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I think the easiest way to talk about this without the racial connotations is to compare it to another language that is often simply considered "non-standard En

by pluma 10y ago

I think the easiest way to talk about this without the racial connotations is to compare it to another language that is often simply considered "non-standard English": Scots. The Scots language is distinct from Scottish English and has actually a larger minority of speakers than AAVE (30% in Scotland according to Wikipedia). However it's insane to think that this means speaking Scots is sufficient if you want a good job. I don't think anyone attempting to get by in life and pursue a career in business or politics or academia would be taken serious if they only spoke Scots. Actually Scots probably has the advantage of nostalgia. AAVE on the other hand is (ultimately) an artefact of American slave ownership -- that's something we would much rather undo than remember. I think there's an argument to be made for the preservation of obscure languages (and a pidgin that is being threatened to be displaced by a dominant language it is partially based on certainly qualifies) but ultimately I agree exactly with what you are saying: reassuring AAVE speakers that it is okay to only speak a minority language when living in a country that is entirely based on a different language is cruel to the speakers. For comparison (according to Wikipedia's numbers): Irish Gaelic is spoken by 18.3% of people on the Irish island (i.e. both Republic and Northern); Welsh is spoken by 19% of people in Wales. Again according to Wikipedia's numbers, 12.8% of Americans speak Spanish at home, while 17.4% of Americans identify as Hispanic or Latino. If we assume AAVE is as widespread among black Americans as Spanish is among Hispanic and Latino Americans (because there are no official numbers) that would mean only 9.3% of Americans speak AAVE. Even assuming every black American is an AAVE speaker (and that seems extremely bold as even linguists admit that "AAVE" is more of a spectrum than a clearly defined language) that would still be only 12.6% of Americans who speak AAVE. In other words: even by the most generous estimate 87.4% of Americans don't speak AAVE -- and likely don't comprehend the more idiosyncratic variants of AAVE. So, even if AAVE is a "real" language, it's not widely useful outside of the small circles of AAVE speakers. It's just not realistic to expect 87.4% of the population to accommodate the "native language" of the remaining percentage if they already both speak General American English (or some approximation thereof).

