A-Infos (en) US dialects in formation

["Shawn Ewald" <shawn@wilshire.net>]

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------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Sun, 22 Feb 1998 20:30:05 -0800 (PST)
From:          MichaelP <papadop@PEAK.ORG>
Subject:       @org: US dialects in formation

London Times   February 23 1998 SCIENCE BRIEFING
   
                                      
   WHEN William Labov, a dialect specialist at the University of
   Pennsylvania, visited London recently he recorded five young British
   blacks in Battersea Park. The next day he played the tapes to several
   white people, asking them if they could tell from the accents whether
   the speakers he had taped were black or white. They could not - a
   result that would be unimaginable in the United States.
   
   There, he says, nobody would have had the slightest difficulty because
   American blacks speak what is, in effect, a different form of English.
   Not only are the sounds different, but also the grammar. Scholars call
   the language Ebonics (from "ebony" and "phonics") or, more formally,
   African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Last week Professor Labov
   organised a discussion of Ebonics and other dialects at the annual
   meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
   Philadelphia.
   
   His studies have shown that despite the unifying force of radio and
   television, spoken English in the US is drifting apart. This applies
   within the white community as well as across the races. Regional
   dialects are not as strong in the US as they are in Britain, but they
   are diverging: so much so that white people from Chicago, Birmingham
   (Alabama) and Philadelphia find it increasingly hard to understand one
   another.
   
   White vowel sounds have shifted significantly since the last century,
   he said. For example, the word "sawed" has come to sound like "sod",
   while "sod" is now pronounced "sad". In Philadelphia, the sound of
   "ou" in "about" is rolled around the tongue to form a double-vowelled
   diphthong sound. Not only does this differ from white speech in other
   northern US cities but, says Professor Labov, "you could search for
   years in Philadelphia without finding a black person who has picked
   this up".
   
   Dr John Rickford, of Stanford University, another participant, agrees
   that there was no evidence of convergence between the black and white
   vernaculars. "Ebonics remains different from white vernacular
   varieties and is even diversifying from them in some respects, even
   though whites and blacks are supposedly in contact with one another,"
   he said. Dr Rickford, who himself speaks with a rich Guyanese accent,
   says that years ago he asked 25 whites and 25 blacks what was meant by
   the Ebonic sentence "She bin married", with strong emphasis on "bin".
   
   What this actually means is that she has been married for a long time
   and still is. Of the black Americans, 23 understood the sentence
   correctly, but only eight of the whites did so. "She bin married"
   without the emphasis on "bin" would mean that she had been married but
   no longer was - a usage most whites can understand.
   
   So why do young British blacks and whites still speak the same
   language? Professor Labov says: "First-generation immigrants don't
   follow the speech patterns of their parents, and there is no
   segregation in housing in Britain as there is in the US."
   
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