0:00

Subtitles is made possible in part

0:02

by a major grant from the national endowment

0:05

for the humanities, exploring

0:07

the human endeavor, Hub

0:10

and

0:10

SPOT. Audio collective.

0:16

Hi,

0:16

it's Patrick Cox here. We're gonna do

0:18

something different in this episode. Actually,

0:20

in the next three episodes, because

0:22

we're about to dive into a three part

0:25

series. And my friend, Shiko

0:27

Theory, will

0:28

be your host. Is

0:29

Shiko? Thanks,

0:30

Patrick. Hey, y'all. You might

0:32

remember me from an episode that I produced

0:35

a while back in which I get personal and

0:37

explore my journey and accepting my linguistic

0:39

identity as a black woman who

0:41

is often labeled as speaking white. we

0:43

are carrying around our

0:46

ancestral experiences as well

0:48

as our personal experiences in the language

0:50

that we speak. Producing that episode got

0:52

me thinking a lot about African American

0:55

English. Where

0:56

does it come from? And

0:57

why in this day and age, must

0:59

we distinguish it as such? So

1:02

I decided to dig in. This

1:05

is the first of a three part series

1:07

exploring the rich history of

1:09

African American English.

1:14

From quiet use in the linguistic society

1:16

of America, this is subtitled.

1:19

Stories about languages and the people who

1:21

speak them. I'm Sheiko Furri,

1:23

and in this episode, we go back

1:25

to the beginning. or as far back as

1:27

we can go to explore how African

1:29

American English came to be.

1:33

Now, like with many aspects

1:36

of America history, the documentation we

1:38

have to tell a comprehensive story about

1:40

the beginnings of black American English

1:42

isn't much. we

1:43

don't even know how to document all

1:46

of the languages that might have African

1:48

American English because the historical record

1:50

was not

1:50

well preserved. a great deal of what happened

1:53

with African slaves and their descendants and

1:55

the kind of English they developed in this country

1:57

went unrecorded or if

1:59

it was poured it at all. It was often

2:02

in mocking distortion.

2:04

But

2:04

thanks to the diligence of generations

2:07

of black folk who passed down their knowledge

2:09

we do have a few clues as to

2:11

where it came from and how it evolved.

2:14

But before we get into those theories, I

2:16

wanna know.

2:17

What is black American English?

2:19

I'm a linguist, so I hate definitions because

2:23

we know that they're always imprecise.

2:25

Nicole Holiday is an assistant professor of

2:27

linguistics at Pomona College. I

2:29

spoke with her in my previous episode, the

2:31

one where I explored white

2:33

and speaking black. Well, I wanted

2:35

to bring her back to help us work through

2:37

our exploration of what black

2:39

American English is. Okay.

2:41

So as a linguist, She doesn't like

2:43

definitions, but

2:44

I'll go with this. The broadest way I

2:46

would describe it is

2:49

it's the variety spoken

2:52

primarily in black American

2:54

communities.

2:55

And it's been given a lot of names. African

2:58

American English, African American vernacular

3:00

English, English, black, black

3:02

English vernacular. The list goes

3:04

on. I mean,

3:04

can you take it, baby? Can you take it? Take

3:07

that. You just bring your fire cell phone

3:09

up in here,

3:10

baby. Oh, oh, no.

3:12

I ain't seen nothing. I ain't seen

3:14

nothing. I mean, we have been there.

3:16

I'm sorry. Around. Yes.

3:19

From today? We have some stuff to talk

3:21

about. We gotta get through some things. We hear

3:23

we hear now. Okay. So

3:25

I guess, talk to me care of. Would you want to?

3:27

Very tough. Alright. I'm getting the

3:29

problems. Alright. You're working at. Very

3:32

tough. Not private. We good. But I

3:34

don't talk to One term you might

3:36

be familiar with is Evonix,

3:37

which was coined in nineteen seventy

3:40

three. The name is a combination of

3:42

the words Ebony and Fonix.

3:44

Ebonics. The term didn't catch

3:46

on until December of nineteen ninety six

3:49

when the Oakland School Board in California voted

3:52

unanimously to recognize it as primary

3:54

language of its black students who

3:56

by the way represented a majority of

3:58

the district. An overwhelming

3:59

number of those students were

4:02

also classified as academically deficient.

