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Comment by bedobi | Hacker News Reader

> ideas of quality and correctness are important

Quality and correctness are important! And AAVE does have and enforce both. If you answered a question like "where be the car?" with "it be on the road" or "it's on the road" when in fact it be in the garage, you would be grammatically incorrect. I bet you have no idea what habitual be even is or how it works. (I didn't)

And it all begs the question, why, in the US, is Standard American English (which is overwhelmingly native to white people, and usually the ones with the most privileged positions in society at that) more quality and correct than any other variety? Is there something magical about their speech that makes it quality and correct? Keep in mind English itself is a hodgepodge of butchered other languages.

Is Australian English not quality and correct?

How come grammatically standard English, just spoken with an African American accent, is still not quality and correct?

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It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly.

The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America, just as American spellings are incorrect in Britain. Language is culture-specific.

Again, if you have no interest in the idea that some things are correct and others are incorrect, this will not appeal to you. But that is a postmodern relativistic position and not one that everyone agrees with.

Even if none of that is appealing to you, the simple fact that is the overwhelming majority of the US agrees that a certain dialect is “proper” English. It’s unclear to me why a small percentage of the population would be justified in having their dialect be on equal terms with the society-wide one. This really has nothing to do with race inherently and the same situation applies to say, Appalachian dialects.

> Again, if you have no interest in the idea that some things are correct and others are incorrect, this will not appeal to you. But that is a postmodern relativistic position and not one that everyone agrees with.

Sorry, but you're just wrong. Everyone agrees grammar and correctness is important. AAVE has and enforces both. This has nothing to do with postmodern relativism.

I bet you can't translate or understand the difference between these sentences

We working We be working We stay working We steady working

eg, most people think AAVE "we be working" means "we are working". But it doesn't, and if you use or understand it that way, you're not being correct or grammatical.

Would it kill you to familiarize yourself with what's correct and incorrect in, and the grammar of, AAVE?

First off, there is no established standard as to what is correct or incorrect in AAVE. It is like other dialects in America, such as Appalachian English or Louisianan English. It’s also not spoken by a large percentage of African Americans.

Secondly, I really don’t know what you are trying to argue for. AAVE is an interesting dialect and something that makes America a richer place, just as all the other dialects do. That doesn’t make it equal to the common established standard, just like Appalachian English or Louisianan English are not “official.” Especially when these dialects have nowhere near the level of historical or cultural development and influence that standard American English does. What literature is there in Appalachian English? What movies? What historical documents?

Do you understand why treating every dialect as equivalent to the standard one is an extremely unwieldy thing to do? Are we to treat every new dialect that appears as completely equal to the standard historical language?

> First off, there is no established standard as to what is correct or incorrect in AAVE

Apologies, but it's now clear that you simply have no idea what you're talking about, I literally posted above textbook examples about what is the standard of what is correct and incorrect in AAVE, but you don't care to understand, so I'm gonna end this particular reply chain here.

If you actually read the Wikipedia article, you’ll see the words “continuum” and “frequently used” often. It’s similar to a creole.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_...

And again, I really have absolutely no idea what you are trying to argue for.

This seems like a very strange position to take.

For one, I think what you're attacking here is usually called "descriptivism", as opposed to prescriptivism. Relativism is already a term of art in linguistics for something unrelated.

For two, it's hard to follow what point you're trying to make. If you think Australian English is correct in Australia, why not similarly say that AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it? Do Australians make up a "culture" in some way that people who speak AAVE don't?

AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it?

I didn’t say it wasn’t. Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions.

That isn’t the same thing proposed by the original commenter, who insists that it is correct everywhere.

It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing with the majority’s agreed-upon standard. Communication would become impossible. Political fracturing would probably happen.

> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. ... It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing

Arguments like these can't support their own weight. For example, how do the two quoted statements resolve when applied to a region where the majority of people mainly speak AAVE? Are we to conclude that standard English is "incorrect" in that region, because the cultural subgroup that prefers it doesn't warrant equal standing? Or is the AAVE-speaking majority of that region a "subgroup" for some arbitrary reason? Or are we instead saying that AAVE and standard English are both correct in that one particular region - but once an AAVE speaker travels to the next town over their usage turns incorrect again?

The whole topic makes a lot more sense if one just embraces descriptivism. There's no such animal as "correct usage", only "usage that people consider correct" - which varies with both the person and with the context. What's correct in an essay isn't necessarily correct on the playground, and vice-versa. Sure it's more complicated, but it has the benefit of accurately modeling how people actually use language, and prescriptivism doesn't.

> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions.

But they're not. AAVE and many other dialects are stigmatized even in their own geographic areas and social contexts. The speakers "know" they're not speaking "right" even when they're just speaking akngst themselves in their own communities. (despite them actually speaking AAVE perfectly correctly - the only way you can speak AAVE wrong is if you make grammatical mistakes like thinking "we be working" means the same thing as "we are working", which it doesn't, that's grammatically incorrect...)

