?"
Or
"You know which pah dey deh?"
I love dis an I done subscribe an' I gon' watch more.😊
Well hear nah, in Trinidad and Tobago 🇹🇹 we does say de same kinda tings inno.
“I eh go reach early”
“Who is dem?”
“Who is dat?”
“Which part dem is?”
Like you I now reach 😂 ah goin an subscribe now!
As an African girlie, I'm impressed by my ability to just know exactly what you mean before you even explain it. It just seems to make perfect sense, this type of English. Has a cool way abt it. And it just makes sense to a person who speaks an African language. This is how they are constructed. Hard to explain in words.
what language background do you come from?
@@nonameforprivacyreasons5158 swahili. East African, bantu languages. I grew up reading lots of Nigerian/west african books, watched nollywood as a child, was exposed to Pidgin this way
It’s probably a west or Central African country it sounds like
@@nonameforprivacyreasons5158 i dont know where my initial reply went. But i said, I am East African. Swahili speaker. Also othef bantu languages. But I grew up watching and reading Nigerian movies and books like most Africans
Yeah and from what I’ve seen it’s very similar to English based creoles and pidgins in west Africa :>
Nice to know: American Sign Language (ASL) and Black Sign Language (BSL) do not use "IS", "ARE", "THE", "BUT", and I'm sure some other less than useful words because they're not needed for completely coherent sentences. 😊
This is one of the dopest videos on UA-cam! Very satisfying and validating. Take your time. And when you're ready, make another one. And know that this video will never get old❤.
The purpose of language is to convey thoughts. If you're getting it done, then it's correct. Languages grow and change.
yeah dood xD who needz a bunch of rools waying us down!? u get wh8t i manrt right?m
@@Professor_Utonium_ yes exactly.
@@FLAMINGBABYHEAD Okay, good luck sending out a resume typed up like what I just did and landing an interview. I swear, people on the internet will stoop to the most unfathomable levels of nonsense just to make their point. We may as well return to hieroglyphics by your own admission.
@@Professor_Utonium_ I understood everything you originally wrote including the self-righteous sarcasm. Despite your efforts to make one point, you've made the opposite point. Do you regularly use "Thee", and "Thine" in your vocabulary? No, you don't, and your ancestors would be aghast at your gutteral vernacular. Languages grow and change. Your way isn't the only way. Get over yourself.
@Professor_Utonium_ You're on a comment thread where you have a massive amount of socialy illiterate people that belive with such conviction that sounding like you haven't graduated 3rd grade is something to be proud of.
This is the definition of self inflicted pain.
Word of advice, sit back and appreciate their genius🤡 from a distance. You aren't qualified to interject.
I was a cultural anthropology major and now teach English. This video scratched an itch in my brain. Loved it.
Who teaches cultural anthropology?
I absolutely love linguistics, and I grew up in a rural area in the U.S., so this kind of exposure is really important to me :)
A grammar nerd is a grammar nerd is a grammar nerd.
Loved the video...
And the dr who shirt.
@@drumsticknuggets5123 I think this video at least is more linguisticsnthan just grammar.
I totally accept that AAVE is a dialect - and did years before I knew linguists were studying it as AAE or AAVE.
What I think is still lacking in the (limited) conversation around it is a realistic assessment of what its role in society should be. It's mutual intelligibility with the other "standard" American English and dialects is very high. There's no danger of it being lost, so it doesn't seem to need any protection as an endangered language. But the question of it's role in education, commerce, the workplace etc is unanswered.
Personally, I feel that Europe already found the best solution to this kind of situation. And they have had the benefit of their dialects not carrying the burden of racial politics, which tends to cloud people's judgement, I find. Take Italy or Germany and their many dialects/languages (many of which are actually quite distant from the standard form). They now celebrate and try to preserve their (regional) dialects as part of their cultural heritage. In some cases, they are even taught in schools ALONGSIDE the standard form. But they recognize the need for a standard national lingua franca (and the current global lingua franca of English too). I would favor this approach for AAVE. Give it the respect and official acknowledgement it deserves as an important part of American cultural history and identity. Teach it in schools as a distinct dialect but make sure students know that (1) a dialect is not equivalent to a race (2) it has a distinctive grammar of it's own (3) you need to be able to NOT misunderstand people speaking AAVE (4) you need to be able to use speak and write standard American English, even if AAVE is what you prefer at home and in everyday life.
