British Eubonics

[Jonathon Green]

I can't speak as a linguist, nor even an expert upon 'Black British' but I
would offer a couple of suggestions.

In the first place second and subsequent generations of Black Britons
(primarily Afro-Caribbeans who arrived en masse in the 1950s/60s) and other
established immigrant groups (e.g. East African Asians and Sylhetis,
arriving in the 1970s) speak with their local, i.e. British regional accent.
Thus those who read, as recently featured in the NY Times, of Asian youths
calling for a homegrown jihad and singing the praises of Bin Laden, should
appreciate that they do so in tones that are barely distinguishable from
their antitheses: the white racists of the far-right British National Party.
They are all 'Lancashire lads', 'Yorkshire tykes' or whatever, and speak
accordingly.

A second point is that while white listeners may find it hard to distinguish
one group of Black Britons from another, black speakers have no problem.
Interviewing a group of second-generatuion Afro-Caribbean teenage girls
about their slang, I was told that _their_ slang vocabulary, that of Hackney
(a working-class area of north-east London) was quite different to that of
their peers in Brixton (south London), let alone those of Moss Side in
Manchester or Toxteth in Liverpool. There are many crossovers (as there are
in 'white' slang around the country), but they could see, and used, the
differences. That said, British teenagers of whatever ethnicity are unified
in one thing: they all talk 'Black American', or at least that version
retailed by rap music.

Jonathon Green