And no, I didn't say it's the "correct" version of English.

I have already said that it is incorrect from the perspective of the society-wide accepted version of English. Not from within the dialect itself.

The notion of a standard language is a modern idea (not in the sense of modern vs. postmodern, but historically).

The idea that the only valid basis for distinguishing between dialects is geography strikes me as odd, but suppose we accept it as a premise. Why is it less valid to allow correctness to be defined, say, with respect to local borders as opposed to the borders between countries?

I didn’t say it was geography. American culture is mostly separate from Australian culture. As the US is a unified cultural element, it’s not surprising that a single standard had been established. The downsides of the lack of this are easy to observe: just look at the EU. No single unified language, no unified market, less economic power. Making a Netflix for America requires 1 language, while making a Netflix for the EU requires 29. China isn’t pushing Mandarin everywhere just for chauvinist “cultural superiority” reasons.

It ultimately comes down to politics and economics.

> Or it’s because the differences between the two are smaller than the differences between regional American dialects and standard American English?

clearly not - Australian English is far more different to Standard American English compared to... Standard American English, just spoken with an African American accent.

Are you talking about AAVE or the standard English African American accent?

These are not the same thing and you seem to be deliberately misleading about it.

Whatever you’re trying to argue for, state it clearly.

Both.

The argument is AAVE is incorrect, or at least different from, Standard American English, that's why it stigmatized.

That doesn't explain why Australian English, which is also different, is not stigmatized in the US. In fact, there's an expectation that even in the US, people make an effort to understand Australian English.

It also doesn't explain why even Standard American English, just spoken with an African American accent, is also stigmatized. It's literally just Standard American English with different pronunciation! Australian English is far more different to Standard American English than Standard American English is to itself just spoken with an African American Accent.

Anyone who thinks about this with a shred of honesty will see that there's something very revealing about that.

No, I don’t think so, and I also don’t think that everyone who disagrees with you is being dishonest. That’s why ideological viewpoints like yours are so misleading.

1. Australians are a tiny minority in America. Most people have never met someone from Australia. Whether they are stigmatized or not is frankly irrelevant. They play almost zero cultural role in American English.

2. Having different pronunciations by default makes it not standard American English. Not sure why this is controversial. If 90% of the country uses a certain pronunciation, why is the 10% one just as valid? Is the avoidance of it discrimination? I don’t think so. More like basic practicality.

3. Again, you seem lost in a loop here. Either AAVE is a separate dialect with its own internal grammar, or it’s an extension of Standard English that uses incorrect grammar. Which is it?

4. Considering that pretty much every other dialect is treated exactly the same way (Appalachian, etc.) it’s pretty clear this has little to do with race, as you are ideologically trying to shoehorn into your argument.

You see some grand conspiracy when the reality is that standard American English has a longer history, more cultural works, and is agreed upon by the majority of the population. It’s really that simple.

> Australians are a tiny minority in America. Most people have never met someone from Australia. Whether they are stigmatized or not is frankly irrelevant. They play almost zero cultural role in American English.

This is an odd counter argument. If there's so few Australians in the US, and they're so insignificant, you'd expect them to be more pressured into not speaking Australian English. But again, they're not being pressured into not speaking Australian English, if anything, Americans are expected to accommodate and make an effort to understand them. Why is this not the case for AAVE, which is very commonly spoken by far more people and a far more important variety of English in the US?

> Either AAVE is a separate dialect with its own internal grammar, or it’s an extension of Standard English that uses incorrect grammar. Which is it?

AAVE is a variety of English. Some of its grammar is different to Standard English.

Standard American English spoken with an African American accent is not AAVE, it's just Standard American English spoken with a different pronunciation.

Both are curiously stigmatized in ways Australian English is not.

Where are you getting this information?

Where are Australians not pressured into speaking Standard American English? On the street? Well, I don’t think anyone pressures people to not speak AAVE on the street either.

In schools? Certainly an Australian kid going through American schools will be taught to lose his Australian spellings, pronunciations, irregular vocabulary. Unclear to me how this is any different.

In the media? Well, if an Australian newscaster working in the US starting saying cunt, I assure you, he’d be forced to adopt Standard American English.

As I said, you have a highly ideological view and seem to be looking for anything to justify your conclusion.

+ I think you're wrong about this too

> Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America

Then how come, in the US, Australians are not stigmatized and pressured into speaking Standard American English? Because, well, they're not. If anything, there's an expectation that people who work with Australians make an effort to understand their variety of English.

Or it’s because the differences between the two are smaller than the differences between regional American dialects and standard American English? Not conjugating be is a pretty big difference.

And yes, if an Australian started using certain vocabulary words like cunt in a professional context, it would not be acceptable.

> And it all begs the question

Does it beg or prompt the question? I ask because the meaning of the rest of the paragraph changes depending on which one you meant to use.

I am an immigrant in the U.S. I do my best to communicate with everyone else in a common language. It does not matter what the common dialect is at any given time. The benefits of using the common dialect are independent of how it came to be the common dialect.

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