None of this should be controversial. But of course it will be, because of our terrible history - and because we do sometimes put our cultural politics ahead of finding practical solutions these days.
If you want to make sure a dialect is not equivalent to race like you say, the first step would be to not call it AAVE. African-Americans are not the only ones to use it
I am helping a friend from Mexico learn about English slang.
I'll be honest: I'm a white person and I told her that there's an English slang spoken by Black people here that I don't and won't teach her.
I'm glad I came upon this video because I will be sharing it with her because it blew her mind and she can't comprehend it.
Thank you for taking the time to create this.
Not all Black people talk like that. Plus, there is no such thing as AAVE it is just poor white talk that they are trying to say is AAVE. This is crazy and it sounds a little KKlanie. WOW!
Did she watch it
This is NOT African American vernacular. This is English learned by black people from white people that was never corrected over time due to a denial of eduction. I do not include slang terminology, which is something every group has based on their community. This is primarily Southern English that was migrated to other regions. The fallacy of this being Black English is negated by the fact that many white southerners in very rural areas speak the same way. Are they black? No, but they also suffer from generations of poor education. This is not only a southern issue, but one that spans the nation where black people and others learned poor English speech patterns from whites. Access or denial to proper education is the difference. I encountered a so-called teacher who is white who said, “As a white woman, I don’t feel it is my place to correct the English spoken by [black] children because that is how they probably speak at home”. The way she said it made it seem as though she was considering the wellbeing of black children, but it is the opposite. She admitted to consciously neglecting to teach black children based on speech that has not been corrected for generations. She, and others like her, are part of the problem. They perpetuate this false perception of Black English by continuing to deny proper education to black children. I work with black educators who are also victims of poor eductions in proper English vernacular. I have heard white teachers make fun of those black teachers and I have also been criticized by black teachers when I have tried to correct them. This notion of Black English is a racist trope that white racists revel in because it reinforces the stereotype of black people being uneducated. The English my ancestors learned was the English spoken by white people. Those fortunate enough to have access to proper education or take the initiative to learn on their own broke the cycle of ignorance. It I an insult when people, both black and white, say we “sound white”. I have never heard of another group of people that this saying applies to. Be careful with what you label things as. Those labels stick and are hard to get off.
This is NOT African American vernacular. This is English learned by black people from white people that was never corrected over time due to a denial of eduction. I do not include slang terminology, which is something every group has based on their community. This is primarily Southern English that was migrated to other regions. The fallacy of this being Black English is negated by the fact that many white southerners in very rural areas speak the same way. Are they black? No, but they also suffer from generations of poor education. This is not only a southern issue, but one that spans the nation where black people and others learned poor English speech patterns from whites. Access or denial to proper education is the difference. I encountered a so-called teacher who is white who said, “As a white woman, I don’t feel it is my place to correct the English spoken by [black] children because that is how they probably speak at home”. The way she said it made it seem as though she was considering the wellbeing of black children, but it is the opposite. She admitted to consciously neglecting to teach black children based on speech that has not been corrected for generations. She, and others like her, are part of the problem. They perpetuate this false perception of Black English by continuing to deny proper education to black children. I work with black educators who are also victims of poor eductions in proper English vernacular. I have heard white teachers make fun of those black teachers and I have also been criticized by black teachers when I have tried to correct them. This notion of Black English is a racist trope that white racists revel in because it reinforces the stereotype of black people being uneducated. The English my ancestors learned was the English spoken by white people. Those fortunate enough to have access to proper education or take the initiative to learn on their own broke the cycle of ignorance. It I an insult when people, both black and white, say we “sound white”. I have never heard of another group of people that this saying applies to. Be careful with what you label things as. Those labels stick and are hard to get off.
AAVE/AAE/AAL (African American (AA) Vernacular (V) English (E)/AAE/AA Language (L)) are NOT slang.
Slang is defined as “a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.”
AAE is used across contexts (formal and informal) and in writing and spoken language and is used by more than African American ppl …
As an aside African American Language is expansive to the point that there’s even a Black American Sign Language (BASL).
this is brilliant, informative, uplifting...bridging cultural gaps with simple good faith communication. that's what I'm talking about!
I’m sure that learning these rules will help the community succeed in international business dealings. Saying you don’t have time to speak properly shows you cut corners and do things your own way for personal gratification.
That actually sounds like someone who does great in business. Just need to be a lot less honest about it.
