Fun fact, AAE even extends to American Sign Languge! Black Deaf people signing to each other often use slightly different mannerisms and word order compared to standard ASL. There hasn't been a ton of research done on this dialect but it's fascinating.

For me, a non-native non-American English speaker, I thought a lot of the words from AAE was just "internet slang" or "internet language" and had no idea about the history or cultural significance behind it. Happy to learn something new :)

What's interesting is when it spreads to other countries, it gets called "American slang." It's just associated with the country as a whole.

One thing that I would like to emphasize. For those who use AAE, our parents often warn us against it. They fear that others will in fact prejudge us and regard us as unintelligent and uncivilized. But shoutout to PBS (another adopted AAE phrase). I've never heard or (have) seen a comprehensive explanation of AAVE in a positive manner. I feel a lil more comfortably with my speech now.

i'm a cahsier and the amount of white guys that will come up to me and clumsily use AAE just because i'm black is tooo many

Growing up in NYC I hate getting comments on how well I speak but how “my ghetto comes out” when I’m with family and friends… and then with family and friends they say I “talk white”!! it’s literally just code switching that doesn’t mean one way Is lesser than the other. And tbh being able to speak in flow using both is fun as hell. I can express myself fully and most comfortably when I’m allowed to use both and just speak how I want.

I had a college English professor who said it best. He said "when it comes to communication, the best communication is that spoken in a way that you subject or audience Understands you. THAT is communication! Otherwise you are just tattling off words". I took that to heart! He went on to say that if you are speaking your best, most correct formal English and the person you are saying it to doesn't understand you, you ain't Said nothing! 😂

One more comment. Classism is very much the reason behind the stigma of a "broken language". Villagers or the local people develop a dialect to shorten and share common language. Those who speak the most formal and proper consider themselves superior, especially when they don't understand another do dialect and distance themselves.

This is the sort of content that I wish was around in broader culture when I was much younger. I bought into the idea that AAE was inferior wholesale, worked HARD as a child to scrub any and all traces of it from my speech, and thought myself superior to my peers for it - and now, as a result, I can understand AAE just fine but am barely able to speak it. It feels like I've lost access to a major part of my culture.

I really appreciate that the narrator ties together modern AAE with how language naturally evolves. It's like saying 'If you don't think that AAE is legitimate, you're delegitimizing your own dialect.' In reference to how English evolved from Anglo-Saxon and European languages.

Wait, but the etymology behind "finna" is so cool! I always thought it was a variation on "gonna," but the "fixing to" --> "finna" makes more sense.

I'm a Roman Catholic Italian from Philly who was taught by nuns, that said the coolest word I ever heard was" Sunday-go-meetin clothes ". This word was send by a black guy who I used to work with who originally was brought up in South. He had to attend a viewing after work and I asked" yo what's with the getup?" He said" you mean my Sunday- go--meetin clothes?" Thank you for the time and effort you put into this video ,thumbs-up. Have a nice day.

I once went out to dinner after a guest lecture at my tiny Welsh university with a group of lecturers and students. In the group most of us were English, a couple were Welsh, one was German, and there were two Americans. We were talking about accents and how we all speaking the same language but how different it sounded, I think the topic came up in relation to ancient dialects of Greek and the intelligibility between them. One of the Americans was a student from Florida who was black and she was telling us how around us she would use her "whiter" voice which we hadn't really experienced before. Although one of the older lecturers talked about how when he was younger he got sent to elocution lessons in order to sound less "Northern" because received pronunciation or "RP" English with little regional colloquialisms was considered correct. It was a very interesting conversation.

The AAE to white people slang pipeline: black people-white homosexuals-drunk white girls-mainstream white vocabulary. Or an increasingly common alternative: black twitter-internet memes-mainstream white vocabulary.

I speak Spanish where we have many verb conjugation forms, and I find that AAE gives me the ability to use those conjugation forms more that mainstream English. 7:18

It's funny to hear it mentioned that the rules are codified in a way that new words can be easily understood so long as you know the basic rules and keep context and tone in mind. Whenever a new word appears in the hood, it makes perfect sense to me and that always tickles me as a language geek.

It gives me such a smug satisfaction when actual linguists reinforce the idea that "Proper English" is a fluid concept. English is such a versatile language and that's super cool and interesting! It's spoken differently depending on the country (America, UK, Australia, New Zealand etc) but even in those countries, region, class and race might mean you speak in a different dialect and/or accent. I think in the end, we gain more when we try and learn more about those differences than if we just dismiss them.

I had a fight with a woman over AAE. People really have a strong hate for it...and yet it forms the basis of a great deal of Americanall culture...the flows, patterns, rhythms of our music. Our dance...they are all connected.

