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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

This is good advice for students who speak native AAE because there exists bias against the dialect. It's better for their own, personal life trajectory to adapt to the way that the world will judge their dialect.

However, that doesn't make it okay to continue to perpetuate the idea that AAE is somehow a lesser dialect and that AAE speakers ought to have to mask their accent in the way that an Indian, Brit, or Australian doesn't.

We can simultaneously teach students how to navigate the dangers of the world they live in while trying to fix said dangers for future generations.

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>However, that doesn't make it okay to continue to perpetuate the idea that AAE is somehow a lesser dialect and that AAE speakers ought to have to mask their accent in the way that an Indian, Brit, or Australian doesn't.

As a Brit living in Britain, I habitually code-switch, because my natural dialect is coded as low-status. If I used my natural dialect in a job interview, it would very clearly communicate one of two things - either I am unwilling to conform to the behavioural norms of a professional workplace, or I lack the linguistic skills to do so.

I cannot pretend to understand the cultural context surrounding AAVE, but the prejudice against my own dialect is broadly rational. Learning to speak in mildly-accented standard English is just one of many shibboleths that signify membership of the professional middle class.

Can I ask what British dialect is associated with lower class? I was not aware there were class-indicating dialects besides AAVE to be honest. To me, anything British sounds higher class if anything

Makes me wonder if we have them in Dutch as well. I guess simply sounding like a foreigner, or making mistakes about word gender or such, will make you stand out as not knowing the language properly (even if you do and merely haven't got the pronunciation down), but I wouldn't know of anyone who grew up speaking Dutch in a native way who subsequently sounds lower class. The Belgian Flemish and southern Limburgians sound funny to most people, but it's not a lower class, just a region-of-origin indicator

Not OP but in Southeastern England obviously Cockney, Estuary English, or Multicultural London English are considered lower prestige dialects whereas RP is high prestige. Other regions may have a prestige version of the local dialect that incorporates some RP features while retaining some local features, but broadly speaking, regional speech patterns have lower prestige because they tend to be more prominent among people with less education.

Any strong regional accent is coded as working class. The upper class speak Received Pronunciation, which is broadly viewed as a "standard" accent and was once the only accent allowed on the BBC. The middle class will avoid using dialect and significantly soften their accent, shifting towards RP. There has been a long-standing debate about whether aspirational members of the working class should moderate their accents in order to advance professionally, but the reality is that most feel obliged to do so. Accent bias is still recognised as a major barrier to social mobility.

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

https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Accen...

Using the word "innit" is something that to me would imply lower/rebel class. Mind you, I only know it mostly from TV Shows/Movies.

There are dialects that are associated with wealth and education that are still discouraged in the business world for various practical reasons. It certainly is a penalty to have a dialect and many educated parents will try to school their kids to speak differently. Not as a replacement, but as an alternative.

I doubt you can remove the preference due to the advantages. There is a force for consolidation, just as there is with English as a whole for example.

Lol wut

That's gonna be an oof from me, dawg https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/06/the-habitual-be-why...

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