Great video! Reminds me of how Russian is a zero copula language in the present tense, and that's why so many people that have Russian or similar as their first language often drop them when speaking English. Everyone knows exactly what they mean because there's no loss in information, it's just not what we're used to, so it sounds "improper." The more I learn about my own language (English), and languages in general, the more I've accepted that there is no "proper" way to say anything - just regional and cultural differences within a broad spectra of how to communicate information in languages that are ever-evolving.
To be always confused me when I was learning english as a second language. Exactly because we can say stuff like he learning and its perfectly normal in my mother language
This is how Thai is spoken as well. Beautifully executed video, exposing the mysteries of language. Nice work!😊
Love this! Ordinarily I’d say “he’s learning”, “who’s he”, “what’s up”, and only use “is” if its to communicate at work in international English for the sake of international colleagues and students. At home and with friends I speak old school New York English.
As an English language teacher, I’m always interested in learning more about the English language. I think your video was very concise, clear and useful! The examples and skits you put in here were funny and helped highlight the language in use, especially with the colour subtitles.
Where were you when I was in school? Lol
Check dr. Geoff Lindsey’s channel. He’s a linguist and his videos on the English language are the best on UA-cam. Hugely interesting both for native speakers who want to know their language better and for not native learners. Can’t recommend him enough.
I’m just gonna say this in my best AAVE texting
My guy. I ain’t never heard it put this good. You really out here cold switchin on quo and ain’t lose a beat. I always end up losing a step when I don’t get around folk often enough. I got to work on that though, cus I really feel like I’ma do my kids wrong if I don’t code switch enough around them. You gave me some peace on this. Bless.
I know many ESL speakers who struggle to understand AAVE speakers when they go to the US for the first time. It’s a whole dialect and culture not taught about, and it deserves as much respect as UK vs American accents. I want to share your videos with everyone I know. I hope you rest up and keep making this series when you are ready!
@@danjquiroz This country has 330 million people, one would expect a few regional dialects here and there. The Germans also say what you said about Bavarians, the French say it about the Libyans, the English say it about the Irish, and the Spanish say it about the Basque.
@@danjquirozSlaves weren't allowed to learn to read. Black schools were underfunded. Educational opportunities were scarce for non-whites. Why should people be ashamed if their ancestors weren't given the opportunity to education?
@@johnnyearp52While I agree with the principle of your message, I feel like it needs to be added that modern black youths do have access to education, so why is AAVE still a thing?
@@Professor_Utonium_ Black people speak like their parents speak and their community speaks. Just like white people. Why do white people from Boston speak with a Boston accent? Because they grow up around it.
@@Professor_Utonium_ Modern Basque youths have an education, why is Basque still a thing?
Just discovering this channel 2 yrs later and LOVE IT!!!
me too. off to drink more o' this.
Same!
Sameeee and I'm black lol
Same! The algorithm finally landed me here from watching Storied, Robwords, Geoff Lindsey, LanguageJones and Tom Scott lol, and so glad it has!
@@philosophyofiron9686 oh ho! The venn diagram of Robwords, LanguageJones, and Tom Scott with What's Good English . . . but now I have to go check Storied and Geoff Lindsey, thank you very much.
I teach ENglish over seas and some of my students (especially those that watch a lot of movies) find this information really interesting
Ok… now that I did watch the video (still thinking about the t-shirt), damn the algorithm that took 2 years to bring me here. Excellent topic and development, and yes, we need a lot more like this….
I grew up in the environment that AAV was just English mistakes.
Honestly, it's really hard for me to unlearn that erroneous lesson.
I think this video will help a lot of people like myself.
I saw videos on Scotts (which is another dialectic) before I came here, which also helped.
I suppose your channel's title is extremely apropos. It's a little difficult to parse just what Good English looks like. There's a lot of self-centered bias out there.
Thanks for the great video.
Me, too, because I come from a teaching family, but in College English, I learned that languages are for communication, so if the other person can understand what you say, then you're saying it right! In anthropology class, I learned that a dialect tells where you're from, and slang tells who your friends are. As a cartoonist, I find that both are handy for creating characters! 😁🤓
You can't "unlearn" something
@@Professor_Utonium_ Yoda (and also retroactive error correction) would beg to differ.;)
@@dakotahrickard Ok, please explain how you actively stop remembering something. Neurologists would love to also hear about your deep understanding of the mind. Sarcasm aside, there is no "unlearning" something, you simply learn a new behavior and make that a new habit/automatic response over time. It doesn't magically erase or undo what you've already known and experienced.