Growing up in South Central as an immigrant kid learning English, it’s always been an interesting perspective to grow up surrounded and influenced fundamentally by AAVE.

I would love to learn about the way AAE has evolved over time. When you go back and read classics written by Black authors in the dialect, August Wilson's plays for example, you find older AAE that isn't used anymore. I feel like AAE evolves really quickly compared to standard/mainstream American English. Please tell me there's a book on the history of AAE vocabulary out there...

This was an intensely uncomfortable challenge to prejudices I didn't even know I had. Thank you.

The problem is anti-Black American ethnophobic sentiment. In America (and beyond) hate of Black American descendants of American chattel slavery is woven into the fabric of our culture. A KZfaqr (I forget his name) who makes videos about language has a video about Black American English where he explains the rules of how to speak this dialectal form of English while also explaining that English (like many other languages) has a multitude of different dialectal versions. Yet, the comment section of tht video is flooded with horrible remarks towards Black American English. People of all racial groups & ethnic backgrounds disagreed with everything he said and reduced Black American English down to simply sounding "stupid" or "uneducated". Some people even went on to say that it was "impossible" for Black American English to be an altar dialectical form of English in America and that thing lile that could only exist in places like Haiti & Brazil (with French in Portuguese respectively). The KZfaqr then went to explain in the comments section (as he did in the video) that many countries like Norway, Germany & Japan have varying dialectal versions of a single language and that no one perceives speakers of those different dialects to be "unintelligent "the way we all do with Black Americans.....I think he even pointed out the fact that there are varying dialectical forms of English spoken through England.Im Black American and I have noticed many English celebrities like Adele structure sentences in ways that are similar to Black Americans, yet they don't receive the same backlash. I've noticed Adele use the word "was" in place of "were" and I've heard her use double negatives...... but I've never heard anyone refer to her as an "stupid" for doing so. The problem is simply anti-Black American ethnophobic sentiment.

I expected to roll my eyes but I have to say this was quite enlightening. My parents migrated from the Bronx in the early 80's before I was born. My mom drilled into us that AAE was lazy and unprofessional slang that should never be used. However, the illustration about Japanese really highlights the immediate social connection formed about the foundation that AAE is within a group of people. While I would be proud to have my employer overhear me speaking Spanish with a family member, I hesitate to say the same if they heard me speaking AAE. Definitely some food for thought as to why that is.

Dr. B., You always do such a great job. Bien hecho. 🎯

AAE has become somewhat dominant in European perceptions on how Americans speak.

This is so good, so concise, a great introduction to the sociolinguistic contexts around Black English!! I also really appreciate how this video outlines some of the key features of our language. I’m going to share this with my students in the fall🖤

Excellent take-this is not an easy topic to share broadly, but this video was a fantastic start to the conversation. Thanks for this labor of love ✊🏽

Thank you for this video!

I remember reading in Kori Stamper's "Word by Word" when she talked about her journey to understanding "irregardless," which seems particularly loathed by internet grammar snobs. She talked about how, as a lexicographer at Merriam Webster, she tracked down the origins and usages for the word and learned how it was sometimes used in AAE to reinforce a negative, and end a discussion (as in "you have a point, but irregardless, the answer is still 'no'"). It was something that definitely made me take a second to reflect on my own snobbery.

As an African American I used this urban dialect growing up, and my mother tried to correct me all the time, but it was hard to stop talking this way, because she talked this way as well. I do find myself switching up my dialect when talking to people who don't speak this way. I think people find that it makes us sound uneducated, but that's far from the truth.

Thank you both for this informative video!

So good, so needed. Thank you!

I am obviously white, but I grew up in New Orleans and have always pronounced words like ask as “axe.” It wasn’t until I got to college and all of my peers ridiculed me for pronouncing the word “wrong” that I forced myself to switch. I’m obviously not persecuted, but I’ll never forget that frustration. Learning about this history is very informative to me. Thank you!

Wish I would've had this video when I was in middle and high school. I hated that I couldn't explain why I was the way I am now! Education really is power, wow, it would've fostered a lot more confidence in myself than I had.

Excellent video! Thanks for sharing with us!

I already knew all of this but it was a very well put together, informative video.