4:05

So the resolution passed by the school board

4:07

called for the implementation of program

4:09

to not only teach black students, black English

4:12

as a way to maintain its legitimacy, but

4:15

in turn, help them learn standard

4:17

English. Here we go. Here's a

4:19

recording inside one of those Oakland classrooms.

4:21

It's from a documentary

4:22

called Do YouSpeak American.

4:25

My grandpa cooked dinner every night.

4:27

our persisting dealer cooked, my

4:29

grandpa cooked dinner every night.

4:32

And

4:32

this sparked a debate.

4:35

COYSIAN FLU May WAS THE END OF AACP

4:37

PRESIDENT AT THE TIME. HERE HE IS

4:39

ON ABC NIGHTLEND.

4:40

I BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE TO,

4:42

in THIS COUNTRY, MAKE IT A POINT to see

4:44

that our students or young people achieve

4:46

proficiency in reading and writing and

4:48

sciences and communicating. And we don't

4:50

raise standards by lowering

4:52

goals. there is within

4:55

the larger African American community and

4:57

in other communities, various dialects. They

4:59

are not languages. They are dialects. We

5:01

have to find ways to bridge out of that into

5:03

proper English, proper communicative skills,

5:05

but we should not be prepared to call it a second

5:07

language or even a primary language I

5:09

THINK IT IS ESSENTIALLY A DIAC. Reporter:

5:11

EVEN

5:11

MYA ANGOLU SAID O'GLEEN'S

5:13

DECISION MADE HER, quote, INSENSED. REVOURN'T

5:16

JUSTY JACKSON WASN'T PLEASED EITHER saying,

5:19

quote, in Oakland, some madness

5:21

has erupted over making slang

5:23

talk a second language. So

5:26

Evonics sort of lost its popularity.

5:29

That term

5:29

has fallen out of favor because in the nineties,

5:31

there was a lot of backlash, and so it

5:33

got it acquired a really negative connotation.

5:36

Again, linguist Nicole holiday.

5:38

And so we stopped using it professionally

5:40

even though there's, like, nothing wrong with

5:42

the term. It's just that, unfortunately, the

5:44

discourse of that time really

5:46

made the word not politically feasible.

5:49

So I would say that now mostly you see

5:51

African American English. Whatever

5:52

you call it, it's important to emphasize

5:55

that not all people who identify as

5:57

black or African Americans speak this

5:59

way, and that African American English

6:01

doesn't just exist in certain communities.

6:04

There's a lot to be said about the co

6:06

opting of it as is often done

6:08

in pop culture. like this sesanol

6:10

kit that includes an abundance of African

6:12

American English words and phrases that

6:14

have been made popular by and

6:16

often incorrectly credited to

6:18

Gen Z and Internet culture.

6:21

Nurse, we demand to know how our bestie

6:23

is

6:23

doing. I'm sorry, bro. I told you I

6:25

don't have the information in yet. Ruh. Ruh.

6:28

Seriously? I'm so pressed right

6:30

now, Ruh. It's only pressed. The

6:32

doctor will be in shortly, Ruh. Dead

6:34

ass. But back

6:35

to my original question, how

6:38

did AAE develop?

6:40

Where

6:40

does this language come from? England

6:43

has books and letters

6:45

and manuscripts that document the

6:47

earliest forms of English. Egyptians

6:49

have hieroglyphics on walls.

6:52

papyrus reads and tablets.

6:54

But that kind of documentation barely

6:57

exists to help tell the story

6:59

of African American English. slavery,

7:02

made that nearly impossible.

7:04

The only thing that we can

7:06

do to try to reconstruct where a came

7:08

from is

7:09

to take what we know about the historical

7:11

record,

7:12

which unfortunately is not very much.

7:14

People were not documenting what was happening

7:16

with their sleep because they didn't care, because they didn't

7:18

think of them as people.

7:19

So while

7:20

there aren't many written texts, there

7:23

are clues. and several

7:25

schools of thought that have formed.

7:28

Today, I want to focus on two

7:30

aspects. The first, is that

7:32

black American English is the combination

7:35

of many English varieties spoken

7:37

in

7:37

Colonial America.

