Why do Blacks in the US talk differently than Whites ?

[Ban my account ffs!]

Tender's question was perfectly valid.  And when President Obama talked about starting to have this conversation, he was trying to calm down the racists while also trying to calm people like you down, Link.

You're so sensitive on this issue that you won't even let people ask honest questions without freaking out.

It is a perfectly valid question, because Tender Branson knows that black Americans live all over the country and still maintain a unique dialect.  It's more than just geography.

Geographical distribution and historical migration can explain why people with stronger accents here pronounce "something else" like "sumpnin yelts"...

And when people inquire about this, most are happy to talk about it.  Because it means you can share your local cultural history.

But it is people like you, Link, that perpetuate racism in this country because whenever people ask a question or try to reach out.. you freak the f**k out and start dragging Hitler and his kitchen sink into it.

[ag]

And yet, you manage to confuse Allen West and Cornel West.

A, what on earth are you talking about?  And B do you think it is reasonable for an adult in Western Europe who spends numerous hours a week posting about the US on the internet to think 310+ million American sounds the same?  Do you think that is intelligent?

So, perhaps you would enlighten me on why do AMLO and Hugo Chavez sound so much the same? Must be Communist Spanish... You don't know? You mean, you don't even know, whether it is true or not? I mean, you post about politics, Latin America frequently comes up. Do you think that is intelligent?

Somebody asked a reasonable question, to which he had no reason to know the answer. Hyperventilating over that is not a sign of much intelligence.

[ag]

  Now I have to listen to a guy who constantly comments on my country tell me as an adult he thought everyone over hear sounded exactly the same.

Considering that the original poster neither said nor implied anything like that, the relevant question becomes, why do you - you, not as a representative of any racial or socio-economic group, but purely personally - have such a limited understanding of written English language?

[ag]

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.

Dialects are establish when a population live apart or separate from other groups. So the answer is that African Americans speak differently because they to some degree live separate from the main population.

Bravo.  Another racist comment by someone sporting a foreign avatar.

Michael Jackson and Darth Vader don't sound the same.  Sorry if that offends the forum.

Would you mind clarifying three things:

1. Why is anything in the preceding comment racist?

2. At what point did anyone imply that Michael Jackson sound the same as Darth Vader?

3. Have you every passed a basic reading comprehension test?

Sincerely,

a foreign avatar

[Хahar 🤔]

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

This is called s-cluster metathesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-cluster_metathesis#S-cluster_metathesis

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

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).

I think you might not have that quite right.  Fischer actually discusses how a large proportion of early Virginia colonials were white tenant farmers.  There were also many indentured servants who would have interacted with African slaves on a regular basis. Black English is nothing like a pidgin, and all languages that are actually spoken by people as primary languages are capable of expressing a wide range of ideas.  Black English dialects do have similarities to the rural dialects of South and West England in the 17th century, as do the old white dialects of the Piedmont region.

[Joe Republic]

Joe Republic, you are seriously saying it makes perfect sense someone who incessantly posts on the internet about the United States from a foreign country is just now finding out all Americans don't sound the same?

Yes, actually.  Duh.  He said himself that most American broadcasts he watches are dubbed into German.  Besides, it can be very difficult for somebody who isn't a native speaker of any language to distinguish between different dialects.  This really shouldn't be that difficult for you to grasp.

Are you honestly saying you think Michael Jackson, James Earl Jones, Collen Powell, and Barrack Obama sound the same?

If dubbed into German, or if heard by someone who probably doesn't hear English spoken very often, sure.

[Torie]

Tender, on behalf of Link (because he won't obviously), I apologize for his hypersensitivity.  Such a reaction to racial issues is quintessentially American.

I'd honestly like an answer to my earlier question though.  I've always wondered about it.

The sort of causal racism that is accepted in America is what leads to unarmed black kids getting shot walking home from the store by "frightened" people.

Joe Republic, you are seriously saying it makes perfect sense someone who incessantly posts on the internet about the United States from a foreign country is just now finding out all Americans don't sound the same?  Are you honestly saying you think Michael Jackson, James Earl Jones, Collen Powell, and Barrack Obama sound the same?

Seriously I can take a black person from New York City, a white person from New York City, a white person from Dallas, and a black person from Dallas and the black and white person from New York will sound indistinguishable from each other and totally different than the black or white person from Dallas.