Obviously it’s a very different situation than with AAE but the code switching and stigmatisation of slang reminds me of how in Britain a lot of working class dialects are only now becoming more widely accepted in media (it used to be that Received Pronunciation / posh English was the only accent acceptable for television. People are also still stigmatised in the workplace if their dialect is difficult to understand) Northern slang especially is still seen as working class and less intelligent. (And that’s not to mention Welsh, Irish and Scottish dialects and languages) Cockney as well is kind of used worldwide to denote ‘rough’ types of people (or generally to mock the working class) We also have black London slang (I’m unsure if it’s got an official name, it’s especially used among Londoners with variations around the country) that white people have coopted when wanting to seem tough (although it’s not often adopted into common usage as much as AAE is). Obviously it’s a totally different situation but it’s fascinating how lots of countries have this mirrored relationship with language dialects.

It’s been amazing to watch when people or bots try to use AAVE to impersonate but don’t get it right and are easily discovered.

This is so interesting, english is my second language and until a few years ago I had almost zero interaction with the english speaking side of social media, so most of my references of "casual" english came from entertainment. I had heard a lot of this terms, thought it was just modern slang, but never new their origin. The first time I learned about AAVE I was scrolling through twitter and found a thread discussing the word "chile" and its use, and was so confused for a while because I thought they meant chile as the spanish word.

I'm so glad someone is finally talking about this. I've always wanted to learn more about it, but people are too scared of ridicule to actually try to teach others about this.

As a Trinidadian🇹🇹 I never realised how similar the sentence structure and other features of language are between AAE and my dialect. It's amazing how despite being from different countries, both groups still developed similar language patterns. It's probably due to the African slave trade and us mixing african grammar rules with English vocabulary.

This is an interesting topic. Language is as fluid as water, so I have to let go of the notion that there is a right and wrong to these things. Because no matter what, these words I may not like will make it into the dictionary and be around longer than me. That's for sure.

Excellent video!!

This is a great video! Thank you guys ❤

SO many people co-opting the word "Woke" nowadays, and not even using it right smh 🙄

I'm definitely guilty of dismissing AAE as just "bad" English...that's kind of what we're taught in a white run education. It was such a hot-button issue back in the 90s along with affirmative action. Now, I see how much of it was vilification and fear mongering. It is the height of irony/hypocrisy to appropriate the culture while dismissing it. My god language would be boring AF without AAE.

Thank you for this breakdown. Perfectly explained.

Incredible (and sometimes hilarious) video. Subbed.

I'm not american and I had just thought that words and expressions shown in 0:14 were slangs and colloquial English, I had no idea they were part of AAE. I think that as non-native english speakers, it is hard to not use those many words originating in AAE, as I part of my English learning was through using social media and by watching tv shows and movies that often employ AAE (although it seems they don't recognize their usage of the language).

This was amazing as a black man thank you guys so much for educating me and confronting a lot of toxic police I had about African-American English.

Great presentation. I learned a lot in just a few minutes!

I LOVE your videos! Cool facts!

This show is dope

As a white southerner I remember being told that some of the shared terms we use that still remain in AAE were incorrect and now those same people are coopting the very same words while still complaining about how certain dialects aren't proper or sound uneducated.

This is brilliant!

The research on this was excellent. Some of the ways we speak and differentiate things with our word choice and word order were highlighted here and I was amazed at how accurate it was. All of it comes naturally during speech so I’ve never thought about it. Thank you for putting this out and showing that it isn’t less-than, it’s just different!

As an American who's lived in Japan for a long time I'll admit the high-level honorific language is beyond me. (Not that I'm all that good with the basic language to be honest...) Japanese people are usually extremely sensitive to the situations they are in and the language they choose to use in those situations. Even younger students will be very careful about the language they use with older students. Fortunately I never really find myself in situations where I need to use such polite expressions. And I'm very good at showing respect through my body language, which the Japanese also find very important...

So proud of Dr. Weissler!! We had the honor of interviewing her for We Are What We Speak. Cheers to you and job well done on Otherwords.

This is my life!! Got me voice over work in the long run!

AAE is so expressive, it has a way of cutting through the weight of the language and effortlessly delivering meaning.

Special Ed said it best “I'm outspoken My language is broken into a slang But it's just a dialect that i select when i hang”

When I saw AAE in the thumbnail I initially thought of Australian Aboriginal English, because living in Australia that’s the only way I’ve seen the acronym used before. I would be curious to see a video on the topic, especially given Australia’s own dodgy past with how white people have treated The Traditional Owners of The Land - and perhaps how the Stolen Generations impacted the development of Australian Aboriginal English.

This was SOOOOO interesting and insightful.

Excellent, educational video!

Lol You can always tell when someone is not a natural AAVE speaker.

I'm a black woman born and raised in Denver Colorado with parents from Louisiana and Alabama... My code switch is truly superior 🤷🏾‍♀️🤣🤣🤣

I been black for a while never knew about African American English !?