7:38

And then, that being in contact

7:40

with the people who were enslaved in them acquiring

7:42

English from all of these different

7:44

sources in a sort of imperfect, you

7:46

know, not a classroom type situation.

7:48

And the other theory that some linguists believe

7:51

is that African American English is

7:53

actually accretal. Accretal is

7:56

a language form, but when two languages

7:58

mix.

7:58

So if we think about Haitian Creole

8:00

or Jamaican Creole, these are also

8:02

situations in slavery. where

8:04

what happened was, I'll take Jamaica

8:07

for example, they're aware of the same colonizers that

8:09

we had in the United States coming

8:11

from England to Jamaica. and

8:14

the enslaved people

8:15

were speaking their languages.

8:18

Of

8:18

course, there are many other threads

8:20

we can explore about the origins of black

8:22

American English but we'd be

8:24

here for forever. So let's

8:26

focus on these two theories. Starting

8:28

with the idea that African American English

8:30

derived from European varieties of

8:32

English, One linguist who

8:34

believes this to be true is John McWATER.

8:36

There

8:36

isn't a single grammatical feature

8:39

of black English that you can

8:41

really trace to African languages. He

8:43

is

8:43

a professor at Columbia and

8:45

author of several books. For

8:47

example, the not having

8:49

to always use the verb to be.

8:51

That's not an African language

8:53

trait. So

8:54

what McWATER is talking about here

8:56

is what linguist refer to as

8:58

Copa absence. or the absence

9:00

of an auxiliary verb

9:02

like to be in sentence

9:04

construction. For instance, she

9:06

is nice in standard English, can

9:09

become she nice in

9:11

African American English. This

9:12

grammatical characteristic of AAE

9:15

is not something found in West

9:17

African languages like twe or Yoruba

9:19

according to McQuarter. There are many

9:21

languages in the world where you don't use

9:23

to be the way we're used to in English, but

9:25

languages of the West African coast

9:27

are not those languages.

9:28

And this is one

9:30

clue according to McWATER that AAE

9:32

is not accretive. So,

9:35

yeah, it's almost disappointing. black

9:37

English would be easier to argue for the legitimacy

9:39

of if you could say this

9:41

is Yaraba with English words.

9:43

That would be great. It would make everything

9:45

somewhat smoother. But unfortunately, the

9:48

case is impossible. So

9:49

if AAE is not derived from

9:51

the West African languages, What proof

9:53

does he have that AAE comes

9:55

out of English as being spoken in

9:58

Colonial America?

10:00

What we

10:00

can know based on looking

10:02

at the dialect now and

10:05

comparing it with colloquial

10:07

speech varieties as they emerge

10:09

around the world and especially

10:11

under conditions similar

10:13

to or equivalent to plantation

10:16

slavery in the United States. What we

10:18

can say is that to

10:21

create black English. You start

10:23

with regional UK

10:26

varieties of English, most of which we're not

10:28

very familiar with. here in the

10:30

United States now and most

10:32

of which have changed considerably since

10:34

the sixteen hundreds and seventeen

10:36

hundreds. But you start with those

10:38

varieties, they are transplanted

10:41

here by whites. They very

10:43

quickly mix into

10:45

new American varieties that didn't exist

10:47

in England, but it would not have

10:50

been the emerging standard English. It

10:52

would have been these colloquial English. they

10:54

mix together into a new American

10:58

stew. That is the English

11:00

that African slaves would have been exposed

11:02

to. and

11:02

it's from this linguistics too

11:05

that African American English is born.

11:07

And

11:07

short, McWATER is quick to point out

11:09

there is, of course, some African influence.

11:12

The African

11:13

slaves develop

11:15

a form of that English

11:17

that is inflected somewhat.

11:20

by the sound

11:23

system and even melody of

11:25

African languages somewhat. And

11:27

then they also sprinkle it with a

11:29

few African words, not too terribly many

11:31

in the case of black English, but a

11:33

few. But he

11:34

emphasizes AAE is not an

11:36

African language with English

11:38

words just thrown in.