As someone learning Spanish from actual speakers here in Florida, this seems similar to how “yo” and “tu” are usually dropped. But it makes sense in both cases; it’s just extra bulk.
i aint even know AAVE was a thing til high school, to me it was just english. as a romanian immigrant living in six mile detroit and as the only white kid in class, hearing my friends talk was just how i learned. so it's wild to me hearing other people act like it's not proper english when that was just normal ass english to me
I also grew up in detroit and didn't know this was it's own language until college. I thought it was just a detroit accent.
I literally have to remind myself I can't say "where you stay" to people out the area.
@@CRBungalow yeah fr after moving to colorado i had other white people ask me why im tryna sound black so i was like wym lmao this just how we speak in detroit and that's when i figured out oh wait issa whole dialectical difference
I’m an English language buff. Yep. I’m the guy who actually read the front part of the Merriam Webster dictionary. Some fascinating stuff in there.
But there was never anything about AAVE. I took grammar from Sister Mary Richard (woman still lives rent free in my head) and I speak such proper English that it rubbed off onto my kids. My youngest (no a full grown man) is black. He knows Sister Richard English but when he brought home what I called “lazy” English I was disappointed.
But now at age 71, I find I am still able to learn things. Like this. Thank you.
(I still say hwen, hwat, and hwite and I still do my best to not end a sentence with a preposition and to use proper vowel conjugation. But I will split all the infinitives I want. Take that Sister Richard!)
White guy here. I don't speak AAVE but I understand 100% with zero effort, and I am certain that my black friends understand me 100% with no effort. It's weird, we have 100% mutually intelligible ways of speaking but there are differences. I want to say the kids these days cross over without as much code switching now. I wonder if the differences will go to zero in another 50 years, which is probably gone happen considering how far apart they was 100 years ago.
I reckon the other way. Dialects tend to diverge until they become unintelligible to each group.
@@benh715 that was before the internet and all the technology though. It's hard for a language group to be isolated anymore, hell the entire world is converging onto English as a lingua franca with Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese being the few that aren't being actively displaced. You know how weird it is for me to go to Europe and 90% of them speak perfect English?
If you can't understand AAVE and are a native English speaker, you have some issues critically thinking. It really isn't difficult to understand at all
@@Professor_Utonium_I don’t think anyone truly has trouble understanding it, there’s just a lot of people who like to have a superiority complex about how it’s “wrong” as if spoken languages aren’t constantly evolving
small correction, I don’t think any *native speakers* truly can’t understand it
Thanks for this, very interesting. I'd love ideas about why this evolves this way in languages.
Turns out some of what I picked up as a child (and later attributed to small southern town) might’ve been AAVE. Fascinating!
It's almost as if AAVE comes from the American south, or something. That would be silly to think, tho. As we all know, nothing happened in American history that would cause a large concentration of black people in the south.
According to historians a large part of what we typically think of as black culture in the south came from original red necks from Scotland and Ireland. That’s according to Thomas Sowell and he may be controversial but he’s very well researched
The white folks in small southern towns speak with many of the same rules for obvious reasons 😂
This is fascinating! I teach German and our verbs are VERY similar to this.
Thank you for this great content!
The small details like the little speed up before "we aint got time for all this nonsense." really added a some flare even though it was subtle. Hahaha and picking between is/are hahaha. Great video.
Slowly but surely I learn to better use my editing software to make better videos lol. I’m glad you liked those parts
@@WhatsGoodEnglish I've tried my hand at video editing so I definitely feel that. Gives me a different perspective and appreciation for the people who put in that effort. 💪🏾
True irony that "ain't" is a contraction of "*are* not" which coincidentally is also being misused in this sentence. The correct word would be "don't", which would then at least subscribe to his own broken rules of not using "are" and "is".
I grew up on the edge of detroit, so I didn't actually know this was it's own language until I studied languages in college. I literally just thought this is how we talk in detroit.
Cool. I could understand 70 percent of your words in your video. Much better then british welsh looool. Greeting from Ukraine :D
Hey EK, found you on TikTok. I'm a Spanish teacher at a predominantly Black school. Since the class relies so much on translation to understand certain structures, I feel it may not be as effective because these structures are absent in AAVE. I would love to see what you thought about Spanish SLA in AAVE speakers. For example, Spanish uses two words (ser/estar) to mean "to be." What is it like going from a zero copula language to a two(?) copula language?
