Black English

Rating:
Summary: a beautiful book, but how to continue??
Review: I came across Dillard's book by mistake, while roaming around the University of Michigan library. I started reading it and couldn't put it down. All I knew about Black English was from movies and TV shows that parodied it (e.g. Airplane). After going through the book and repeating the examples, I couldn't get over just how lovely it sounded. So by now I knew that Black English was a real language -- like Greek or Chinese or Spanish. What next? How does one continue from there?

I decided to visit the Afro-American Studies dept. By then I was a grad student at Indiana University, and innocently enough, I thought that this was what a person in the academia did when they wanted to learn something -- they went to consult the experts... The experience was an overall disappointment. I spoke to several instructors, several students, left messages with the secretaries, but alas -- it was very difficult to get through to people: They were all very suspicious that someone would even think of studying Black English. Eventually I was able to learn a few things from peoples' comments:

- Currently, there is no such thing as a textbook for Black English in the same way that there are textbooks for Spanish or Russian. You will need to make due with books like Dillard's, and there aren't all that many of those either.

- Black English is more than just a vocabulary. A dictionary of "Jive" won't do. You need to pick up some grammar.

- There are many dialects of Black English, and Black English changed over time.

- No one I spoke to had ever heard of a university course in Black English.

- No one I spoke to knew of any book written entirely in Black English, though there are books (including novels) that have generous samples.

- I've found a reference to the New Testament in Black English (I'm NOT refering to the Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch version of the New Testament), but no one seemed to know where to get a copy (if you do PLEASE let me know).

Eventually, though, a kind instructor pointed me to Zora Neale Hurston's books, for which I couldn't have been more grateful. So, if you're interested in Black English, get Dillard's book and go through it a few times, to appreciate the structure of the language. Then if you would like to see some very beautiful if somewhat out-of-date examples of Black English, pick up a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and in addition to reading a beautiful novel you'll also get a beathtakingly beautiful sample of Black English. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Classics on African American Vernacular English AAVE
Review: I came in contact with this whole AAVE (aka Black English) business when I took a linguistics class in undergraduate. The Oakland School Board then in 1996-97 outbursted the controversy of recognizing AAVE as an official instruction language in schools.

On a linguistic persepctive, as this book suggests, AAVE should be considered a dialect of English for it is what linguists call "rule-governed". It means that Black English has a distinctive sets of grammar rules, structures, and sound patterns. It had been hypothesized that West African immigrants came into the country and worked as slaves. They might speak a pidgrin that over course of time developed and became a creole. This is known as the Creole Hypothesis. It explains the striking similarities shared between Plantation English (spoken by Southern Whites) and Black English.

Dillard's book, though published more than 20 years ago, still reflects the distinct linguistic characteristics of AAVE. The dialect distinguishes itself with forestressing syllable, regularization (i.e. using "I goes" rather than "I go"), syllable contaction (i.e. pronouncing "suppose" as /spoz/), perfective "done" form, invariant be form, and more.

AAVE therefore is just like any dialect we might hear people speak except it is often stigmatized; that is, in linguist's language, language is degraded and the speakers feel ashamed to speak the language. Dillard's book deals with grammatical and social aspects of the language. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The book from a black english scholar
Review: J. L. Dillard is quoted in many other books on black english. It is full of interesting tidbits about black english, and is loaded with examples. an excellent work, even for the 1970s!