![]() It is interesting, but not surprising, that AAVE and southern dialects of white English share many features. Most of the features of AAVE are also present in many other English dialects, but those dialects are not as severely stigmatized as AAVE is. Most variations have several features in common, for instance, two phonological features: the dropped /r/ typical of some New York dialects, and the pronunciation of the “ th” sound of words like this and that as a /d/ sound, dis and dat. Present-day AAVE is not homogeneous there are many regional and class variations. Anyone who grows up in an area where their friends speak it may be a speaker of AAVE like the rapper Eminem, a white man who grew up in an African-American neighborhood in Detroit. In this situation, it becomes a more fully complex language consistent with Universal number 3.Ī language that develops from a pidgin when the pidgin becomes so widely used that children acquire it as one of their first languages.Īll African-Americans do not speak AAVE, and people other than African-Americans also speak it. A creole is a language that develops from a pidgin when it becomes so widely used that children acquire it as one of their first languages. Eventually, the use of the pidgin expanded to the point that it developed into the original forms of what has been called a Black English plantation creole. Some of the captive Africans could speak this pidgin, and it spread among them after the slaves arrived in North America and were exposed daily to English speakers. An English-based pidgin was used as a common language in many areas of West Africa by traders interacting with people of numerous language groups up and down the major rivers. A pidgin has no native speakers it is used primarily in the environment in which it was created. There are no primitive languages, but a pidgin is a simplified language form, cobbled together based mainly on one core language, in this case English, using a small number of phonemes, simplified syntactic rules, and a minimal lexicon of words borrowed from the other languages involved. Pidgins are the only exception to the Language Universal number 3 (all languages are systematic, rule-driven, and equally complex overall, and equally capable of expressing any idea that the speaker wishes to convey). A pidgin is a language that springs up out of a situation in which people who do not share a language must spend extended amounts of time together, usually in a working environment. But some of them already spoke a version of English called a pidgin. When Africans were captured and brought to the Americas, they brought their own languages with them. A widely accepted hypothesis of the origins of AAVE is as follows. Typically, it is not the language itself that these attitudes are targeting it is the people who speak it.Īs with any language variety, AAVE is a complex, rule-driven, grammatically consistent language variety, a dialect of American English with a distinctive history. It is no longer “politically correct” to openly express racism, but it is much less frowned upon to express negative attitudes about African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). (These laws restricted their rights after their emancipation from slavery.) With the Civil Rights Acts of 19 and other laws, African-Americans gained legal rights to access public places and housing, but it is not possible to eliminate racism and discrimination only by passing laws both still exist among the white majority. They have a unique history among minorities in the United States, with their centuries-long experience as captive slaves and subsequent decades under Jim Crow laws. They may also use it to distinguish themselves from a larger, sometimes oppressive, language group when they are a minority population.Ī familiar example of an oppressed ethnic group with a distinctive dialect is African-Americans. A language variety is often associated with an ethnic group when its members use language as a marker of solidarity. Because of the social implications and biological inaccuracy of the term “race,” it is often more accurate and appropriate to use the terms ethnicity or ethnic group. In the United States such groups are frequently referred to as “races,” but there is no such thing as biological race, and this misconception has historically led to racism and discrimination. \)Īn ethnicity, or ethnic group, is a group of people who identify with each other based on some combination of shared cultural heritage, ancestry, history, country of origin, language, or dialect.
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