¡Hola! Honestly it’s something I still get mixed up from time to time. I do think the issue has more to do with relying more heavily on translation than communication. What got me to make less mistakes was regularly conversing with people who were saying it correctly all the time because they were native speakers and little by little I was able to reproduce the grammatically correct version more regularly.
I’m currently learning Spanish as well (though I’m white, and I don’t know AAVE)
I agree with Mr. What’s Good. I think the literal “translations” are basically just a shoehorn to get students started, but they don’t really have much to do with fluency or true understanding
When I’m studying, I need to be able to think directly in Spanish. There are many grammatical differences, even from “standard” English, and all I can do is roll with the punches. Not all of it makes sense immediately, but as long as I understand the individual words, I’m more than happy to jam them together however Spanish tells me to!
OK, I’m only 2 minutes in, but what you’re saying is the dropping of the be, at least as an auxiliary verb, just makes AAVE more like pretty much every other language I know anything about, which is, I grant, a small set. Je mange is I eat, I am eating,mI do eat. There's no Je suis mange, Je fais mange. There are auxiliary verbs in other tenses, but no need in present tense. I guess I have never learned how English developed such a dependence on auxiliary verbs. I don’t hate it, but it certainly is a difference.
It’s the same in Turkish. We don’t say „is“ and „are“ either, but I can’t explain the differences as well as you do. It’s a bit complicated in Turkish since we conjugate at the end of the word. We also don’t gender in our language, there is no „he“ „she“ „it“ there is only „o“. I speak 3 languages and it’s really hard to explain Turkish because I have no comparison to other languages because of the way we conjugate. But it’s cool to learn about other languages.
😍 New subscriber! You awesome! I've always loved this vernacular. So cool! You're helping me in my academic endevours too. Thanks so much for your super interesting content. 😊
Oh this is so cool. My parents are from a major us city, but like, from the city-city, so my mom (as most women often do with any language) carried AAVE through her formative years way back in the 70s/80s and passed her language knowledge down to me (obviously lol), and this is literally so cool cause I have always wondered why that was the case, cause I 100% am the walking literal SNL sketch of "I just talk like that", but, forreal and except I'm a chick and not a man, and I 100% am reading the comments of people saying that they found this interesting how seamless you code-switched, and, IDK, it's weird cause I guess I took understanding AAVE for granted and didn't realize I was code-switching as well when I was understanding it, cause, I can code switch on the fly (which I know some people take as inauthentic, but, everything I do is authentic, and if it's not, you'll know cause my eyes give it away--i'm autistic, my facial expressions are not masked well lmao).
What a wild ride of enjoying a video, gaining knowledge, comparing to my own life, self-reflection about my knowledge that I've had my entire life, and then realizing that I likely owe my love of language to AAVE. Seriously, I 100% mean that, because code-switching is not something I have to think about at all, in any capacity, my brain will just do it for the necessary situation/person, no matter who that person/situation is (like, old person, crying child, formal business meeting, to just casual talking), and, IDK, this was just an amazing video that was extremely thought provoking. Thanks for this video, also, omg, your shirt is amazing, peace!
As a european ESL with no experience of AAVE outside of random pop culture examples, this is tremendously helpful. I can usually suss out what is being said when I run into it, but the underlying rules of the vernacular tend to escape me because it’s just so unfamiliar.
Man, I loved this. (As for why it's blowing up now, I dunno--it just showed up in my "recommended for you" feed--I did watch a few Simon Roper videos about the evolution of English accents since 1500.) Having very little patience for Proper Language mavens, I greatly enjoy seeing someone explain how "incorrect" dialects (i.e. those not used by the dominant/privileged caste) are actually internally-consistent variations. Liking and subscribing!
SUBSCRIBED! Whoa, this is the good stuff. Thank you!
What about ‘be’? “He be trippin.” “She be vibin.” Seems unnecessary, but I hear it now and again.
Dang, it's almost like AAVE is a huge grift that actually doesn't make sense.
Disclaimer I don't speak AAVE but I think that refers to a more ongoing or habitual thing instead of just what's happening right now.
