Black English

[James A. Landau <JJJRLandau@netscape.com>]

(The following was inspired by some thoughtful comments from Wilson Gray on the misuse of the term “substandard”.)

Dialects differ from each other in three ways: phonetics, vocabulary, and grammar.

We don’t have to equip Tom Zurinskas with a tape recorder and turn him loose in a black neighborhood to know that BE is phonetically different from, say, General American.  But then so is the speech of most immigrants to the US from Latin America, yet we do not recognize Spanglishas a separate dialect.

(That reminds me of the Jewish immigrant who stated "Until I came to America, I never had an accent.")

No question that BE has considerable vocabulary that would not be recognized by the average WASP.  But then so does the speech of (mostly white) American Jews.  Even if you omit Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic expressions, there are still such terms as
     black hat
     U-O
     trope
     Federation
     dynastic
     Responsa
     pointed
that would baffle the average WASP or for that matter the average black.  Yet we do not recognize Jewish-American as a separate dialect.

When we come to grammar, we have a more interesting situation.  It turns out that with respect to grammar, there are exactly TWO dialects of English.  These two dialects are frequently, but INCORRECTLY, referred to as "Standard" and "Substandard".  I shall refer to them below as "Patrician" and "Plebian", and am open to suggestions for better names.

Patrician is the grammatical dialect used in books, newspapers, magazines, etc., and is what I am currently writing in.  However, we discussing the oral dialect.

Patrician is NOT the same as "prescriptive".  Indeed, in Patrician
- You are allowed to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
- You are allowed to casually and without intent to be ungrammatical split an infinitive.
- You do not have to use the subjunctive, except in stereotyped expressions such as "moved that the meeting be adjourned", although many speakers of Patrician make a point of insisting that the subjunctive be/is used.

Some notable grammatical features of Patrician:
  -  The conjugation of "“to be"” in the present and past is rigidly fixed:

       o I am/am not              We are/are not
       o You are/are not          You/y’all are/are not
       o He/she/it is/is not      They are/are not

  -  double negatives are never used, except in expression such as "not unnecessary" where it is clear that the double negation amounts to a positive
  -  "he does not" is invariably contracted as "he doesn’t".

What, then, is Plebian?  Let us define it by examples of its grammar.
  -   The conjugation of "to be"” is complicated, and I am not sure I have it entirely correct.  Let me try: Certain ombinations such as "I are" and "he am" are not allowed.  Allowable combinations are (I think):

     o I am/is            We is/are
     o You is/are         You/y’all is/are
     o He/she/it is       They is/are

     o I was              We was/were
     o You was/were       You/y’all was/were
     o He/she/it was      They was/were

  -   for the negative, "ain’t" can be used in all persons and numbers
  -   Some intermingling of the past tense and the present perfect, e.g. "He’s got" does not mean "he has had" but rather "he had"
  -   Double negatives are used freely, and have the negative rather than the positive sense: "ain’t no such thing as…".  Triple negatives can also occur, e.g. "We don’t take nothing from nobody."
  -   "he does not" is contracted to "he don’t"

Observe that the above is NOT "bad grammar" but rather a DIFFERENT grammar than that of Patrician.

If Plebian were merely a "substandard" form of "correct" English, then one would expect that the growth in compulsory education over the last two centuries would have wiped it out, or at least forced it into decline.  But no, Plebian is alive and flourishing, is quite persistent, and shows no signs of decline.  Hence we have no choice but to rank it as a dialect equal with and competitive to Patrician.

Philologists should be looking into the differences between Patrician and Plebian and the question of why, after several centuries, neither dialect has managed to dominate the other.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Now to contradict my own title.  Black English does exist.  What is it?

It is nothing more than a phonetic variation of Plebian English, with a notable amount of vocabulary not shared with other variations of either Patrician or Plebian English.

A way to demonstrate:  transcribe a sample of BE, keeping the original grammar but using standard rather than eye-dialect spelling.  Compare it with a similar transcription of speech from a white speaker of Plebian.  Can you tell the difference?

    - James A. Landau









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