However, research in the years that followed found that in many of its important features, African American Vernacular English was becoming not less, but more different from other dialects.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
This African American Vernacular English shares most of its grammar and vocabulary with other dialects of English. But it is distinct in many ways, and it is more different from standard English than any other dialect spoken in continental North America.
Black English is something which - it's a natural system in itself. And even though it is a dialect of English, it can be very difficult for people who don't speak it, or who haven't been raised in it, to understand when it's running by quickly, spoken in particular by young men colloquially to each other. So that really is an issue.
It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century.
Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.
The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school.
People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.
Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.
Well, American dialects have been studied for a hundred years or so.
In the South we experienced, you know, some black kids who gave us a hard time because - cause 'you talk white.' We didn't talk white. We talked fairly proper. Plus, we had a Midwestern accent, so we didn't have a Southern accent, either. So it wasn't really talking white; it was talking different.
I am now completing research supported by NSF and NEH that is mapping changes in the English language through all of North America, for both mainstream and minority communities.
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