Update: This channel has a video about that very subject! Go check it out
Thanks man. I’m British and I sometimes struggle with AAE in movies etc when spoken fast. Subbed to learn more!
My curiosity about why Afro Americans say "you is" and "is you?" made me look this up. Greetings from a Germany based Berber 🤙🏼
Then I hope you learned from this video that _we_ don't say "you is".
@@IndomitableAde it’s clear some do and some don’t. 🤷♀️ at least germany took the time to understand why, rather than judge.
@@Dovelunalove I've been Black for 54 years and the only times I've ever heard "you is" have not been from native speakers but from American television shows and movies not written by native AAVE speakers. These media products create a distorted version of the language and then are exported and consumed by foreigners who don't understand that the 'is' in "you is" isn't necessary. Isn't that why you're here?
The most cringe worthy example I can think of is from the movie The Help, in which Viola Davis's character gives her young charge affirmations by telling her "You is kind, you is smart, you is important." The novel the movie is based on was written by a white woman who probably thought she was constructing those phrases correctly when she wasn't, and those phrases are now used by our community as an inside joke.
@@IndomitableAde I do wonder to what extent this really applies across the entire US rather than just portions, because this does not sound like how I heard my black friends talking when I was a kid. It's been quite a while, but while there was no copular be, it was pretty much always replaced with the habitual be or one of the phrases that he listed in the video. Just outright skipping the verb entirely was not something that I ever noticed being done and certainly not as consistently as the video implies.
I don't know if that's just my memory, or if that's just a regional variation.
@@Dovelunalove allow me to apologize. I'm recalling a famous song by Louis Jordan titled "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby", so while it's true that some African Americans do say "you is" and ask "is you?", by and large we don't, and what I explained earlier about corrupted AAVE being an export of American media stands.
Well done.
Good use of captions and colors.
Also, good use of characters and examples.
Extra points for the "Doctor Who " shirt.
Entertaining video. I like the use of all the different scenarios. They were funny.
I love this, thank you for teaching me that my language is correct, and has purpose.
This seems normal of all people in much of the South and Appalachian regions, even Ohio. Cincinnati Bengals - Who day? and New Orleans Saints - Who dat?
I just stumbled upon your channel while doing some research about AAVE and it's one of those channels that make me go “what, only 4k subscribers”? Very positive and educative content there, thank you so much for your work!
Tense; past present or future.
Was, Is, Will be
I'll BE checking out more of your vids for sure!
That’s a very pacific answer to a question I never axed.
😂😂
This is not just for AfroAmericans. This way of talking initially comes from our families being poor and widely uneducated in European society.
However, poor EuroAmericans ALSO speak like this.
Wealthy POC only talk like this to be "relevant" to poorer POC.
Sometimes, I have to talk like this so as to not offend my fellow POC, who think that my speech is too "high on the horse" (AKA "white" 🙄). I cannot stand dummying myself down just to spare others of embarrassment, especially the elders.
I did a cultural exchange in the us and I found it extremely hard to understand African American speech. At the time I couldn’t explain it to myself and I thought it was about my English level not being good enough.
When I later learned about AAVE and how it’s a separate dialect of English it all started to make sense.
Thanks for explaining this to all the confused foreigners out here!
Don't worry, we have a hard time understanding bad English as well.
@@helxis not bad English just a different kind of English
@@francescaan110 It isn't taught in school here.
@@helxis so the fact that it isn’t taught in schools makes it bad? I don’t get what ur saying
@@francescaan110he’s being elitist at best, racist at worst.
You got this, Bro! And you look good doing it!!
This is the kind of thing that makes me wish I was younger just to have time to enjoy the knowledge that people are spreading for free. Love your energy and enthusiasm as well as your knowledge. Subbed.
I guess it boils down how you were brought up in the way you speak, regardless of your ethnicity! I was born in Mississippi, but I grew up in California, and have used "is" and "are" frequently in conversation.
I'm from a poor white area and we spoke English incorrectly. Fortunately, I noticed it early (how could you not with access to basic news channels, movies, etc) so I corrected it fairly easily. Obviously for casual, local situations it is perfectly fine, but it's important for people to break out of the little tide pools of stunted offshoots and be able to speak properly. It definitely helps communication.
Can you give an example of what you mean?
Sadly, instead, people like this celebrate their poor use of language and give it a positive label to make it sound more qualified. All this will ever do is hold people back.