The forum never ceases to amaze.

Not to squirt lighter fluid on the flames, but I doubt Tender meant to suggest all blacks sound the same. Surely he does not believe that. What I think he was talking about was the stereotypical "black" accent that many particularly lower SES blacks have, that originated in the South. As a side note, many blacks in, for example,  Philly, are descended from blacks who were freed before the Civil War, or never lived in the South, and they have not had that stereotypical accent since well before the Civil War, if ever. West Indian blacks have an entirely different sounding accent by the way, and there are a lot of them on the Fruited Plain, with middle class West Indian blacks (and there are a lot of them too - they seem to do relatively well after they get off the boat/plane), often having a standard American accent, e.g. Colin Powell.

[Gustaf]

Lol Link.

Sweden doesn't dub anything and to me hearing the difference between the stereotypical black accent, New York type English and say a Southern accent is not hard at all. When it comes to the finer points though, I'm not personally great with accents.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

with middle class West Indian blacks... often having a standard American accent, e.g. Colin Powell.

Which is tragic as actual West Indian accents are amongst the best of accents.

Worth noting, though, that Colin Powell is white.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

with middle class West Indian blacks... often having a standard American accent, e.g. Colin Powell.

Which is tragic as actual West Indian accents are amongst the best of accents.

Worth noting, though, that Colin Powell is white.

No, it's worth noting that Colin Powell didn't grow up middle class, and so likely had to work to develop that accent.

[Link]

Joe Republic, you are seriously saying it makes perfect sense someone who incessantly posts on the internet about the United States from a foreign country is just now finding out all Americans don't sound the same?

Yes, actually.  Duh.  He said himself that most American broadcasts he watches are dubbed into German.  Besides, it can be very difficult for somebody who isn't a native speaker of any language to distinguish between different dialects.  This really shouldn't be that difficult for you to grasp.

Duh, indeed, Joe.  Not everyone sounds the same in Austria and Austria is far smaller and more homogenous than the United States.  Even if you have never heard someone from the US speak logic alone should tell you there is going to be a lot of diversity in accents and dialects.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viennese_German

Are you honestly saying you think Michael Jackson, James Earl Jones, Collen Powell, and Barrack Obama sound the same?

If dubbed into German, or if heard by someone who probably doesn't hear English spoken very often, sure.

You've never been to a bar or club in Europe... or is this just trolling.  I have never heard Michael Jackson dubbed in German in Austria or anywhere else.  I'm not saying it couldn't happen but it didn't seem to be the norm in my experience.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No, it's worth noting that Colin Powell didn't grow up middle class, and so likely had to work to develop that accent.

Shades of Roy Jenkins. But Powell is still white in the context in which he's been mentioned in this thread.

[Joe Republic]

Joe Republic, you are seriously saying it makes perfect sense someone who incessantly posts on the internet about the United States from a foreign country is just now finding out all Americans don't sound the same?

Yes, actually.  Duh.  He said himself that most American broadcasts he watches are dubbed into German.  Besides, it can be very difficult for somebody who isn't a native speaker of any language to distinguish between different dialects.  This really shouldn't be that difficult for you to grasp.

Duh, indeed, Joe.  Not everyone sounds the same in Austria and Austria is far smaller and more homogenous than the United States.  Even if you have never heard someone from the US speak logic alone should tell you there is going to be a lot of diversity in accents and dialects.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viennese_German

You seem to be stating the obvious, but for no apparent reason.  We've been talking about stereotypical accents here.  TB was clearly talking about the differences between the standard American ('newsreader') accent and African-American Vernacular, in general terms.  The rest of us were able to grasp that, for the most part.

Are you honestly saying you think Michael Jackson, James Earl Jones, Collen Powell, and Barrack Obama sound the same?

If dubbed into German, or if heard by someone who probably doesn't hear English spoken very often, sure.

You've never been to a bar or club in Europe... or is this just trolling.  I have never heard Michael Jackson dubbed in German in Austria or anywhere else.  I'm not saying it couldn't happen but it didn't seem to be the norm in my experience.

Yes, I'm the troll here.  I'm the one who shat all over an otherwise decent and rational thread by throwing the 'H' word at someone from Austria, and was later compelled to apologize for that after being ridiculed by almost everybody else in the same thread.  Oh wait.

