It does not escape attention that AAVE is relegated to a small blurb in the "Special Interest" section, with a number of inaccuracies.
>African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the dialect of most African Americans in the United States, is derived from Classical Southern, and shares its main features and many other features. However, it also has a number of distinctive features. I have not generally included AAVE in this study, since its geographical distribution tends to be independent of “white” dialects, primarily because after the Civil War large numbers of former slaves moved to all parts of the U.S., and tended to form their own communities, retaining their unique dialect. However, in many areas of the Lowland South no such migration occurred, and in these areas AAVE and “white” dialects share features and clearly have developed together, so in these areas I have sometimes included AAVE samples. AAVE tends to retain r-dropping more than “white” dialects do, even among younger speakers, and throughout the United States in African American communities.
>I have not generally included AAVE in this study, since its geographical distribution tends to be independent of “white” dialects
This is like saying, "I have not included black history in this survey of American history, as it tends to be independent of "white" history.
>primarily because after the Civil War large numbers of former slaves moved to all parts of the U.S.
Mass movement of American blacks out of the South occurred in the early 20th century; the Great Migration was spurred not by the Civil War, directly, but instead by mass terror.
>and tended to form their own communities
They were forced into small communities, largely into poor conditions or predatory housing arrangements, and generally barred from entering white communities except as menial labor.
AAVE is one of the most important American dialects. It's had a major influence on American cultural output, and has done so for more than a one hundred years. It's also itself heavily influenced by West African speech patterns, miraculously preserved despite centuries of persecution of its speakers. Rick, if you're reading this: you need to do better. Your work is unfortunately incomplete and inadequate without giving AAVE it's just due. I would suggest contacting subject-matter experts for guidance and revising this page appropriately. Some suggestions:
> Rick, if you're reading this: you need to do better.
Front and center of Rick's page.
> This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be interesting to a lot of people. Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects. - Rick Aschmann. (Page last updated: May 2, 2018.
In fact Rick is apparently a professional linguist who's day job involves researching "amerindian" or indigenous languages so he's devoted his career to studying the dialects of people of color. Consider cutting him some slack on his hobby.
The webpage is presented as a fairly comprehensive overview of "American Dialects", of which AAVE is one of the most widely-spoken. To gloss over it the way he has is criminal, especially because he's an academic. This is part-and-parcel of the way blackness is marginalized in and erased from the American record. Essentially, every chart on the page is missing a column. It does a major disservice to anyone who might happen upon the page and view it as a credible source regarding the way Americans speak. You might as well present an atlas with the lakes and ponds removed from each map.
This is a bit simple, too. AAVE is not a single thing. All black people do not have the same accent, and some don't have similar accents to each other. There is also no an ur-accent floating around that is perturbing all black people in a uniform way from the local accents that surround them.
And while people can theorize that some notably common Black speech patterns arose from West Africa because they can find similar things in some contemporary West African speech - this is a comparison that people were biased to make (black people imported from West Africa talk funny, must be West African influence.) Black people's accents as you quote here are generally the same archaic Scottish/Irish/English accents that everyone else they lived near had, but didn't continue identically because black people were physically separated from white people socially, and often living under enforced illiteracy.
Black people were brought here speaking a huge number of languages, and forced to live with other black people who didn't speak the languages they spoke, and forced to live under white people who demanded that they speak in a subservient manner and remain illiterate.
AAVE is honestly a joke. It's another way to designate black people as a designated foreign underclass. Black West Texans or Hill Country Mississippians don't sound like black New Yorkers. Black West Texans sound a lot like white West Texans, and black New Yorkers sound a lot like white New Yorkers. That they don't sound identical is due to segregation, past and current, not some foreign origin.
The reason they don't track black people's accents, or even recognize them, is because no one cares about black people. It's easy to see how the recognition of "AAVE" seems like a victory if one thinks that all black people are fungible.
edit: and of course, if you're white, talking "black" is a single thing, and white people can do it. It involves holding your hands in weird ways, pushing your chest out, making a mean face, and can only be used (and will almost always be used) when talking about partying, violence, or having sex. Pop music is minstrelsy.
>African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the dialect of most African Americans in the United States, is derived from Classical Southern, and shares its main features and many other features. However, it also has a number of distinctive features. I have not generally included AAVE in this study, since its geographical distribution tends to be independent of “white” dialects, primarily because after the Civil War large numbers of former slaves moved to all parts of the U.S., and tended to form their own communities, retaining their unique dialect. However, in many areas of the Lowland South no such migration occurred, and in these areas AAVE and “white” dialects share features and clearly have developed together, so in these areas I have sometimes included AAVE samples. AAVE tends to retain r-dropping more than “white” dialects do, even among younger speakers, and throughout the United States in African American communities.
>I have not generally included AAVE in this study, since its geographical distribution tends to be independent of “white” dialects
This is like saying, "I have not included black history in this survey of American history, as it tends to be independent of "white" history.
>primarily because after the Civil War large numbers of former slaves moved to all parts of the U.S.
Mass movement of American blacks out of the South occurred in the early 20th century; the Great Migration was spurred not by the Civil War, directly, but instead by mass terror.
>and tended to form their own communities
They were forced into small communities, largely into poor conditions or predatory housing arrangements, and generally barred from entering white communities except as menial labor.
AAVE is one of the most important American dialects. It's had a major influence on American cultural output, and has done so for more than a one hundred years. It's also itself heavily influenced by West African speech patterns, miraculously preserved despite centuries of persecution of its speakers. Rick, if you're reading this: you need to do better. Your work is unfortunately incomplete and inadequate without giving AAVE it's just due. I would suggest contacting subject-matter experts for guidance and revising this page appropriately. Some suggestions:
https://adwhiteprofessors.cornell.edu/professors-at-large/jo... https://coe.arizona.edu/person/sonja-lanehart