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The article isn't discussing accents, but rather differences in vocabulary and grammar between two dialects. There is a difference "He isn't going to do anythin

The article isn't discussing accents, but rather differences in vocabulary and grammar between two dialects. There is a difference "He isn't going to do anything about it" with an accent and saying "He ain't gon' do nothin' bout it."

disantlor 9y ago
is there that much of a difference? how much? poster used the word "accent" but to my mind that includes regional variations in the language, not just the sonics.
- garrettdc 9y ago
  Not sure... the poster didn't differentiate, so I could only assume they meant speaking Standard English with an accent.
- yodon 9y ago
  I'm not able to locate the links, but I've read that academic studies of twitter users misclassified AAVE-speakers as "non-English speakers" with sufficient ubiquity as to nearly or completely exclude black Americans from the supposedly inclusive studies.
- lawpoop 9y ago
  One thing that jumps out in this sentence is that, grammatically, AAVE uses negative concords (double (or more) negatives), like Spanish or French, instead of the "standard" English "not any", etc. (which I forget the name of.) Interestingly, double negatives were standard in English up until about 200 years ago, when English speakers wanted their language to be more like Latin-- that is, civilized and refined. So they changed it. An interesting part of AAVE is that is has verbs conjugated by tense and aspect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English#Tense_and_aspect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En... . Aspect is something standard English doesn't have a grammatical case of.
- LordKano 9y ago
  There aren't a lot but some really stand out. For example, what's known as the "habitual be". In SAE, one would say something like "Sam is walking that route to the store and does so regularly." In AAVE, an equivalent statement would be "Sam be walking to the store that way." The habitual quality of the action is what would allow for the use of the habitual be. One would not say it for an activity that is only expected to happen once. To further illustrate, in SAE you'd say "He's dying." In AAVE, you would not say "He be dying." because it's not habitual. There are many others but I think this is one of the easiest to explain.
  - racer-v 9y ago
    Incidentally Latin also employs a habitual verb form in the imperfect tense. For example the imperfect ambulabam (was walking): "He was walking to the store" can mean "He was in the habit of walking", perhaps more informally "he used to walk" or "he would walk".

disantlor 9y ago

is there that much of a difference? how much? poster used the word "accent" but to my mind that includes regional variations in the language, not just the sonics.

garrettdc 9y ago
Not sure... the poster didn't differentiate, so I could only assume they meant speaking Standard English with an accent.
yodon 9y ago
I'm not able to locate the links, but I've read that academic studies of twitter users misclassified AAVE-speakers as "non-English speakers" with sufficient ubiquity as to nearly or completely exclude black Americans from the supposedly inclusive studies.
lawpoop 9y ago
One thing that jumps out in this sentence is that, grammatically, AAVE uses negative concords (double (or more) negatives), like Spanish or French, instead of the "standard" English "not any", etc. (which I forget the name of.) Interestingly, double negatives were standard in English up until about 200 years ago, when English speakers wanted their language to be more like Latin-- that is, civilized and refined. So they changed it. An interesting part of AAVE is that is has verbs conjugated by tense and aspect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English#Tense_and_aspect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En... . Aspect is something standard English doesn't have a grammatical case of.
LordKano 9y ago
There aren't a lot but some really stand out. For example, what's known as the "habitual be". In SAE, one would say something like "Sam is walking that route to the store and does so regularly." In AAVE, an equivalent statement would be "Sam be walking to the store that way." The habitual quality of the action is what would allow for the use of the habitual be. One would not say it for an activity that is only expected to happen once. To further illustrate, in SAE you'd say "He's dying." In AAVE, you would not say "He be dying." because it's not habitual. There are many others but I think this is one of the easiest to explain.
- racer-v 9y ago
  Incidentally Latin also employs a habitual verb form in the imperfect tense. For example the imperfect ambulabam (was walking): "He was walking to the store" can mean "He was in the habit of walking", perhaps more informally "he used to walk" or "he would walk".