I just learned something. Thank you ❤️

This show and the explanations of how English dialects develop and evolve has greatly helped me to become less judgemental of people who speak differently than I do, and more aware of the world as a diverse collection of equal valid styles of expression. Thank you.

3:13 - props to this channel for promoting a descriptivist view of language when grade schoolers are indoctrinated into a prescriptivist view

Thank you KZfaq for randomly recommending this channel as this is my 2nd favourite channel right now!❤❤❤❤❤

Now, PBS, do this video using AAE. That would be amazing 🤩

Good god that final clip was hard to watch

the funniest part about aave is we continue to create and change things literally every day so the day you watched this video it was already dated 😩😭

This is incredibly interesting!

WOW! That was amazing!!

What an amazing video! Following this, I would love to see a video about "textbook" vs. "real/authentic" English, and how ESL institutions attempt to gatekeep English at the expense of students' comprehension of the language ultimately

Can I just say this is probably one of the best researched and factual shows out there? I love that you even talk about other theories we have for AAE, instead of only stating the most common one.

Wow 👌🏽 this is amazing

That was super insightful to people like me who don’t live in the states and want to know more about diversity and appreciation of what makes us different. We are all different and that is a blessing ❤

It's such a shame when good words go bad. "Ebonics" remains one of the best words ever coined in our language, in my opinion. Maybe one day it can be reclaimed with pride

It's very strange how the language is so co-opted in inner cities, but I've noticed it even more in Southern states. Sooo many similarities between the examples of AAE shown here and southern dialects. But they are distinctly different as well. I think maybe they get conflated more than they need to because southern dialects are also grouped together as "inferior" or "wrong" due to classism. But I also think that their similarities are contributed to the fact there is such a large community of AAE speakers in the south. I'm very interested in this topic, thank you for this video.

I ain’t even gone hold you, I appreciate this one.

Salute. This was good.

I've always loved the "she working"/"she be working"/"she been working" distinction. It's really useful and I kind of wish that were a feature of my own native dialect.

As an ESL teacher I found this very interesting. We of course teach only "standard" English, which is what you get on textbooks. Anything else is considered "wrong".

Always thought it was dope how we remixed the English language... Cool to see people accepting it instead of bashing it.

I'm not American, but this is fascinating. Thank you for educating me.

How about an episode on the history of grammatization of languages? There must have be an interesting discussion around the need or lack of need for a unified grammar for a people when these were first developed.

This episode gets an A+ from me. Hooray for understanding, respecting differences that make us, 'us.'

What's up Dr Rachel?... What's up Dr.Rachel? 😂

This was very informative. Thank you! After all these years I am realizing I have been using two dialects and code switching on a regular basis. I mean, I am aware of what I do when I communicate with my "homies" verses when I communicate with my white friends. Culturally, there are things I say to my students that if I say to my white students, they are looking at me with puzzled expressions. I appreciate this. I will be using this to educate others.

This was honestly a suprisingly good, well thoughtout, and well-intentioned video. Thank you for covering this topic.

Absolutely fascinating! We had an extremely short unit on AAE in one of my college linguistics classes and I wish that we had covered even half of what you did here.

Thank you!

This is very interesting.... I love it thank you....

It's "wrong" in the sense that it's not something that rich white people do. They set the rules, so not behaving like them is considered bad. For example, if a poor person gets a housing voucher from the government for rent, it's bad. If a rich person gets a tax deduction from the government for mortgage interest, it's good.

I just listened to the You're Wrong About podcast's episode on Ebonics. This is so interesting. A lot of the controversy surrounding the pushback against it came from just a total misunderstanding (or not wanting to understand) what recognizing it as its own dialect actually meant. No school curriculum was ever intended to teach ebonics to kids, but recognizing and understanding it was meant to actually teach mainstream English better. Because when a kid says "she be working" and the teacher says "wrong, you mean she is working" the teacher is wrong. They literally didn't mean "she is working" they meant "she has a job". How can teachers teach a language when they can't properly understand their own students? And the "I has a dream" poster is from a NY Times ad that sorta proves the opposite of what it intended, because "I has" is nonsensical and doesn't exist in AAE. You might replace has with have, like "He have a car" but you never replace have with has, proving that it has rules, and therefore isn't just "English spoken poorly".

Very interesting, It would be intriguing for you to do an episode, on accents in general, and a linguistic perspective on why some people enjoy speaking in other accents!

I never knew AAE was an actual recognized language. Very cool! I just always viewed it as slang. Where I live there’s tons of different slang and colloquial terms used by so many different groups and individuals I always just categorized it as that