GordonS 10y ago
> 30% in Scotland according to Wikipedia Actually, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't use Scots to some degree. I realise the 30% figure came from census data, but most people here use Scots without recognising it themselves as a distinct 'Scots' language. It's a tricky thing to word in a census to get real numbers. > However it's insane to think that this means speaking Scots is sufficient if you want a good job Absolutely true. Myself and everyone I know use Scots in daily life, both at work and at home. But most recognise that (rightly or wrongly) it's not socially acceptable to use it in formal situations, such as during a job interview, talking to clients etc.
- pluma 10y ago
  Also note that I didn't say it's not possible at all to find a job (even a high paying one) if you consistently only speak Scots. But it's most likely a significant disadvantage (akin to speaking only basic English or not speaking English at all, depending on the extent of course). Scots or AAVE might not actually be "deficient English" but to a non-Scots or non-AAVE speaker of English they might as well be because the only thing that matters (biases aside) is intelligibility. For an absurd example: if you're a German company and hire a sophisticated Dutch native speaker who doesn't speak a word of German it doesn't matter how sophisticated their Dutch is, you'll still only understand a fraction of what they say and think they have a really strong accent (because the words you understand as German are actually Dutch and just happen to have the same origins). Of course it's less of a problem with Dutch because there's actually a language where Dutch is the official language and there is a large regional population of people all speaking the language and learning standardized rules for the language in schools. Scots at least has the large regional population. AAVE outside majority-black areas might as well be Scots because the majority of people won't find it mutually intelligible.
Chathamization 10y ago
> It's just not realistic to expect 87.4% of the population to accommodate the "native language" of the remaining percentage Almost no one is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that AAVE shouldn't be derided as talking "like hoodlums" (to quote the parent comment). Employment discrimination based upon someone retaining elements of AAVE is considered acceptable to some, but I've never seen them argue that discriminating against someone who speaks New England English is acceptable (or seen them address how showing the influence of one dialect is much more harmful to your employment chances than showing the influence of the other). It makes sense that people should learn General American and try to use it to facilitate communication, but the negative stigma attached to particular dialects and not others is problematic and encourages bigotry.
- pluma 10y ago
  The negative stigma is not about the language, it's about the ethno-social group as a whole. I think New England is a red herring. There's a similar negative stigma to the Southern Drawl -- and that's really as white as it gets. "White trash" or "redneck" is an actual existing stereotype. Both AAVE and Southern American English have negative connotations. The only difference is that AAVE also marks the speaker with an ethnicity that also has negative connotations (going by studies into biases, even black Americans have negative associations with black people). Fix the negative connotations of that ethnicity and people think of AAVE speakers no less than of uneducated white people. The reason that AAVE even in isolation "sounds uneducated" is that it is not only related to Southern American English (which already "sounds uneducated" on its own) but also that it simplifies some grammar and phonemes from English. No matter what complexity it brings to the table by itself, those changes make it look simpler in comparison and speaking simplified language makes a speaker appear less sophisticated. AAVE by itself sounds unsophisticated to GA or RP speakers. That simply cannot be helped. It's inherent to the language itself. The only thing you can hope for (short of replacing GA with something that makes AAVE sound less jarring -- or having AAVE somehow become the language of the sociopolitical elite) is that the association moves from "hoodlums" to "inbred rednecks". Note: I'm not saying AAVE "is" objectively less sophisticated. I'm saying it objectively sounds less sophisticated to a speaker of GA or RP. Even if you had never met a black person before and never heard AAVE before, as a GA speaker you would think AAVE sounds less sophisticated than GA because of the objective reasons I laid out. If you can think of a scenario where AAVE becomes a language everybody wants to speak in order to show off how sophisticated they are (like French in medieval England) or where GA is replaced by a language that is different enough to simply make AAVE sound completely foreign (like if the official language of the US was Chinese or Spanish), I don't see any plausible way to fight its negative connotations (unlike those of blackness in general).
tptacek 10y ago
No part of this essay argues that AAVE speakers should be fluent solely in AAVE. In fact, it implies the direct opposite: that the damage caused by elites ignorance of and disrespect for AAVE is primarily in how it retards the education in --- among other things --- Standard English among AAVE-speaking students. The "even if" part of your concluding paragraph was a nice touch, suggesting as it does that there might be a live dispute about whether AAVE is a proper dialect of English. I have a hard time understanding how someone could get even 3 pages into this (incredibly fascinating) essay and retain any doubts about that. If you skimmed the essay and jumped to HN to make a political argument, you've cheated yourself. Go back and read it more closely. It's fantastic.
- pluma 10y ago
  You misunderstand. I'm not saying AAVE is less "real" than GA or RP or Scots or whatever. In another comment I actually explicitly rejected the notion of "language" as something distinct from "dialect" (in other words: I'm asserting that GA, RP, etc are all "just" dialects and the notion of "language" is entirely an abstraction and not a meaningful distinction). I don't know what beef you think you have with me and maybe this is my failure to communicate clearly (English is not my native language) but you seem rather hostile to me and it reads like you think I'm somehow questioning AAVE's status is a distinct dialect of English alongside GA, RP, Scots and so on. BTW, my comment was a response to a comment that has apparently been flagged and my comment seems to have been detached, which is why my argument reads like it's in opposition to the article rather than the comment I responded to (which in turn was actually in opposition to the article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030560
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Like me, you're in several places on this thread. In this particular instance, the comment of yours we're discussing is a top-level comment, not a detached one. In that comment, you introduced unbidden an irrelevant ideological tangent about whether AAVE harms the job prospects of its speakers. It's that tangent I reacted to here. Elsewhere on the thread I simply disagree with your description of AAVE.

by pluma 10y ago

GordonS 10y ago

> 30% in Scotland according to Wikipedia Actually, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't use Scots to some degree. I realise the 30% figure came from census data, but most people here use Scots without recognising it themselves as a distinct 'Scots' language. It's a tricky thing to word in a census to get real numbers. > However it's insane to think that this means speaking Scots is sufficient if you want a good job Absolutely true. Myself and everyone I know use Scots in daily life, both at work and at home. But most recognise that (rightly or wrongly) it's not socially acceptable to use it in formal situations, such as during a job interview, talking to clients etc.

pluma 10y ago
Also note that I didn't say it's not possible at all to find a job (even a high paying one) if you consistently only speak Scots. But it's most likely a significant disadvantage (akin to speaking only basic English or not speaking English at all, depending on the extent of course). Scots or AAVE might not actually be "deficient English" but to a non-Scots or non-AAVE speaker of English they might as well be because the only thing that matters (biases aside) is intelligibility. For an absurd example: if you're a German company and hire a sophisticated Dutch native speaker who doesn't speak a word of German it doesn't matter how sophisticated their Dutch is, you'll still only understand a fraction of what they say and think they have a really strong accent (because the words you understand as German are actually Dutch and just happen to have the same origins). Of course it's less of a problem with Dutch because there's actually a language where Dutch is the official language and there is a large regional population of people all speaking the language and learning standardized rules for the language in schools. Scots at least has the large regional population. AAVE outside majority-black areas might as well be Scots because the majority of people won't find it mutually intelligible.

