Why do Blacks in the US talk differently than Whites ?

[Tender Branson]

I have always wondered about this since here all movies are German-dubbed and once I heard Blacks actually talk, they talked differently.

Why exactly is that ?

That's not the case here for example: Black people who are born here, like the football player David Alaba has the same Vienna dialect like other (white) Vienna residents.

[Eraserhead]

lol

[tpfkaw]

It's mainly a class thing, middle and upper-class blacks will usually speak in "normal" accents, poorer or less-educated blacks speak a somewhat dialectical form of English ("Ebonics") with slightly different grammar and vocabulary and spoken with a somewhat singsongy accent.

[Хahar 🤔]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English

[barfbag]

People of every ethnic background speak differently though. One thing that comes to mind is that humans tend to keep to their own races socially. If a child is brought up speaking a certain way, then it's how they turn out. This isn't bad but it can lead to problems like black students not being able to read as early as white students because the literature taught in schools is mostly all white literature. When blacks begin school, things like reading stories and Phonics are very different from what they're used to at home and become confusing. This starts the process of falling behind more and more throughout their school years and leads them into more problems in society as adults. What could be done differently?

[Tender Branson]

I have some Austrian friends and having known them for years and visited them in Vienna it is really hard for me to accept the fact Hitler was Austrian.  Now that I read the OP it is suddenly very plausible to me that Hitler was born in Austria.  Ignorance was so nice.  I want it back.

This thread was started by a moderator!  The forum being the forum again.

Why do you have to bring up Hitler here ?

I don't want this to be racist or anything (I'm not racist at all).

I was pointing out that this difference of speaking style is not known to people here, unless they visit the US and hear it themselves.

That's why I wanted posters here to explain why it is that way (thanks, Xahar for the link) and why it's still that way after 400 years of Black settlement in the US.

[rejectamenta]

I was pointing out that this difference of speaking style is not known to people here, unless they visit the US and hear it themselves.

That's why I wanted posters here to explain why it is that way (thanks, Xahar for the link) and why it's still that way after 400 years of Black settlement in the US.

My rudimentary understanding of it is this: the vast majority of African Americans draw their lineage back to the south as a result of slavery, and as such their predecessors spoke with a chiefly southern dialect. A large chunk of this population packed up and moved north and west in what were called the great migrations, only to be indirectly segregated once again by class. The insulation of the ghetto allowed the southern accent they spoke to thrive far outside its original borders, and with conditions scarcely improving for them as time went on, their descendents retained many characteristics of the original accent.

This isn't a racist thing to recognize or ask, so I'm not sure what the objection is about.

[Tender Branson]

This isn't a racist thing to recognize or ask, so I'm not sure what the objection is about.

No, it's not.

Link probably just thought that I as an Austrian must be racist (even though I'm certainly not) and that a moderator can't post topics like that.

I'm actually interested if Blacks in the UK and Canada also talk differently, or if it is just the case in the US with the poorer population segment ? Maybe the posters from there know more.

To me, Obama for example seems to talk like the white mainstream, or is it just me as a non-native English speaker who can't hear out the small differences ?

[Ban my account ffs!]

I have some Austrian friends and having known them for years and visited them in Vienna it is really hard for me to accept the fact Hitler was Austrian.  Now that I read the OP it is suddenly very plausible to me that Hitler was born in Austria.  Ignorance was so nice.  I want it back.

This thread was started by a moderator!  The forum being the forum again.

lol.  I really really really hope you are trolling.  If you knew Tender  Branson or really knew Europeans, you'd know a question like this was curiosity. 

I think you and BRTD need to recalibrate and try again on the race issue.

[pbrower2a]

According to Albion's Seed, planters typically broke down slaves and reshaped them in the image of English peasants who did not follow them to the New World. They 'gave' the slaves an over-simplified, near-pidgin English that could never encompass the 'lofty' ideas of their masters. (Just think of a theme of Orwell's 1984 -- that whoever controls the language controls human thoughts and actions as efficiently as a hangman).

[Joe Republic]

Related question, non-trolling I promise:  What's with the word 'ask' being pronounced 'aks'?