There is no "correct" English dialect. There's just what academic institutions have decided is correct, and a lot of it is arbitrary nonsense, like not using split infinites or whatever.
@@simkoning4648 iffn yinz dobe caxin zat, hown kinzyinz b manarty?
@@helxisyour understanding of linguistics is poor. Though in this age ignorance is not only prevalent it’s actively sought after. So I’ll leave you be.
No need for impostor syndrom my friend...phd in linguistics and i immediately subbed, excellent work!
No disrespect, but it still sounds unedicated no matter if its cultural appropriate or not. Why not just learn the acceptable way to speak just like everyone else? Why try to be different, and then wonder why you are looked at differently?
"Rules for thee but not for me" lol
Well, there's room for everyone, isn't there?
@@porterp Yeah, the homeless crisis would tell you otherwise
Another important point is that zero copula isn't unique to AAVE. Arabic, Lithuanian, Russian, Japanese and a bunch of other languages are also zero copula to some degree. So it's not that AAVE "lacks" something that makes it inferior. It's just one language among many that simply doesn't have it. Same as how English doesn't have grammatical gender but a lot of other languages do.
“Who you?” is most often used to request an individual to identify themselves.
“Who is you?” generally expresses two distinct questions and a statement that are dependent on the context of the situation when it is used.
Context 1. A situation where someone appears to be acting within their authoritative capacity.
Meaning 1. From where (what title or position) does your authority derive?
Context 2. An individual asserts authority of which the speaker does not recognize or refuses to submit to.
Meaning 2. Who do you think you are? What authority do you claim to possess? You do not hold the authority that you are attempting to assert within the context of the situation and/or over me.
i demand to be able to write this way in research papers
As I learn more about our history and our world today, I realize how programmed I've been to see the world from a perspective used to control me and control others, especially black people in America. As I clean the mud out of my eyes and ears, I can finally understand beauty, your video helped me see it.
The entire globe uses standard English for the air traffic control system. No matter what your native language is, you must be able to speak standard English to fly for the airlines and use the airports. Everywhere you land with a control tower, standard English is spoken. It is also the standard language for many international organizations such as engineering and physics. So, I would suggest that while AAVE may be used by a fraction of English speakers, not knowing and being fluent in standard English can be an impediment to advancement in many fields. Also, some people may judge those using AAVE as having less intelligence.
Well, yeah. Very important to keep in mind if I’m going to become a pilot I guess. In the meantime, the “entire global” will continue to use many variants of English: Australian, New Zealand, Indian, South African, and Caribbean to name a few.
Im an english teacher that works with spanish studens and DUDE this came in SO helpful when they asked me question at what at the time I didnt know was AAVE. I would just say it was slang or urban english. Thank you so much man. This channel is not getting the love it deserves
How can Spanish speakers who have novice level English proficiency speak AAVE?
@@eve3363 Just natural acquisition. If someone is around AAVE, they will pick up the rules. If they are around AAVE more than Standard American English, but both are just called "English"... well, that can get confusing for obvious reasons.
@@travcollier I have not met one white person who speaks Black American English
@@eve3363 You should get out more ;)
Seriously though, it isn't common for someone who is "white" to speak AAVE, but happens. In fact, there are some white folks who learned AAVE as their native language, but there are more who speak it alongside something like Standard American English. Even some folks who learn it as adults. It is just a dialect, nothing particularly special or difficult about it.
PS: Of course, "white" isn't a particularly well defined term. Some folks might not consider a light skinned Caucasian growing up in an AAVE speaking community as really being "white".
@@Kemetyu-Centered36 No one? Really? How do you think that works, are the brains of folks of European ancestry sufficiently different from Blacks that they literally can't learn the same languages/dialects even if they grow up in the same environment? Or do you think it is some critical physiological difference between races?
Nah, humans just learn whatever languages they are exposed to.
What he saying is technically true but we use “is” “are” and such, but since most of us talk so fast, you don’t hear it or it’s gets skipped.
We might hear “who dat?” But you’re more likely to hear, “who dat is?” Hopefully this helps a lot of people
thank you for the engaging video about AAVE grammar. looking forward to watching more of your stuff.
also, i really love that you included audio cues for each example on the screen. really helps the viewer follow along and distinguish your spoken explanations from the examples.
Thanks for letting me know. Little by little I try to improve the quality of my videos to make the viewer experience better and easier to understand
Love the Dr. Who shirt.
