What People Get Wrong About African-American English | Otherwords

It's one of the most studied — and most controversial — varieties of English. But many people still hold deep misconceptions about African-American English (AAE).

Otherwords is a new PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and fınds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fıelds of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective into what it means to be human.

hosted by Dr. Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
written by Andrew Matthews
directed by Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
produced by Katie Graham
animated & edited by Andrew Matthews
executive producer Amanda Fox
special thanks to Rachel Elizabeth Weissler, PhD
Assistant Director of Programming (PBS): Niki Walker
Executives in Charge (PBS): Brandon Arolfo, Adam Dylewski

music by APM

[Quintinia]

Fun fact, AAE even extends to American Sign Languge! Black Deaf people signing to each other often use slightly different mannerisms and word order compared to standard ASL. There hasn't been a ton of research done on this dialect but it's fascinating.

[neosaneo]

i'm a cahsier and the amount of white guys that will come up to me and clumsily use AAE just because i'm black is tooo many

[robk]

What's interesting is when it spreads to other countries, it gets called "American slang." It's just associated with the country as a whole.

[sadistyk_]

One thing that I would like to emphasize.
For those who use AAE, our parents often warn us against it.
They fear that others will in fact prejudge us and regard us as unintelligent and uncivilized.

But shoutout to PBS (another adopted AAE phrase).
I've never heard or (have) seen a comprehensive explanation of AAVE in a positive manner.
I feel a lil more comfortably with my speech now.

[koirasikin]

For me, a non-native non-American English speaker, I thought a lot of the words from AAE was just "internet slang" or "internet language" and had no idea about the history or cultural significance behind it. Happy to learn something new :)

[oruguita.lylita]

Growing up in NYC I hate getting comments on how well I speak but how “my ghetto comes out” when I’m with family and friends… and then with family and friends they say I “talk white”!! it’s literally just code switching that doesn’t mean one way Is lesser than the other. And tbh being able to speak in flow using both is fun as hell. I can express myself fully and most comfortably when I’m allowed to use both and just speak how I want.

[sadistyk_]

One more comment.
Classism is very much the reason behind the stigma of a "broken language".
Villagers or the local people develop a dialect to shorten and share common language.
Those who speak the most formal and proper consider themselves superior, especially when they don't understand another do dialect and distance themselves.

[SkyeID]

They like our language, our music, our hairstyles...but they don't like us.

[JaylukKhan]

The AAE to white people slang pipeline: black people-white homosexuals-drunk white girls-mainstream white vocabulary. Or an increasingly common alternative: black twitter-internet memes-mainstream white vocabulary.

[kristianwilliams]

This is the sort of content that I wish was around in broader culture when I was much younger. I bought into the idea that AAE was inferior wholesale, worked HARD as a child to scrub any and all traces of it from my speech, and thought myself superior to my peers for it - and now, as a result, I can understand AAE just fine but am barely able to speak it. It feels like I've lost access to a major part of my culture.

[neutechnica]

I expected to roll my eyes but I have to say this was quite enlightening. My parents migrated from the Bronx in the early 80's before I was born. My mom drilled into us that AAE was lazy and unprofessional slang that should never be used. However, the illustration about Japanese really highlights the immediate social connection formed about the foundation that AAE is within a group of people. While I would be proud to have my employer overhear me speaking Spanish with a family member, I hesitate to say the same if they heard me speaking AAE. Definitely some food for thought as to why that is.

[DawlessHouseMusic]

It's funny to hear it mentioned that the rules are codified in a way that new words can be easily understood so long as you know the basic rules and keep context and tone in mind. Whenever a new word appears in the hood, it makes perfect sense to me and that always tickles me as a language geek.

[trishmalone]

I had a college English professor who said it best. He said "when it comes to communication, the best communication is that spoken in a way that you subject or audience Understands you. THAT is communication! Otherwise you are just tattling off words". I took that to heart! He went on to say that if you are speaking your best, most correct formal English and the person you are saying it to doesn't understand you, you ain't Said nothing! 😂

[dnd]

I really appreciate that the narrator ties together modern AAE with how language naturally evolves. It's like saying 'If you don't think that AAE is legitimate, you're delegitimizing your own dialect.' In reference to how English evolved from Anglo-Saxon and European languages.

[John-ciyk]

I'm a Roman Catholic Italian from Philly who was taught by nuns, that said the coolest word I ever heard was" Sunday-go-meetin clothes ". This word was send by a black guy who I used to work with who originally was brought up in South. He had to attend a viewing after work and I asked" yo what's with the getup?" He said" you mean my Sunday- go--meetin clothes?" Thank you for the time and effort you put into this video, thumbs-up. Have a nice day.

[SadhviJenn]

I speak Spanish where we have many verb conjugation forms, and I find that AAE gives me the ability to use those conjugation forms more that mainstream English. 7:18

[hee]

The problem is anti-Black American ethnophobic sentiment. In America (and beyond) hate of Black American descendants of American chattel slavery is woven into the fabric of our culture. A YouTuber (I forget his name) who makes videos about language has a video about Black American English where he explains the rules of how to speak this dialectal form of English while also explaining that English (like many other languages) has a multitude of different dialectal versions. Yet, the comment section of tht video is flooded with horrible remarks towards Black American English. People of all racial groups & ethnic backgrounds disagreed with everything he said and reduced Black American English down to simply sounding "stupid" or "uneducated". Some people even went on to say that it was "impossible" for Black American English to be an altar dialectical form of English in America and that thing lile that could only exist in places like Haiti & Brazil (with French in Portuguese respectively). The YouTuber then went to explain in the comments section (as he did in the video) that many countries like Norway, Germany & Japan have varying dialectal versions of a single language and that no one perceives speakers of those different dialects to be "unintelligent "the way we all do with Black think he even pointed out the fact that there are varying dialectical forms of English spoken through England.Im Black American and I have noticed many English celebrities like Adele structure sentences in ways that are similar to Black Americans, yet they don't receive the same backlash. I've noticed Adele use the word "was" in place of "were" and I've heard her use double but I've never heard anyone refer to her as an "stupid" for doing so. The problem is simply anti-Black American ethnophobic sentiment.

[swordfish]

I once went out to dinner after a guest lecture at my tiny Welsh university with a group of lecturers and students. In the group most of us were English, a couple were Welsh, one was German, and there were two Americans. We were talking about accents and how we all speaking the same language but how different it sounded, I think the topic came up in relation to ancient dialects of Greek and the intelligibility between them. One of the Americans was a student from Florida who was black and she was telling us how around us she would use her "whiter" voice which we hadn't really experienced before. Although one of the older lecturers talked about how when he was younger he got sent to elocution lessons in order to sound less "Northern" because received pronunciation or "RP" English with little regional colloquialisms was considered correct. It was a very interesting conversation.

[Erudito_Ra]

I been black for a while never knew about African American English !?

[g.]

I would love to learn about the way AAE has evolved over time. When you go back and read classics written by Black authors in the dialect, August Wilson's plays for example, you find older AAE that isn't used anymore.

I feel like AAE evolves really quickly compared to standard/mainstream American English. Please tell me there's a book on the history of AAE vocabulary out there...