[Mr. Morden]

Related question, non-trolling I promise:  What's with the word 'ask' being pronounced 'aks'?

Many years ago, Pat Buchanan wrote a book in which he suggested that it was a mistake for the US to declare war on Germany in World War II.

I have some Nevadan friends and having known them for years and visited them in Las Vegas it is really hard for me to accept the fact that Buchanan won 21,000 votes in the 1996 Republican presidential primary in Nevada, or 15% of the vote.  Now that I read your post it is suddenly very plausible to me that Nevadans cast those votes.  Ignorance was so nice.  I want it back.

This post was written by a moderator!  The forum being the forum again.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

To me, Obama for example seems to talk like the white mainstream, or is it just me as a non-native English speaker who can't hear out the small differences ?

The way Obama normally speaks in public is within the bounds of white mainstream or even prestige sociolects in terms of pronunciation and grammar, but in his stress patterns and word choice one can sometimes discern influence from the oratory style of some black preachers.

[Torie]

Yes, this thread got off track. Tender asked a question that may seem obvious to most Americans, but I think he was just curious. To suggest that Tender, particularly given his posting history, was asking it as a vehicle to demean blacks seems terribly unfair to me. I think he deserves an apology. Thank you.

[memphis]

Obama speaks like a white person because he was raised by white people in Hawaii and Indonesia, places without many black people. Ethnic dialects are hardly limited to the US. My grandmother's first language was Yiddish, which is really just an ethnic dialect of German. If you heard her speak it, you would instantly know she was Jewish. Same idea. Are there no ethnic minorities left in Austria? What a change from the Hapsburg days!

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Yes, this thread got off track. Tender asked a question that may seem obvious to most Americans, but I think he was just curious. To suggest that Tender, particularly given his posting history, was asking it as a vehicle to demean blacks seems terribly unfair to me. I think he deserves an apology. Thank you.

I don't believe he was asking for that reason, but Tender's threads are more often trolling, than not.  That is what I believe.
 

[J. J.]

It's mainly a class thing, middle and upper-class blacks will usually speak in "normal" accents, poorer or less-educated blacks speak a somewhat dialectical form of English ("Ebonics") with slightly different grammar and vocabulary and spoken with a somewhat singsongy accent.

First, I think it is a bit unfair to say all blacks, or all whites.

Some if it has to do migration patterns.  Most black people or their families moved from the South between 1920 and 1965.  When they did, they brought a  southern dialect with them and tended to concentrate in specific geographic areas (not necessarily by choice).  It got reenforced, but slightly changed by contact with people living here, and by black people with slightly different Southern accents.

Three examples:

1.  One of the people that I know with either the thickest or second thickest Philadelphia accent, which is a "white" accent, is black.  Her family lived here for a while.

2.  At the welfare office, I handled a client for my coworker, Eleanor, who was away from her desk.  When she came back, Eleanor asked me if the client was black or white, based on the telephone conversation.  I said black, and then she showed me a photo a woman with blue eyes, red hair and skin for shades lighter than mine.

Eleanor, who was black, laughed and said, "The first time I talked to her, I thought she was black.  She was talking about going down to North Carolina to visit her family.  I was sure she was black."

3.  The person who I know who has one of the thickest black accents if heard, has a doctorate from Penn, lived in a rather tony suburb, was president of a state professional organization, and drove a Volvo.  She grew up in Virginia.

[Tender Branson]

Obama speaks like a white person because he was raised by white people in Hawaii and Indonesia, places without many black people. Ethnic dialects are hardly limited to the US. My grandmother's first language was Yiddish, which is really just an ethnic dialect of German. If you heard her speak it, you would instantly know she was Jewish. Same idea. Are there no ethnic minorities left in Austria? What a change from the Hapsburg days!

There are ethnic minorities left (like Slovenes and Croats), but they grow up in 2 languages and when they talk the dialect of their region, it's not different to other people in their region.

An example is Terezija Stoisits, a politician from the Greens, who is also a Burgenland-Croat.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terezija_Stoisits

I just find it interesting that there are population segments/ethnic groups that have not changed their speaking style over a few hundred years and assimilated with the majority population, while there are others who have.

