Language and Ethnic Group

In the beginning of this chapter, it is stated that the speeches of Black people and
White people are normally separable by listeners. Some exceptions such as the people raising
in different ethnic group could be, but mostly black speech and white speech is different.
Because individuals acquire the linguistic variety from their environment.
In the past, there was a belief that there wasn an inherent connection between language
and race. In time, this idea dies hard and humanity has understood everybody can speak every
language. However we cannot deny that linguistic criteria are very important characteristic of
an ethnic group membership. Mostly different ethnic groups exist separately with these
linguistic differences.
In the case of former Yugoslavia, we can see the fluidness in the ethnicity. Serbian
language and Croatian language were like a single language in the past however political
situations render them separate. Now there are 3 languages in there ; Serbian , Croatian,
Serbo-Croat. It is an example of fluidness and differences because of political situations. This
example is mostly about lexical differences because they tend to do ‘lexical cleansing’
As an example of phonological differences , we can say the English pronunciation of
speakers from Jewish and Italian. In this case, researchers noted that the second generation of
Italian native speakers tend to use an a-type vowel , more open than the English sound. So
they have tried to avoid Italian accent. Similarly Jewish people tend to say high vowels. In
this two cases, we can see the ethnic-group differences .
The difference between the speech of black and white Americans is significant for this
chapter. In former times, the black speech is regarded as inferiority. However, today it is not a
matter of superiority or inferiority, it is just an example of ethnic-group language varieties. It
is believed that the lack of integration between black and white American communities is
leading to this linguistic divergence.
Many words originally connected with African-American culture such as jazz, juke,
gig are examples of lexical transitions. Furthermore, there are some hypothesis about AAVE
is a kind of English creole. There are two main views; AAVE features are derived from
British Isles English or West African languages. Whichever is correct, AAVE and White
English in America are believed to be growing apart.
In the following, there are grammatical differences between AAVE and other forms of
English.
1- Many AAVE speakers do not have –s in third-person singular present tense forms.
2-In AAVE the copula in the present tense is absent. (he doctor, she not Turkish)
3-In AAVE, Black people use ‘be’ as a finite verb form. (He usually be there, She always be
nervous)
4- A feature of AAVE Syntax is the following:
SE: We were eating- and drinking too.
AAVE: We was eating- and we drinking too. (they omit just the copula)
5- AAVE Question Inversion- (I asked Mary where did she go)
6- ‘existential It’ – (It is a flower which I love bougainvillaea)
7- Negativized auxiliary preposition (wrong usage of nobody, nothing, nowhere etc.)
8- ‘do’ usage as a conjunction with the meaning of otherwise.
We can observe these differences on Black people’s speech. What is the cause of these
differences? There are several debates on it. British settlers might have brought this
nonstandard dialect features to the USA. AAVE might be a some kind of English creole. At
the moment, American linguists are not agreed as to exactly what is happening . It is certain
that there are significant differences between AAVE and White English and these differences
reflect the division between the two communities.

Summarized by Zeynep KESKİN