11:40

Nor was it something that we

11:42

have any reason to think, slaves

11:45

created as a secret code so that white

11:47

people couldn't understand. that's not why

11:49

languages and dialects like this

11:51

develop. It's a more natural and

11:53

ordinary and largely subconscious process,

11:55

where speech for 80s change depending

11:57

on who's speaking them and

11:59

to who who's developing them what the

12:01

composition of the population is.

12:04

So

12:06

what about this other theory that AAE

12:09

is a creole?

12:10

Well, more on that after the

12:12

break.

12:12

I'm

12:14

jumping in here just for

12:17

a minute to tell you about a podcast I've

12:19

been listening to recently. It's

12:21

called vanishing postcards. and it

12:23

is one of the best podcast

12:25

you should listen to in twenty

12:27

twenty two. That's a quote. I

12:29

didn't come up with it. Digital

12:31

Trends did. But I agree,

12:33

in the latest season of

12:35

vanishing postcards, post Evan

12:37

Stark Motor's cross

12:39

country along America's favorite

12:41

highway, Route sixty six. He goes

12:43

west, of course. From a

12:45

dance in Tulsa, to

12:47

an eating contest in Amarillo,

12:50

to a morning on the Santa

12:52

Monica pier. This is a highway

12:54

where America as past meets its

12:56

present, you can hear that in

12:58

every episode in people's voices and

13:00

in their stories. It makes you

13:02

want to take that drive your

13:04

self, and it shames me to say,

13:06

I haven't driven one single mile

13:08

of it, but you don't need to

13:10

do that because vanishing postcards

13:12

has done the job. it's

13:14

taken you there. Listen to

13:16

vanishing postcards wherever

13:18

you're listening to this.

13:21

Alright.

13:23

we're back. We're talking about the origins

13:26

of AAE. Is it a mishmosh

13:28

of colonial Englishes, linguist,

13:30

John Wickwater, think so? but there's another school

13:32

of thought that AAE is

13:35

actually accretive. We have

13:36

found that these special varieties

13:38

that we call pigeons and

13:41

then creoles

13:42

develop when people

13:45

speak in different languages are

13:47

brought together. John

13:48

Rickford is a linguist in this camp.

13:51

He's Professor Emeritus at Stanford,

13:53

an author of several books, including

13:55

Spoken Soul, The Story of Black

13:57

English, which he wrote with his son.

13:59

He's

13:59

also from the Caribbean nation of

14:02

Guyana and speaks Guyanese

14:04

Creel. He knows firsthand how

14:06

Creel developed and believes that some features

14:08

can be found in African American

14:10

English. So

14:11

very often, in

14:13

our case, it's

14:15

because of colonial expansion.

14:18

Britain,

14:18

for instance, would expand

14:21

and bring people from different African

14:23

countries to the Caribbean

14:26

And in that context, very

14:28

often, they

14:29

would develop a

14:31

Persian kind of English So

14:33

a pigeon isn't a native language. A

14:35

pigeon is developed when two different

14:37

languages come into contact. For

14:39

example, An English speaker and an EVO speaker

14:41

might develop a Pigeon language to communicate

14:43

with each other, but still speak

14:46

EVO or English as their primary

14:48

tongue. but then subsequent generations

14:51

might adopt that pigeon language as their

14:53

primary language. Later on,

14:55

when the pigeon is learned as a

14:57

native language, It has to be used for a much

14:59

wider set of purposes than the

15:01

pigeon. So at that point, you would say it

15:03

becomes

15:03

accretal. This

15:05

is what Rickford thinks happen in the

15:07

United States much as a did all over the

15:09

Caribbean. He finds proof of this theory

15:11

that AAE is accretal in the

15:13

language of Gala. Gella

15:15

is spoken by black Americans who live on

15:17

the outer banks of the southeast coast,

15:19

and it's been preserved for

15:21

decades. The

15:22

Southeast region, which is the Golar Gucci culture

15:24

heritage corridors, is first and foremost,

15:27

the epicenter of Golar Gucci language,

15:29

and that's from

15:31

Wilmington, North Carolina in

15:33

thirty five miles and down

15:35

to Jacksonville, Florida.

15:36

That's sun Michelle. He

15:39

teaches Gola at Harvard. And by

15:41

the way, we did a whole episode of Besson

15:43

a while back. We'll post a link in

15:45

the show notes. Now according to

15:47

Sun, there are many many

15:50

linguistic similarities between Golar,

15:52

Caribbean, and African languages.