[J. J.]

I have some Austrian friends and having known them for years and visited them in Vienna it is really hard for me to accept the fact Hitler was Austrian.  Now that I read the OP it is suddenly very plausible to me that Hitler was born in Austria.  Ignorance was so nice.  I want it back.

This thread was started by a moderator!  The forum being the forum again.

lol.  I really really really hope you are trolling.  If you knew Tender  Branson or really knew Europeans, you'd know a question like this was curiosity. 

I think you and BRTD need to recalibrate and try again on the race issue.

Agreed, and Black English has been a subject of scholarly inquiry for decades, by both black and white academics.  It is also of interest to black and white people in general.

I might add that it might be closer to the English of Shakespeare than most of us are speaking. 

[Tender Branson]

2.  At the welfare office, I handled a client for my coworker, Eleanor, who was away from her desk.  When she came back, Eleanor asked me if the client was black or white, based on the telephone conversation.  I said black, and then she showed me a photo a woman with blue eyes, red hair and skin for shades lighter than mine.

Eleanor, who was black, laughed and said, "The first time I talked to her, I thought she was black.  She was talking about going down to North Carolina to visit her family.  I was sure she was black."

Didn't you post something once (certainly more than 5 years ago) about the Bradley-effect and how "black interviewers" impact polling numbers ?

[Brittain33]

I just find it interesting that there are population segments/ethnic groups that have not changed their speaking style over a few hundred years and assimilated with the majority population, while there are others who have.

Bear in mind that in the southeast around the year 1900 where virtually all African-Americans lived, no one, black or white, was speaking in terms you've identified as "mainstream" English. You would start the clock on assimilation into northern English to the time of the Great Migration and then the spread of radio and television, and even then, our media has a diversity of voices and patterns that people are exposed to.

I also wouldn't presume that rural Southern speech of 1900 was the same as that of 1750, but I don't really know.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Because black people are cool and don't want to sound like a stick-up-their-ass cracker.

[DC Al Fine]

This isn't a racist thing to recognize or ask, so I'm not sure what the objection is about.

No, it's not.

Link probably just thought that I as an Austrian must be racist (even though I'm certainly not) and that a moderator can't post topics like that.

I'm actually interested if Blacks in the UK and Canada also talk differently, or if it is just the case in the US with the poorer population segment ? Maybe the posters from there know more.

To me, Obama for example seems to talk like the white mainstream, or is it just me as a non-native English speaker who can't hear out the small differences ?

In Canada, they speak differently from your typical white person, but the difference is not quite as pronounced as in the USA.

[J. J.]

2.  At the welfare office, I handled a client for my coworker, Eleanor, who was away from her desk.  When she came back, Eleanor asked me if the client was black or white, based on the telephone conversation.  I said black, and then she showed me a photo a woman with blue eyes, red hair and skin for shades lighter than mine.

Eleanor, who was black, laughed and said, "The first time I talked to her, I thought she was black.  She was talking about going down to North Carolina to visit her family.  I was sure she was black."

Didn't you post something once (certainly more than 5 years ago) about the Bradley-effect and how "black interviewers" impact polling numbers ?

Yes, that has always been a concern.  It was also interviewers with a Spanish accent.  It was also the idea of not wanting another person to think you were racist because of how you vote. 

[J. J.]

I just find it interesting that there are population segments/ethnic groups that have not changed their speaking style over a few hundred years and assimilated with the majority population, while there are others who have.

Bear in mind that in the southeast around the year 1900 where virtually all African-Americans lived, no one, black or white, was speaking in terms you've identified as "mainstream" English. You would start the clock on assimilation into northern English to the time of the Great Migration and then the spread of radio and television, and even then, our media has a diversity of voices and patterns that people are exposed to.

I also wouldn't presume that rural Southern speech of 1900 was the same as that of 1750, but I don't really know.

I think it is closer to 1750 or 1600, than the English I speak.  However, if you took a Southern white population, subjected it to the same conditions, you would probably get something close to Black English.  Confederatics, anyone?