elidyce:

prismatic-bell:

im-just-a-penguin:

prismatic-bell:

im-just-a-penguin:

prismatic-bell:

gahdamnpunk:

THIS

Can confirm. My favorite book on linguistics has an entire section on AAVE that talks about this.

So some people are better at bad English than others? Also, in what kind of classes is this knowledge useful?

It’s useful for the kind of classes where people aren’t busy being assholes about how other people speak, @im-just-a-penguin.

But don’t take my word for it!

Here’s a website dedicated to explaining dialects that goes over the rules.

Here’s a professional linguist who specializes in AAVE, and just one of his many papers explaining that AAVE is a proper dialect.

Hot shit! Here’s an article from STANFORD UNIVERSITY that’s literally titled “AAVE is not Standard English with mistakes”!!!

Here’s a blurb from PBS, introducing the topic of whether AAVE is a creole or a dialect. You’ll notice neither one of those options means ‘just poor English’.

Here’s English Language and Linguistics Online, which is a nice technical linguistics website, further deconstructing how AAVE works.

Here’s a paper on the habitual “be” from New York University.

Here’s a link to some information from Portland University. I wish to draw your attention specifically to the phrase: “linguists now agree that AAVE is not ‘broken’ English, or slang”.

Here’s a super-technical paper on phonology in AAVE, which gets down into things like why AAVE speakers may say “axed” instead of “asked.”

Hm. Looks like there are a lot of people who study this stuff for a living who disagree with your assessment that it’s “bad English.” I guess you better get reading … . asshole.

What’s so useful about the study of different ways people refuse to speak proper English? You did not answer that question.

Hm! Well, first, let’s define “proper English.”

Do you mean Queen’s English? American English? Canadian English? What about Indian English, or Kenyan English? Maybe Zimbabwean English? Maybe you meant Jamaican English, or Sierra Leonean English. Are those “proper English”?

Well, let’s assume you mean American English, since this kind of asshole question usually only comes from Americans, in my experience. Do you mean Southern American English, with “y’all” and “all y’all” and people who are “fixing to” do things? What about New Englander American English, where the thing I call a “side yard” is a dooryard? How about American English as spoken along the Arizona/Texas/Mexico border, which tends to have features not present in more northern states? Oh! Or what about New York City American English? Only place I’ve ever been where a grinder is a kind of food rather than a kind of food-maker and a train is underground.

Ah! Or perhaps you mean Texan American English, where “might-could” is a valid construction that means neither “might” nor “could.” Or Californian American English! Yes, that must be what you mean!

I didn’t answer the question, asshole, because it is not a valid question, and because you clearly asked it just to be (falsely) pedantic and superior. Rewording it as “refuse to speak proper English” instead of “better at bad English” doesn’t make it valid, it just shows that you know more than one way to be an asshole.

AAVE is an American English dialect. No different from any of the other dialects I just mentioned, except that it tends to be based along race lines rather than geographic ones. It is a correct American English dialect, it is a recognized American English dialect, and you don’t have to like it but you don’t get to shit on it just because you want to be racist … asshole.

Proper English is exactly like a proper cup of tea. Despite the fact that there are as many ways to make tea as there are people who drink tea, every single person believes that their way is the only right way and will go to the grave defending it. 

Some of them, however, just have to be arseholes about it and try to ruin tea for everyone. Don’t be the arsehole. Just drink your tea and let other people have theirs how they like even if they are PHILISTINES who put almond milk or something in there like HEATHENS. It’s their tea, not yours.