AAVE Basics // Zero Copula //Basics Of African American Vernacular Episode 1

I'm revisiting the basics of AAVE in this video and reviewing how we don't use a copula in the present tense. That's a fancy way of saying we don't use "is" or "are" but there are some exceptions. I covered this in my first episode about AAVE but I felt like that video had a bit too much information packed into it and I wanted to give this principle of the language an episode of its own to be able to better explain it with new examples. I hope you enjoy it

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Welcome to What's Good English! On this channel we explore the slang, common phrases, idioms, and AAVE. My goal is to help English learners learn the meanings behind some of our harder to understand vocabular and phrases that are in our common speech in context. I try demonstrate as much as I can acted out in humorous (ok well sometimes humorous) sketches so they can be learned with real context because that helps us remember far better than a simple explanation. I'm a language learner myself and occasionally I upload a bonus episode about language learning tips and things I learned through my trials and errors trying to learn languages. If you like what you've read, please subscribe and share my videos around. My goal really is to help as many people as I can understand these fun curiosities of the English Language.

Thank you so very much for watching!

E.K. Powell

#AAVE #AfricanAmericanVernacular
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A great book about AAVE:

Talking Back Talking Black by John McWhorter

Comprehensible input books that helped me learn Spanish:

A1

A2

B1

B2

C1

C2

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[WhatsGoodEnglish]

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

[mercury]

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.

[gregmcnair]

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!

[ebonyr.b.]

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.

[DavidRealMusic]

"What is you doing" is words I would often hear right before a whooping is imminent.

[rachaelhill]

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.

[sporeafan]

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

[CBlargh]

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...

[orinjayce]

I was a cultural anthropology major and now teach English. This video scratched an itch in my brain. Loved it.

[sgomidg]

“Our language is beautiful and deserves to be respected” hit me

[bmac]

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"

[LeeFKoch]

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!

[Madhatter]

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 :)

[kemunto_]

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.

[ahfimiwonawun]

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.

[polyMATHY_Luke]

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.

[songbanana]

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!

[EeveeFlipnoteStudios]

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.

[hereforit]

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.

[Kingramze]

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.