#Black American language

[official-linguistics-post]

Black English is being misidentified as Gen Z lingo, speakers say

Samantha Chery, The Philadelphia Tribune, 18 August 2022

As Generation Z influencers and Black entertainers continue to shape the internet landscape, from viral memes to TikTok dances, AAVE has shown up in more online spaces. But some Black AAVE speakers believe that the language has been incorrectly chalked up as new vocabulary started by young people - and they've been calling out non-Black people for glorifying internet stars who butcher the speech and lack understanding of the language's cultural significance.

Read the article here.

[the-b1ah]

Part 1 of the batburger saga

Imma try to get all of Cass’s ASL right but let me know if I’ve fucked up in the comments. I’m already dreading how many hands I’m about to draw but anything for the queen of ass kicking.

Also gargoyle are very fun to draw btw

Context:

Black bat is doing the classic bat brood over Gotham city when our little ghostie decides to pop over. Since he’s acquired a free “all you can eat” batburgers pass it only seems fair to share the wealth.

——————————————

Black bat: *gazing despondently upon Gotham with dramatic music in the back* >:(🦇🪦🌧️

Phantom: Hey! ope, sorry to interrupt your brooding, want Batburgers?

Black bat : :D✨💖🫧

——————————————

Art reference

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Masterlist | Origin | part 2

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

So the members of the discord at @bfpnola were explaining to me why BASL (Black American Sign Language) is a separate language than ASL (American Sign Language) because I was wondering if it was for a similar reason as AAVE (African American Vernacular English).

Fun fact. It's because of segregation. So when Sign Language in America was being taught. The schools were segregated, so they each dealt with deaf accommodations in their own way. White schools were taking a more integration approach so they highly frowned on the use of Sign and they were trying to get deaf kids to practice speaking.

However, Black schools were more opening to the use of Sign, so they had a lot longer to develop their Sign Language than White schools, as they were encouraging Sign at a time when white schools weren't.

Follow and support @bfpnola because they teach me so many things and it is so cool. 😁

-fae

[digitalfishwish]

I wanted to put out a post asking if there are any black nonverbal or deaf/HoH people who use BASL who would be willing to consult on an animation project?

My junior year of art school starts this fall, and I will begin working of my junior-senior thesis 3D animation, where the main character is a black nonbinary person who, in the beginning and ending scenes, is seen communicating with sign language. I am white and more-or-less abled-hearing (I have Auditory Processing Disorder but I don’t know if that counts), but I know there are differences between ASL and BASL, and I wanted to have a lot of sensitivity around using this dialect accurately and respectfully.

The consultation would involve taking videos of your hands as you sign the ‘dialogue’ I have written, which would then be used as a reference in the 3D animation. I am a relatively broke student but I am willing to pay for your consultation. Please DM me if you’re interested!

Note: I apologize in advance if I have mistakenly used any offensive terms in this post, I tried to do a lot of research but I’m sure I have shortcomings and gaps in my knowledge.

[silkieluv]

It actually irks me that some people don't know the real meaning why Nadakhan called Jay 'canary' that one scene.

Like sure it was a pet name or something, but if you just do 1 google search you'll know that one you call someone a canary, you're calling them a snitch/blabber/rat/synonyms. Which fits the context perfectly. Jay goes to tell on Nadakhan to Flintlock so Nadakhan calls Jay a snitch which makes him so uncool (cuz who wants to hang with a snitch ;-;, not this pirate!) so Flintlock disregards Jay quicker than my dog's speed when I open his food box.

It is very silly though that a canary is a type of bird, and Jay is a type of bird. I find it so funny how someone there's a term for everything in every theme you could possibly imagine

So yes, while it's interpreted as a yucky pet/nickname for Jay, it's important to me that you know the actual meaning

[creatingblackcharacters]

for your followers that enjoyed the superbowl halftime, i want to draw attention to this year's ASL performance as well! big events like this usually have interpreters, but the halftime is unique in that the performance has to be specially made to convey music/rhythm and not just words.

this year's performer was matt maxey! here's another for Ledisi's lift every voice and sing performed by otis jones IV. kendrick's show was legendary, obviously, as is Ledisi's voice, but i also wanted to highlight the talent of the Black interpreters that made these performances accessible this year!

Im pretty sure I shared this, yes! But I still think it's really cool!

[forthosebefore]

Are there Black dialects of Spanish?

Some people got a surprising result after taking an MIT dialect quiz. It was meant to guess what U.S. dialect the test taker spoke and the person's native language. As results started coming in, many Spanish speakers saw their English dialect had been marked as “U.S. Black Vernacular/Ebonics”

But what's the connection between speaking Spanish and U.S. Black Vernacular?

In the United States, dialects spoken by African Americans are sometimes referred to as Black English, African American Vernacular English, or even Ebonics. Though the terms have had different levels of popularity, having a specific name at all has given African Americans the ability to reclaim their language practices as a joyous part of their identity. 

But much less common are terms and discussions about Blackness and Black language beyond English. If Black English dialects exist, are there also Black forms of other languages due to colonization? For example, are there Black Spanishes and Black Portugueses, too? Read more here.

Source: Are there Black dialects of Spanish? by Aris M. Clemons

Visit www.attawellsummer.com/forthosebefore to learn more about Black history.

Need a freelance graphic designer or illustrator? Send me an email.

[the-everqueen]

me [takes your face gently between my hands]: hob gadling would not be a history professor at any number of british universities because of how humanities academia works and even if he were, rose walker would not be his student or advisee.

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[azhvne-blog]

Tutnese

Hashesqualulo fufamum 👋🏾 ❗️

So I went down this rabbit hole after finding out that I come from the Soulaan people.