15:54

Gala

15:54

is one of those languages that is

15:56

a bridge between the

15:59

Caribbean

15:59

and African diaspora

16:02

in a sense that you will

16:04

hear, you know, Guinea coast

16:06

creels on West African pigeon. It

16:08

sounds very reminiscent of the creels

16:10

there in Iberia, I'm in a coloqua.

16:12

When Sierra Leone, you hear the

16:15

Creo. And people hear them next

16:17

to Gullen, like, wow. They sound, you

16:19

know, so similar, so very similar.

16:21

It's preserved so much of its African

16:23

as essentially more than any other

16:25

subset of African

16:27

American community linguistically. on the

16:29

road and tell you about Vascepa Kamia. Go down the

16:31

road there and tell your brother I said to come

16:33

here. What are you gonna do? What are they going to

16:35

do?

16:35

Against the odds, Gala

16:37

has survived. And in

16:39

addition, its culture has been carefully

16:41

passed down from generation

16:43

to generation. Many

16:44

of the people who still

16:47

speak their mother tongue are literally the

16:49

mothers. They they literally did grandmothers, the

16:51

great grandmothers, the older generation who

16:54

either never did ascribed to

16:56

crossing over or are no longer in a

16:58

position at a point in their life where they feel

17:00

inclined to code switch

17:02

for acceptance. These gala

17:04

speakers didn't feel the need to

17:06

alter gala to gain acceptance from those

17:08

who might not understand it or deem

17:10

it secondary to standard English.

17:13

there's purity and its preservation. And

17:15

perhaps Golar speakers have been able to

17:17

prevent its alteration because of

17:19

their geographical isolation. and

17:22

there's been concerted efforts to keep

17:24

it that way. In two thousand six,

17:26

the Galagicchi Cultural Heritage

17:28

Corridor Act was passed. allocating

17:30

financial support and protections to

17:32

preserve the rich Galagic culture.

17:35

But even though the Gala people have tightly

17:37

preserved their language, isolating it from the influences of

17:40

standard English and AAE, Gala

17:42

has actually played a role in the evolution

17:44

of black American English.

17:47

During the great migration between nineteen

17:49

sixteen and nineteen seventy, millions

17:51

of black Americans, including people from

17:53

the Galagicchi community, moved from

17:56

the south to the west the Midwest and the North

17:58

seeking better opportunities and a fresh

18:00

start. This migration

18:02

affected the way black American speech

18:04

evolved and changed. and

18:06

part of that change can be traced to

18:08

gala. Here's an example of

18:09

the way verbs are modified

18:11

in gala. In

18:13

showing verb tense,

18:15

or modifying verbs in a sentence.

18:17

The term is either

18:20

going to be present tense where it

18:22

replaces the suffix ING

18:24

for for, like, doing.

18:26

Instead of doing, it would be a do.

18:28

Also, it is for

18:30

near future tense because I,

18:32

you I gonna say or I could do would

18:34

be something that you're doing in the future. Amadu

18:37

or Amadu say is something that

18:39

is immediate future.

18:41

And

18:41

this grammatical construction is something

18:43

that you also hear in African American

18:46

English.

18:46

So how many times have you heard

18:48

someone in LA, in New York,

18:50

in in Arkansas, say, well, I'm a

18:52

tell you what, well, I'm a go. Well, I'm a say

18:54

this. I'm a say that. You ain't gonna

18:56

kill me? I'm a kill

18:58

them. So it's it's in our language all

19:00

throughout the country. We haven't had

19:02

very many people point it out and say, hey, this

19:04

is where that comes from and that's why you

19:07

say this thing that you

19:09

say, it's not broken English or whatever

19:11

you've been fed. that's a part of your

19:13

linguistic heritage that stuck around in your

19:15

language from generation to

19:17

generation. Okay.

19:17

Truth moment. I've

19:20

heard I'm a a million times. I

19:22

also use it sometimes when I'm speaking to

19:24

people depending on who I'm speaking to.

