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"The two of us were children and as children we were simple and complicated and we didn't get tangled up in words."

Leftist, radical politics, shitty poetry, some poopy poop, New Orleans, Latin American shit, things that make my booty bounce.

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September 19, 2011
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"So what are the things that we look for? What are the features of African American English? There are three dimensions: a system of grammar and pronunciation, verbal traditions, and a system of semantics. For an example of the system of grammar, I like this story that I heard just a couple of weeks ago at a hair braiding shop. A woman was talking about her significant other and she said “the brother be looking good.” We were just sitting around a hair braiding shop, you know, and she was using “be” here in the way that many languages of West Africa convey meaning. That is, the verbs don’t necessarily have anything to do with whether it’s past, present or future tense but with the quality or essence of something. In fact when she said “the brother be looking good,” she didn’t mean the brother looking good but he be looking good, which is to say, something that’s repeated over time. He looked good last week, he’s looking good today and he’s going to be looking good tomorrow, ’cause he be looking good. Many of the languages of West Africa have this sort of grammatical pattern."

~

African-American English: From The Hood to the Amen Corner Geneva Smitherman (via howtobenoladarling)

and this is a good example as to why dominicans need to stop being ashamed of our spanish too. our spanish has roots as deep as we do. we do not speak white spanish because we’re pretty fucking far from white and that is perfectly fine.

(via soydulcedeleche)

THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU GUYS!!!!! OUR ‘BAD’ SPEECH IS THE MOST AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL, WONDEROUS THING EVER!!!! IT’S WHERE OUR HISTORY IS!!!!

(via liquornspice)

I’ll flat-out tell you that I speak AAVE or African American Vernacular English and that it IS my first language. The shit is beautiful!!!! Look up Renee Blake! She’s awesome and whatnot!

(via kyssthis16)

Telling people that AAVE is an actual dialect is one of my favorite/least favorite conversations depending on the reaction of the people I’m talking to.

(via telegantmess)

(Source: writing.umn.edu)


Reblogged from black-culture

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  8. evelark reblogged this from dressesandyarn and added:
    I love linguistics so much. Just gotta say that. And I really wish more people would acknowledge that English has...
  9. unoutlawed reblogged this from zorascreation and added:
    Reminds me of a conversation/debate with my speech 101 professor in college wayyyyyy back in da day… I walked away...
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