Chathamization 10y ago

> It's just not realistic to expect 87.4% of the population to accommodate the "native language" of the remaining percentage Almost no one is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that AAVE shouldn't be derided as talking "like hoodlums" (to quote the parent comment). Employment discrimination based upon someone retaining elements of AAVE is considered acceptable to some, but I've never seen them argue that discriminating against someone who speaks New England English is acceptable (or seen them address how showing the influence of one dialect is much more harmful to your employment chances than showing the influence of the other). It makes sense that people should learn General American and try to use it to facilitate communication, but the negative stigma attached to particular dialects and not others is problematic and encourages bigotry.

pluma 10y ago
The negative stigma is not about the language, it's about the ethno-social group as a whole. I think New England is a red herring. There's a similar negative stigma to the Southern Drawl -- and that's really as white as it gets. "White trash" or "redneck" is an actual existing stereotype. Both AAVE and Southern American English have negative connotations. The only difference is that AAVE also marks the speaker with an ethnicity that also has negative connotations (going by studies into biases, even black Americans have negative associations with black people). Fix the negative connotations of that ethnicity and people think of AAVE speakers no less than of uneducated white people. The reason that AAVE even in isolation "sounds uneducated" is that it is not only related to Southern American English (which already "sounds uneducated" on its own) but also that it simplifies some grammar and phonemes from English. No matter what complexity it brings to the table by itself, those changes make it look simpler in comparison and speaking simplified language makes a speaker appear less sophisticated. AAVE by itself sounds unsophisticated to GA or RP speakers. That simply cannot be helped. It's inherent to the language itself. The only thing you can hope for (short of replacing GA with something that makes AAVE sound less jarring -- or having AAVE somehow become the language of the sociopolitical elite) is that the association moves from "hoodlums" to "inbred rednecks". Note: I'm not saying AAVE "is" objectively less sophisticated. I'm saying it objectively sounds less sophisticated to a speaker of GA or RP. Even if you had never met a black person before and never heard AAVE before, as a GA speaker you would think AAVE sounds less sophisticated than GA because of the objective reasons I laid out. If you can think of a scenario where AAVE becomes a language everybody wants to speak in order to show off how sophisticated they are (like French in medieval England) or where GA is replaced by a language that is different enough to simply make AAVE sound completely foreign (like if the official language of the US was Chinese or Spanish), I don't see any plausible way to fight its negative connotations (unlike those of blackness in general).

tptacek 10y ago

No part of this essay argues that AAVE speakers should be fluent solely in AAVE. In fact, it implies the direct opposite: that the damage caused by elites ignorance of and disrespect for AAVE is primarily in how it retards the education in --- among other things --- Standard English among AAVE-speaking students. The "even if" part of your concluding paragraph was a nice touch, suggesting as it does that there might be a live dispute about whether AAVE is a proper dialect of English. I have a hard time understanding how someone could get even 3 pages into this (incredibly fascinating) essay and retain any doubts about that. If you skimmed the essay and jumped to HN to make a political argument, you've cheated yourself. Go back and read it more closely. It's fantastic.

pluma 10y ago
You misunderstand. I'm not saying AAVE is less "real" than GA or RP or Scots or whatever. In another comment I actually explicitly rejected the notion of "language" as something distinct from "dialect" (in other words: I'm asserting that GA, RP, etc are all "just" dialects and the notion of "language" is entirely an abstraction and not a meaningful distinction). I don't know what beef you think you have with me and maybe this is my failure to communicate clearly (English is not my native language) but you seem rather hostile to me and it reads like you think I'm somehow questioning AAVE's status is a distinct dialect of English alongside GA, RP, Scots and so on. BTW, my comment was a response to a comment that has apparently been flagged and my comment seems to have been detached, which is why my argument reads like it's in opposition to the article rather than the comment I responded to (which in turn was actually in opposition to the article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030560
- tptacek 10y ago
  Like me, you're in several places on this thread. In this particular instance, the comment of yours we're discussing is a top-level comment, not a detached one. In that comment, you introduced unbidden an irrelevant ideological tangent about whether AAVE harms the job prospects of its speakers. It's that tangent I reacted to here. Elsewhere on the thread I simply disagree with your description of AAVE.