19:27

I never knew where it came from. I never

19:29

knew how it came about. And

19:31

honestly, sitting here after going through all of

19:33

those theories and speaking to

19:35

the experts. It's hard for me to make

19:37

conclusions about the origins

19:39

of African American English. I mean,

19:41

you can see how and

19:43

why linguist side differently on the origins. Right?

19:46

Again, without comprehensive documentation,

19:48

how can we expect a linear

19:50

story? And

19:52

on that, there's something

19:53

that Nicole holiday told me that

19:55

really struck me. It actually doesn't matter where

19:57

it came from whether or not it

19:59

came from accrual or came from the

20:02

Anglophone speakers undergoing

20:04

change. Anglophone speakers

20:05

meaning English speakers,

20:07

It's still a legitimate variety.

20:10

LEGitimate variety. Those

20:12

two words are powerful.

20:15

Considering the

20:15

lost past of AAE, moving

20:19

forward, it's crucial that we document

20:21

this variety. this

20:23

legitimate variety of English

20:25

that tells us stories of the

20:27

past and illustrates the survival of

20:29

a people It demonstrates the

20:31

tenacity of their belief in its

20:33

integrity despite attempts to destroy

20:35

it, de legitimize it, and

20:37

distort it. Those

20:39

attempts never went away. They're

20:41

still here. Language

20:43

bias is everywhere. At

20:45

work, at school, in the media,

20:47

In fact, John Brickford is written about the role

20:50

linguistic biased plays in the

20:52

courtroom, particularly in the

20:54

trial for George Zimmerman back in

20:56

twenty thirteen. The prosecutor's key

20:58

witness, Rachel Gentel, was

21:00

used to discredit Zimmerman's claim that he

21:02

fatally shot Trevon Martin out of

21:04

self defense. Giantel

21:06

spoke for many hours on the witness

21:09

stand. He did not ask me to turn on

21:11

describing the man. He just

21:13

told me, I didn't think it

21:15

was that important at all. He

21:17

he got excellent on

21:19

high ground statement

21:21

management. I say creepy.

21:23

Don't dare I say creepy.

21:25

JENTEL

21:25

was deemed not credible

21:27

by members of the jury.

21:29

Why? because

21:30

they said she was quote hard

21:32

to understand. They later

21:35

found Zimmerman not guilty. But

21:37

despite continued attempts to delegitimize

21:40

it, Black American English hasn't and

21:42

isn't going anywhere. And it's

21:44

time we recognize its role in the

21:46

American public square and the way resonates

21:48

with the masses

21:49

abroad. To acknowledge the

21:51

people who speak it, to recognize

21:54

their journey, and

21:56

to validate their

21:58

humanity in this way.

22:04

Thank you

22:08

for joining

22:10

me on this journey. Now episode,

22:12

we'll explore AAE in music.

22:15

This episode is

22:17

reported and produced by me, Chico

22:19

Theodie. Special thanks to

22:21

Patrick Cox Alua Chemi, Alad

22:23

Dussui, and Nina

22:25

Porzuki. Also to Alison

22:27

Reid and everyone at the Linguistics

22:29

Society of America. Tina Atobe

22:31

is our sound designer. Alison Shao

22:33

manages our social media and newsletter.

22:35

And if you haven't subscribed yet,

22:38

the newsletter comes out every two

22:40

weeks. There are language themed news

22:42

items and also some updates on the

22:44

podcast and some fun stuff. sign

22:46

up at subtitle pod dot

22:48

com slash newsletter. One more

22:50

time, subtitle pod dot

22:52

com slash newsletter. Subtitles

22:54

a member of the hub and spoke audio

22:57

collective. Another hub and spoke podcast

22:59

is nocturnal. For anyone who loves the

23:01

sounds and mysteries of the night, but

23:03

sleeps through most of it. This is a

23:05

wondrous lesson. Hosted by

23:07

Vanessa Lowe, each episode takes you

23:09

on a unique nighttime adventure.

23:11

For not and all of the hub and

23:13

spoke podcast go to

23:14

hubspokeaudio dot org. Thanks

23:17

for listening.

23:17

We'll be back in a couple of weeks.

23:20

Subtitles is made possible in part

23:23

by a major grant from the national

23:25

endowment for the humanities, exploring

23:27

the human endeavor,

23:29

Hub and spoke.

23:32

Audio collective.