Black English

Interest in the existence of Black English began in the early twentieth century. In 1924, linguist G.Ph. Krapp published the article "The English of the Negro." A year later, he followed up his article with the book English Language in America. Krapp attributed the existence of Black English to the "baby-talk" that he felt slave masters must have employed when speaking to their slaves. He hypothesized that slave masters addressed their servants in a simplified English, "the kind of English some people employ when they talk to babies". The view that blacks who spoke in Black English were deprived of a real, dynamic, and multi-faceted language continued through the 1960s. In 1968, British sociologist B. Bernstein wrote: "much of lower-class language consists of a kind of incidental emotional accompaniment to action here and now".

It was also in the 1960s that an audible defense of the logic and legitimacy of Black English was launched. The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s featured a long needed appreciation and celebration of Blackness.' The language of Black Americans was included in that celebration. Black poet Haki Madhubuti said simply, "black poets [will] deal in... black language or Afro-American language in contrast to standard English ... will talk of kingdoms of Africa, will speak in Swahili and Zulu, will talk in muthafuckas and can you dig it". Around the same time, W. Labov, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by J.L. Dillard, G. Smitherman, and other linguists, mounted an impressive defense of the legitimacy of Black English. Labov published a number of essays and three books in the late 60s that refuted the language deprivation theories of previous times. In his essay "The Logic of Non-Standard English," Labov concludes that "All linguists agree that nonstandard dialects are highly structured systems; they do not see these dialects as accumulations of errors caused by the failure of their speakers to master standard English". With the assistance of linguists and the Black Arts Movement, Black English gained a large amount of legitimacy. The demise of legal segregation brought Blacks and Whites together in the classroom. At first, White children performed better than Black children. This was easily explained by the recently outlawed separate and unequal facilities. Black children, it was thought, would soon fully integrate and perform at parity with white children. Continuing disparity in the performance and test scores, has resulted in a dilemma for Black children and the school systems that are charged with the duty of their education.

Many linguists trace the development of Black English back to the time of slavery and the slave trade. Thus, the history of Black English must date back to about 1619 when a Dutch vessel landed in Jamestown with a cargo of twenty Africans. During the slave trade, ships collected slaves from several different nations rather than just trading with one nation. The rationale that justified this action was simple. Africans from different nations spoke different languages and could not communicate with each other, and thus were incapable of uniting to overthrow the ships crew. In 1744 slave ship Captain William Smith wrote: "...the safest way to trade is to trade with the different Nations, on either Side the River, and having some of every sort on board, there will be no more Likelihood of their succeding in a Plot, than of finishing the Tower of Babel". Upon arriving in America, all the slaves had to be able to communicate with their masters in some way. Thus, all the slaves had to learn at least some degree of English vocabulary. This established English as a common language among slaves. The one language that all the slaves had in common was English. Linguists propose that Africans developed a pidgin language with the English language providing the vocabulary.

When the African slaves bore children, they must have taught them this African-English pidgin. It was necessary that they be able to communicate with the slave master, as well as other slaves. This by no means suggests that Africans immediately relinquished their mother tongues. It is probable that the children of slaves were taught original African languages, but they were probably of little use amongst their diverse peer group. The African-English pidgin now had native speakers and would be forced to fill the needs of a normal speech community. Any vocabulary needs would be filled by borrowing from other languages. The pidgin graduated from its role as, as a language of transaction, and became a creolized language. G. Smitherman proposed that "this lingo [early Black English] involved the substitution of English for West African words, but within the same basic structure and idiom as that characterized West African language patterns". In a very real sense, this new language was a mixture of West African languages (Ibo, Yoruba, and Hausa) and English. Listed below are some of the West African language rules that were embedded in early Black English that Smitherman notes in her book Talkin and Testifyin.

The origins of Black English (referred to variously as Black Vernacular English, African-American English, and Ebonics) are disputed. One theory holds that this variety of English developed from a pidgin that resulted from the conditions of the slave trade, during which speakers of different African languages were thrown together and forced to communicate through a pidgin language. This pidgin was used by slave traders and slave owners to communicate with blacks, and by blacks of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate with each other. Out of this developed a Black English Creole spoken by the first generations of slaves born in North America. This Creole can be heard today spoken by the Gullah and Geechee inhabitants of the Carolina Sea Islands. Another view holds that Black English results from the retention of British English features that have not been retained in other varieties of American English. Also controversial is the question of whether Black English and Standard English are on the path to convergence or increasing divergence.

Black English is characterized by phonology, grammar, and inflections that in many instances occur in other varieties of English. Many features are shared by Southern white speakers and by Appalachian speakers. The features below represent tendencies toward speech patterns that occur some of the time in speakers of Black English but that are certainly not to be regarded as universal.

Very little evidence of the speech of slaves exists from the 17th century, the earliest time in the languages history. However in 1692, J. Hathorne recorded Tituba, an African slave from the island of Barbados in the British West Indies, speaking in the pidgin of the slaves. Tituba was quoted as saying "He tell me he God". The words of the phrase are English, but the structure and grammar of the phrase are congruous with that of the West African Languages that Smitherman identifies. In the 18th century, more records of the speech of slaves and the representations of their speech were produced. In fact, J.L. Dillard claims that "By 1715 there clearly was an African Pidgin English known on a worldwide scale". Dillard justifies this claim by citing the pidgin's utilization in Defoe's The Family Instructor (1715) and in The Life of Colonel Jaque (1722), as well as in Robinson Crusoe (1719). "Yes, yes ... me know, me know but me want speak, me tell something. O! me no let him makee de great master angry," a Virginia slave was depicted as saying in The Life of Colonel Jaque. Black characters made their way into show business in 1777 with the comical Trial of Atticus Before Justice Beau, for Rape. In this farcical production, "one of our neighbor's Negroes," says "Yesa, Maser, he tell me that Atticus he went to bus 'em one day, and a shilde cry, and so he let 'em alone". Much like Tituba's statement, the statements above use English vocabulary, yet the structure and grammar of the statements well in keeping with that of the West African Languages.

Early Black writers, such as F. Douglass, wrote in the standard English of his time. A mastery of standard English was also beneficial in passing as a free Black. In a very real and disturbing way, Black English became the language of slavery and servitude.

During the Civil War period, abolitionists made the speech of slaves know to all serious readers of that era. Writers such as H. Beecher Stowe and Th. Halliburton produced many works that indicated their knowledge of the existence of Black English. While the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves were significant historical events, their impact was mitigated severely by the Jim Crow era. Although everyone labeled "Negro" by the Jim Crow laws did not speak Black English, it is safe to assume that those Blacks who did speak Black English far outnumbered those who spoke standard English. It is certain that under these conditions, Black English continued to flourish.

Phonology: r-deletion: door> [do:] ("doah") sister>"sistah"

l-deletion: help > "hep" steal > "steah" ball > "bah" you'll > "youah"* they'll > "deyah" /"dey"*

*Results in appearance of failure to inflect for the future tense

final consonant cluster reduction: passed > "pass"

This gives the appearance of a morphological gap in the grammar (i.e., no past tense marker). Note that even in Standard English speakers simplify final clusters in casual speech if the following word in the phrase begins with a consonant: cold cuts > "col´ cuts"

loss of final dental [alveolar] stop: good man>"goo´ man"

monophthongization: like>[lak] time>[tam] why>[wa]