Look, it's really not that difficult.  To someone whose first language is not English, English can often sound the same.  Yes, I'm sure everybody knows that there are different accents and dialects, and that is often displayed by how difficult it is for the non-English listener to understand them.  For example, take a conversation between somebody from Ohio and somebody from Scotland, and see which one a person with only a basic grasp of English could understand better.  But the point is that I doubt many people with less than an expert understanding of spoken English could tell exactly where those two aforementioned people might be from.

You really don't need to be so incredulous that Michael Jackson sounded similar to any other English speaker, if heard by a non-native English speaker.  I'm sure anybody from anywhere could pick out Michael Jackson's voice just from the sound of it, but that's not to say that they could figure out that his dialect was any different from any other English speaker's.

[memphis]

So, ethnic dialects. Are they pervasive in Europe? Do French born folks of Magreb ancestry retain distinct speech patterns? Turks in Germany? South Asians in the UK? Obviously immigrants have accents, but what about those born in Europe?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Put it like this: some of the thickest Brummie accents you will ever hear belong to people who live in Sparkbrook.

[barfbag]

We all have our own accents. It could be genetic structure. It's passed down culturally and socially too. I know whites who speak like they're black because of who they're associated with.

[Хahar 🤔]

So, ethnic dialects. Are they pervasive in Europe? Do French born folks of Magreb ancestry retain distinct speech patterns? Turks in Germany? South Asians in the UK? Obviously immigrants have accents, but what about those born in Europe?

Western Europe has no significant indigenous minority populations similar to the black population of America, so it's difficult to draw comparisons. Perhaps the Roma might qualify.

[Hatman 🍁]

In Canada, Black people's accents vary widely depending on their heritage. Often they will have no accent at all. I believe (and perhaps DC can correct me on this), descendants of slaves living in Nova Scotia have retained a bit of their southern accent. Immigrants from the West Indies, which make up a large % of Canadian Blacks will obviously have an accent as well.

[Oak Hills]

In Canada, Black people's accents vary widely depending on their heritage. Often they will have no accent at all. I believe (and perhaps DC can correct me on this), descendants of slaves living in Nova Scotia have retained a bit of their southern accent. Immigrants from the West Indies, which make up a large % of Canadian Blacks will obviously have an accent as well.

So they don't talk?

[memphis]

So, ethnic dialects. Are they pervasive in Europe? Do French born folks of Magreb ancestry retain distinct speech patterns? Turks in Germany? South Asians in the UK? Obviously immigrants have accents, but what about those born in Europe?

Western Europe has no significant indigenous minority populations similar to the black population of America, so it's difficult to draw comparisons. Perhaps the Roma might qualify.

Black people are indigenous to the United States?

[Hatman 🍁]

In Canada, Black people's accents vary widely depending on their heritage. Often they will have no accent at all. I believe (and perhaps DC can correct me on this), descendants of slaves living in Nova Scotia have retained a bit of their southern accent. Immigrants from the West Indies, which make up a large % of Canadian Blacks will obviously have an accent as well.

So they don't talk?

That would get them in trouble with Massa', now won't it?

[Link]

So, ethnic dialects. Are they pervasive in Europe? Do French born folks of Magreb ancestry retain distinct speech patterns? Turks in Germany? South Asians in the UK? Obviously immigrants have accents, but what about those born in Europe?

I posted this quote earlier.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That's native Austrians.  Not even immigrants.  So the idea someone from Austria would be baffled that 310+ million Americans don't sound the same is pretty bizarre.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Tender, on behalf of Link (because he won't obviously), I apologize for his hypersensitivity.  Such a reaction to racial issues is quintessentially American.

I'd honestly like an answer to my earlier question though.  I've always wondered about it.

The history of it isn't known, as far as I know.  By now, it's become a pattern that exists mainly due to common use by people that those who use it grow up around.  It's similar to pockets of the country where "nucular" is commonly used.

[All Along The Watchtower]

So, ethnic dialects. Are they pervasive in Europe? Do French born folks of Magreb ancestry retain distinct speech patterns? Turks in Germany? South Asians in the UK? Obviously immigrants have accents, but what about those born in Europe?

Western Europe has no significant indigenous minority populations similar to the black population of America, so it's difficult to draw comparisons. Perhaps the Roma might qualify.

Black people are indigenous to the United States?

Well they've been here since before  the United States was the United States.