What It Is?
Yo! I 'as always found da Vernacular ta be specahally fascahnatahng. I 'as several ebony nahzzas but I seldoesm hear dem speakahng aht. I does get glahmpses here a' dare. What it is, oh, baby! One 'she be dare' here a' a 'I aksed her a questahon' dare, like, wow, but not'ahng mo. And I blahnd doesuble negatahves. You 'as dem ahn Spaahsh a' French all da tahme.
I have always found the Vernacular to be specially fascinating. I have several Black friends but I seldom hear them speaking it. When they mention in the video that code switching is a usual phenomenon, believe them. I do get glimpses here and there. One 'she be there' here and a 'I aksed her a question' there, but nothing more. And I love double negatives. You have them in Spanish and French all the time. It was really gratifying to find them when I started learning French because it somehow validated the fact that so many people used them.
I think one of the reasons that I find Missy Elliot and Cardi B so entertaining is because their use of the language is so vibrant, so colorful, that I can’t help but stop and listen. I'm forever fascinated by all the turns of phrase and clever wordplay. I was slightly offended when Iggy Azalea (Australian) appropriated Black English and wore it as a cloak. You're not fancy, girl. I guess it's for the same reason that I like the Ballroom scene so much. All the expressions we take today for granted (gagged, read for filth, Yaaass, Mama!) come from the Black and Brown Ballroom scene. And were quickly appropriated by cisgender white gay men, of course. They repeat these expressions over and over without knowing where they came from.
I laugh when I find some basic white boy trying to sound all cool (Ă la Eminem) imitating the Black Vernacular. Or some twink trying to sass me by imitating Nina Bonina Brown. They’re both gloriously unaware that the same cadences and the same wording they’re using are what single out Black men and make them 'thuggish' and Black women 'angry' and the target of White Grievance. I think very few people are aware of that. This video was illuminating. And it sent me in a linguistics tailspin. I'm going to watch it again to geek out with one of my friends, who did work with English dialects for her dissertation. Always fun to geek out.
So the next time you hear any of those expressions or any of those turns of phrase, or you hear any of those 'mistakes', you'll know that it's not "Bad English" it's just another dialect, like your Valley Girl, or your Midwestern, or your Pittsburghese. It just comes with more color.
Oh, and #BlackLivesMatter
Happy Juneteenth!
XOXO
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If I can't understand what someone is saying, then the speaking in the vernacular fails.
ReplyDeleteOh, honey.
DeleteThey are not talking to you. Haha. Not at all. The sense of entitlement of the white man knows no limit.
XOXO
Out of ignorance, I was always perturbed by the “aks” and the move from prescription to “prescription.” This was a very enlightening video and it makes things much clearer for me. It can be so difficult to flip between the various dialects. The intellectual bandwidth to do this is astounding. And those of you who speak multiple languages have a super power. That’s something that always amazed me about you, babe.
ReplyDeleteAnd the white boyz that co-opt the language, I have nothing but disdain for them.
XOXO đŸ‘¨❤️đŸ’‹đŸ‘¨
You hit that right, Huntley.... Anyone who is multi-lingual is a fricking genius to me.
DeleteYes!
DeleteBecause we learn a version of the language that has been stripped of all its flavor (and whitewashed) we tend to stigmatize the Vernacular. It's just another one of the micro-aggressions that Black people suffer day in, day out. Black people code-switch on a daily basis.
XOXO
OK. So, now most of it makes sense to me. But --- and I'm sorry about this --- some of it still makes me cringe. The same as some of the Pennsylvanian mispronunciations that spill from my wife's mouth on a regular basis. And her use of double-negatives drives me insane, but I manage to keep my mouth shut. LOL. XOXO
ReplyDeleteOh, Big.
DeleteUnderstanding where things come from always makes it click. But there is no way we are going to always find the most salient parts of a language jarring. The sore thumbs, I call them. All those little quirks that have been stigmatized (the West Virginia dialects come to mind) and that still drive us mad. My Pittsburgh friends once gave me a t-shirt covered in Pittsburghese. I should buy one when I go back to PA.
I love double negatives. Ain't nobody is one of my favorite songs. Is you or is you ain't my baby always puts me in the mood, too.
XOXO
XOXO
LOL. "It ain't no nevermind to me." I love that one. I actually love the southern dialect and phrases. Don't know why. Maybe because I have Hillbilly roots in W. Va.??? XOXO
DeleteWest Virginia dialects are fascinating! There's communities there that have spoken exactly the same for the last two hundred years. For real.
DeleteEnglish is so colorful!
XOXO
I find a lot of this a put-on. A lot of these words, pronunciations, mispronunciations, phrases and such are used by one so-called celebrity and then everyone co-opts them. Then it trickles down through society and suddenly everyone is saying a version of the put-on. I'm all for slang, lord knows I use it, but sometimes it's just too much of an act.
ReplyDeleteSigned
Cynical Monday Morning Bob
Hahahah Cynical Monday Morning Bob, huh?
DeleteI've always thought that co-opting what doesn't belong to us but to a marginalized portion of society is theft AND a slap on the face of those who are stigmatized for using it.
I love slang, though.
XOXO
my comment was eaten by blogger.
ReplyDeleteI know the feeling. I now copy my comments before I try to post them. đŸ˜¡
DeleteBlogger is such a little bitch.
DeleteI cannot comment from my iPad. Blogger hates it.
XOXO
A excellent post! Many of my black friends don't use it much either , but maybe a few words here or there. We were just talking about this the other day, just how many phrases and how things are said the gay men community took from the black community, and then gayifed it.
ReplyDeleteSame!
DeleteMy Black friends usually code-switch with me but there are little things that always stay. I love the cadence and the incredibly flexible nature of the Vernacular, though. I wish I knew more about it.
And many, many of the things we say and do in the gay community come from the Black and Brown Ballroom community and from Black women (on fleek, anybody?). And we don't even know it.
XOXO
I love language. To each their own. It's all fun. A great turn of phrase? Adore. It's a different form of musical expression. I get it. Sometimes rap is lazy. Lil Wayne comes to mind. But these ladies bringing their A games? Lizzo just makes me weak. Kizzes.
ReplyDeleteAnd that musicality is what's at the core of my love for the Vernacular. Yo nailed it, Upton. I think Rap is not what it used to be. It became lazy because all they can talk about is 'hoes and paper. The message gets lost because it's shallow.
DeleteI love Lizzo! Good as Hell!
XOXO
You will not believe it but in Italy, despite the massive presence of television since the 1960s, many people, even young people, speak their dialect. In a small territory like Italy, there are at least a hundred different dialects.
ReplyDeleteI totally believe that! One of my friends speaks Sardinian and we always talk about his code-switching to 'standard' Italian (that didn't exist until the 1800s). I think dialects are necessary. They express our belonging to a certain culture that we cherish.
DeleteXOXO
let me be more precise: for many Italians, dialects are simply the language of everyday life. Even for young people.
Delete