An "African American English accent"?

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Ok, so I don't intend to be racist but I just have this observation that many African Americans speak with an accent. Caucasians speak differently amongst themselves too, you know, the Southern accent and such, but why is it that some African Americans seem to have this unique accent no matter where in America they live?

Or am I getting this all wrong here. Perhaps the ones I hear are all from NYC?

So yes, explanations please?

I believe the dialects vary though they do share some signifant qualities. I think it has its southern roots since that's where slavery started.

On another note I've heard African Americans sound just as "white" as white people sounding "black". Here in Missouri the accent is more subtle but still I know color people who don't seemingly have an accent or at least speak the same dialect as me.

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of us aren't aware of having accents. I don't have an accent but some people think I do....

Last edited by MissConstrue on 21 May 2010, 6:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have not heard of a white person speak the African American dialect

I used to drive a cab, and I have heard varieties of people surprisingly speak exactly like other varieties of people. In other words, I often could have guessed incorrectly if I had only been hearing someone over the phone.

reminds me of the scene in "smokey and the bandit" where sheriff buford t. justice sees the black sheriff he previously spoke to over the 2-way radio, and sheriff justice says to the other sheriff, "you sounded taller over the radio."
my time in the army exposed me to many southerners, and with my eyes closed, i couldn't tell a black southerner from a white southerner of the same social class.

Linguists call it African American Vernacular English, or AAVE. It's not a dialect or a separate language, it's closer to an accent than anything but encompasses it's own constantly evolving sets of slang and grammar. It's also not "bad English" or poorly spoken English, it's just a different way of speaking the language. It does have similarities to some of the southern accents, but it is spoken nearly universally where Black people are found in the US, though each region adds it's own little touches and flourishes to the vernacular.

In bold: There is no such thing as poorly spoken language. Its all relative. If someone has bad grammar, its "bad" because it doesn't follow the norm of how others speak.

As the late Johnny Cochraine said during the O.J. murder trial: "What do a black man sound like?" (exact quote).

ruveyn

Somebody told me once, that I had both, British and American tendencies in my speech.

Went to New York city this week to meet some friends. Two are black, one is from Brooklyn and the other is from Boston, Massachusetts and they sound nothing alike.

It's weird how people keep saying I sound like a white guy on the phone but I'm actually a hybrid (a positive and non-offensive way to describe it).

Well I don't know where you live but if you go to down town Kansas City, you'll see a mish mash of black and white cultures. There are a lot of white people down there that will sound just as "black" as a lot of the colored who sound white.

You sound British.

I'd argue that not following norms is somewhat bad in and of itself. The purpose of language is to communicate, and failing to follow norms makes misunderstanding more likely.

Also, accepting the breakage of firm rules of a language will lead to too much diversity in how we speak, making it gradually exorbitantly more difficult for people from different localities or subcultures to understand one another.

I fully support giving leeway when people break the rules of a language accidentally, but I do not support considering the incorrect syntax to be correct by any measure. Although, there's sort of a line to it. Language will change slowly over time anyways, but if it gets too fast, it would be all the more painful to people just trying to understand one another, since there will be different branches to the changes, especially as greater differences to language syntax are readily accepted as correct.

AAVE is it's own thing from that I guess, but I still rather dislike it. I don't always dislike the people using it, but I do dislike AAVE itself. Needless to say, I don't tend to vocalize that much with people that use it unless they're my friends and I know they would be understanding of it if I said so.