The problem with AAVE (colloquially known as Ebonics) is that it's a less functional, inferior form of English. It make deciphering meanings more difficult, and typically disregards academic words, or higher level English words in general. I was taught that assimilation was essential to America's flourishing, but the opposite school of thought seems to be more popular nowadays. It's really unfortunate.
So everyone had to assimilate to the way you decide is the right way? AAVE is not less functional. Languages evolve because they are functional.
@@xjr.0 No, that's not how assimilation works. I'm not willing to have a discussion with you about this. Thanks anyway.
@@Musicdudeyoutub If you respond to me, I'm gonna respond back. You don't have to want a discussion. It's pretty arrogant to say this is your opinion, you know how things work, and you're shutting off all other ideas. My point is that believing everyone has to do things the way you see as proper, and that your way is the de facto normal, is entitled and arrogant. English wasn't even the language of the land not that many years ago.
@@xjr.0 English has been the language of the land for the whole existence of America. Pockets of people have always spoken other languages, and we have always encouraged them to speak proper English and become accustomed to the dominant culture. That's what assimilation is. There's no argument about a definition
TLDR: It's crazy that there are still American people who don't understand basic AAVE.
I'm white, so of course there are some words I don't know, but at least I get the basic structute & can tell most words by context. AAVE has always seemed very intuitive to me. It's very pervasive all throughout American English, to varying degrees. A lot of non-black people don't even know they are borrowing from (or straight up appropriating from) AAVE. Even good old American words like "rock n' roll" came from AAVE. (Not to mention the music, itself and the dances that went with it!) So it's always been crazy to me how so many white people could possibly not know it!
Back in the 90's when I was in high school Spanish class, the students (a mix of white and hispanic kids) were talking in groups about Spanish and English dialects. AAVE (fka: Ebonics) came up. My group members were laughing and saying Ebonics isn't a dialect and I said "yes it is." They didn't believe me. They thought I was just trying to fool them, until our teacher, Miss Tom (a sweet black woman), overheard us and came over and said "yes, Ebonics really is a legitimate English dialect." My group was just like "Really? Oh, ok. Wow. I didn't know that. Wow."
Miss Tom smiled at me. I think she must have been happy that at least one of these kids had some respect for her culture. I felt half proud and half sad. Proud of myself for knowing, but sad that no one else around me had known, and some of them still seemed like they didn't really believe it.
I'm glad that now adays a lot more people are finally starting to give AAVE the respect it deserves.
it’s really interesting to see how people play around with AAVE. while it shares the same fundamentals, everyone has their own personalized way of using it, because it’s a part of their identity. i love linguistics.
Are the same fundamentals that they failed high school?
@@sunnybhai1904 do you need a hug?
@@sunnybhai1904I made it through high school just fine using it, and with a high GPA as well, so it would be best for you to shut your snooty, pretentious little mouth. It amazes me how ignorant some people can be
Thanks for explaining and elevating the language, my brother.
Your skits are so funny 😂 also i love this video, i love how many examples you added !
So learned about copulas, so I can talk without copulas.
White teacher in a multi-ethnic school here. This is super helpful. Thanks for making these!
Stumbled on this, probably due to other language youtube! Its Entertaining and informative! So fucking good!
Polymathy sent me here. Keep up the good work
Thank you!❤️ I'm glad you stopped by to check out my channel
this AAVE more logic than regular american english. the logic is about the same INDONESIAN language
You’re no imposter. You’re a funny, smart dude and I wish you all the best.
Very insightful way to see my childhood communication explained
1:44 That's actually a really good point. The sentences can be understood entirely without the additional words. Now I'm kind of curious why we use them at all. There must have been some reason.
Reminds me of the sudden and completely unnecessary increase in the use of the word RANDOM in recent years.
@@thomasferranti6736 Yes, that seems rather random, doesn't it?
@@thomasferranti6736 always these random ass dudes complaining about the flow of languages
You don't want to get rid of copulas. Standard English is necessary for literature and formal speaking. But, that don't mean ya'll can't use dat slang, sometimes.
Standard or formal English is used to reduce ambiguity or misunderstanding. Everyone "code switches" in the sense that they have a casual way of speaking in private, and a more formal way of speaking in professional settings. Think of formal English more of a way for all English speakers, regardless of accent or dialect, to understand each other rather than a "correct" way of speaking or writing.
I love linguistics ❤