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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

You shouldn't have to.

I recently started a role where I work very closely with a guy from southern Kansas. He speaks with an accent that I would associate with hicks, farmers, non-intellectuals. And true to form, he was raised on a farm. But he's smart, hard working and great to work with. Every day that we work together, I'm learning things that I wouldn't have otherwise understood.

No one criticizes him for speaking with his dialect of English. He doesn't have to code switch. He speaks the way he speaks, he's understood and respected. That's what's different about AAVE. It's not just that it's not the dialect of power, it's a dialect people seem to go out of their way to not respect.

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I'd disagree with you that speaking with a southern twang doesn't disqualify a person. I came out of deep East Texas and I have a bit of a drawl in my voice that comes out when I'm tired or stressed but for the most part, I intentionally speak as closely to SAE as possible. Because people do disqualify me and I think you may have judged your friend too. You say you associate his accent with people considered non-intellectuals? That's exactly what LordKano is saying he tries to avoid by speaking SAE in the business realm. Because he believes someone may make the judgement call that he is unintelligent because of the way he speaks, just like you associate speaking like a redneck to unintellicence.

I don't think this is about dialects being associated with any sort of people group. I think it's about having a standard way of speaking in a professional environment. And deviating from that may cause some people to have a negative bias against you.

> he believes someone may make the judgement call that he is unintelligent because of the way he speaks, just like you associate speaking like a redneck to unintelligence

That's a really great point. The very fact that I do mentally associate my friends accent that way is part of the problem. It's a problem that I hope I am getting better at overcoming.

I'd rather by a hypocrite and say it's wrong than agree to the idea that it's okay to need to modify the way you speak to avoid being disqualified by society.

Perhaps the Kansan accent you’re referring to is exempt from this, but I can tell you from personal experience that a strong Southern accent will cause your intellect and ability to do anything quickly to be seriously doubted, regardless of your actual ability. While some people have been able to capitalize on their accent, that is not true for many people. I chose pretty early on to moderate my accent as much as possible, as have a lot of other people. Kathy Bates recently referenced this on Stephen Colbert.

> He speaks with an accent that I would associate with hicks, farmers, non-intellectuals.

Isn't that the point? Your stereotype was wrong but you still stereotyped him, and he had to overcome it.

The article isn't discussing accents, but rather differences in vocabulary and grammar between two dialects. There is a difference "He isn't going to do anything about it" with an accent and saying "He ain't gon' do nothin' bout it."

is there that much of a difference? how much? poster used the word "accent" but to my mind that includes regional variations in the language, not just the sonics.

Not sure... the poster didn't differentiate, so I could only assume they meant speaking Standard English with an accent.

I'm not able to locate the links, but I've read that academic studies of twitter users misclassified AAVE-speakers as "non-English speakers" with sufficient ubiquity as to nearly or completely exclude black Americans from the supposedly inclusive studies.

One thing that jumps out in this sentence is that, grammatically, AAVE uses negative concords (double (or more) negatives), like Spanish or French, instead of the "standard" English "not any", etc. (which I forget the name of.)

Interestingly, double negatives were standard in English up until about 200 years ago, when English speakers wanted their language to be more like Latin-- that is, civilized and refined. So they changed it.

An interesting part of AAVE is that is has verbs conjugated by tense and aspect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En... . Aspect is something standard English doesn't have a grammatical case of.

There aren't a lot but some really stand out.

For example, what's known as the "habitual be".

In SAE, one would say something like "Sam is walking that route to the store and does so regularly." In AAVE, an equivalent statement would be "Sam be walking to the store that way."

The habitual quality of the action is what would allow for the use of the habitual be. One would not say it for an activity that is only expected to happen once.

To further illustrate, in SAE you'd say "He's dying." In AAVE, you would not say "He be dying." because it's not habitual.

There are many others but I think this is one of the easiest to explain.

Incidentally Latin also employs a habitual verb form in the imperfect tense. For example the imperfect ambulabam (was walking): "He was walking to the store" can mean "He was in the habit of walking", perhaps more informally "he used to walk" or "he would walk".

As someone with a similar background to your friend, you don't code switch for the people who already respect you, it's for those whose respect you want. I wouldn't speak in my low-class, rural dialect around prospective employers or customers or anyone else I might want to perceive me as competent. There may well be a racial component to how AAVE speakers are treated, but the class component is non-negligible.

EDIT: Judging by the downvotes, a lot of people disagree with my experience. I'd love to hear your experiences or rationale.

> No one criticizes him for speaking with his dialect of English. He doesn't have to code switch. He speaks the way he speaks, he's understood and respected.

This is an anecdote, not a rule. It's good that no one is judging this guy based on his accent, but that doesn't mean no one ever has or no one ever will. I guarantee some people will hear his accent and subconsciously (usually) form an opinion based on it.

> He speaks with an accent that I would associate with hicks, farmers, non-intellectuals.

Having an accent isn't the same as speaking a dialect. For example, many Indians speak correct English, but their accent renders them near unintelligble.

As a Texan, I'm always going to have a Texas accent, unless I take pains to minimize it. But I can easily switch to standard English, y'all.

Sometimes, you have to do the needful to get ahead at work.

"He speaks with an accent that I would associate with hicks, farmers, non-intellectuals"

That might be because you're a hint bigoted? (No offence, but why else would you think that?)

(FYI someone from Kansas speaks with an accent - it's not a dialect.)

Or perhaps you've been trained very well by decades of Hollywood/New York representation of 'anyone with a southern accent as stupid?'

Also - you do realize that like 1/3 of Americans speak like that? Have you ever even been to the South?

I'm not American, but I've lived in various American states and come from a 'small town' myself.

After years of wondering how this stereotype exists so strongly in North East/West Coast American culture (i.e. negative view of Southern accents) - I believe it's something done expressly by the creative and Ivy League class: almost always when someone with an 'southern accent' is on TV, they're portrayed in a negative way.

I think that the 'Civil War' North/South divide is in some ways, still ongoing, culturally. Northerners are bigoted towards Southerners.

Where I'm from, in Canada, the accent issue still exists, but not remotely as strongly.

A thick 'Ottawa Valley' accent might mark you as 'a country local' but not 'stupid' or 'racist' or 'redneck'.

FYI Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have soft Southern accents.

The downvoters are accidentally proving your point. I'm from the north, and it isn't really the north that looks down on the south (no pun intended), but the American left (arguably only the far left, depending on where "far" begins) looks down on the south. Conservative and moderate northerners are generally congenial towards the south. But the left dominates the academy and media and education and fine/popular arts and technology, so they are more visible in many ways, and they largely get to craft your exposure to American culture and its various subcultures.

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