I’ve learned that our ancestors spoke a secret language or argot known as “Tutnese” or “Tut” for short.

Apparently, this is an actual language that our ancestors who were enslaved used to communicate with each other in private and to learn how to read.

I remember being told that tut was “fake” and just “a made up language.” (Mind you, all languages are made up, but I digress😅) However, this language was almost becoming extinct until Gloria McIlwain published her book on the tut language.

I’m currently self learning/ teaching this language, in hopes to communicate with my fellow Soulaan brothers and sisters.

I’ve been trying to find her book but only 1500 copies were made and sold in 1995. But once I get my hands on a pdf version it’s over😭

LET US GATE KEEP THIS PLEASE 🙏🏾 AS THE PURPOSE, INTENT, & ORIGIN OF THIS LANGUAGE IS FOR US TO USE WITH US AND ONLY BY US.

[nando161mando]

[hasellia]

So apparently, as an Aussie, you can't use the word "busting" online because it's been corrupted to mean something else. It now joins the ranks of "lolly" (as in lollipop, used to refer to candy in general), as Australian cultural lexicons forbidden by the internet. At least we gave the world "selfie," though.

This, however, still pales in comparison to what the internet has done to the African American Vernacular English dialect (this is where "rizz", "Karen", "woke", "drip", "gyatt" and many other modern internet slang have been appropriated from). Or how just anything related to the Scottish dialect of English is used as an unserious joke.

Back in my day, we made up our own nonsense words instead of stealing words we don't understand and insisting it never had any value in the first place.

The hegemonic soft power that white USAmerica has over the english language, even through the World Wide Web, is so damn infuriating sometimes.

[weirdo09]

i love learnin abt black asl like this is so fun, it’s just better to me than white asl like it’s !!!!

[daily-public-domain]

Day 90: Frances Densmore uses a wax cylinder phonograph to record the native language of the Blackfoot People, 1916.

link

–This image is part of the public domain, meaning you can do anything you want with it ! (you could even sell it as a shirt, poster or whatever)–

[joshuadunshua]

[Image ID: a cropped image of an excerpt from “The Will to Change” by bell hooks. Various spots are highlighted in different colors. Beginning from the first full sentence, the paragraph reads, “He was not interested in forgiving him or understanding the circumstances that had shaped and influenced his dad’s life, either in his childhood or in his working life as a military man.” The following paragraph reads, “In the early years of our relationship he was extremely critical of male domination of women and children. Although he did not use the word ‘patriarchy,’ he understood its meaning and he opposed it. His gentle, quiet manner often led folks to ignore him, counting him among the weak and the powerless. By the age of thirty he began to assume a more macho persona, embracing the dominator model that he had once critiqued. Donning the mantle of patriarch, he gained greater respect and visibility. More women were drawn to him. He was noticed more in public spheres. His criticism of male domination ceased. And indeed he begin to mouth patriarchal rhetoric, saying the kind of sexist stuff that would have appalled him in the past.” The last paragraph is cut off, the top which is visible reads, “These changes in his thinking and behavior were triggered by his desire to be accepted and affirmed in a patriarchal workplace and rationalized by his desire to get ahead. His story is not unusual.” End image ID]

Trans mascs that “speak out” against transandrophobia/anti-transmasculinity/transmisandry/antimasculism/whatever word of the month they’ve forced us to coin, I need you to see yourself in this. This is you. This is you leaning into the patriarchal role of “protectors of the poor weak permanently victimized women,” this is you leaning into the patriarchal role of “ignore your pain, ignore your emotional distress, ignore your psychological needs, stuff it deep down inside and suck it up.” This is you enforcing patriarchal (and therefore also white supremacist) attitudes about gender. This is you learning to shift how you operate under the “logic” of a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchal system so that you can get and maintain access to what little scraps of privilege the system will give you for your conformity.

You cannot apply “logic” to oppressions—it is not a math equation you can solve for. It is not internally consistent.

(And when I say logic, I mean formal logic, I mean mathematical logic, I mean specifically Western conceptualizations of logic.)

You can’t simply state that “men don’t face oppression for being men because that then logically means [something untrue about women’s oppression] would be the case and it’s not.” Oppression is inherently illogical. To assume it operates on a truly definable and fully understandable logic is to suggest there’s a “good” reason for its existence. Which if you examine that for just a moment, you find it also then suggests that there is truth behind how oppression works. Or rather, that oppressed people did some thing or are some way that deserves oppression in response.

White supremacy doesn’t operate on any logical basis. Patriarchy doesn’t operate on any logical basis. They weren’t constructed to be logical, they were hardly “constructed” at all. They came about specifically to uphold and maintain powerful people’s access to power. To call the systems “constructed” is almost to give people too much credit.

Perhaps at one point “white supremacy” was a very specific spark in the mind of quite a number of powerful fair skinned Western Europeans, (though many would understandably point out that white supremacy existed well before it was made explicit), but to suggest that white supremacy as it exists now, as a self-perpetuating system that is able to chug away, an engine for capitalism built and sustained on the exploitation and slaveability of Black bodies, was consciously and carefully designed to operate only within specific bounds that we can define and uncover? That’s trying to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.

Trying to equate the operation of white supremacy with patriarchy, or any system of oppression with any other system of oppression (though you really do see this most often with people equating racism with sexism) similarly does not work because they are not organized logically. They are not separable entities, either. It is true that there are common elements to different oppressions (see: Suzanne Pharr, bell hooks, Paulo Freire) and it is true that the different systems are interlocked and work together to hold it all up (see: Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Andrea Smith) and it is true that they impact people at different intersections of oppressive systems uniquely and dynamically (see: Kimberlé Crenshaw, Jennifer Nash, Bonnie Thornton Dill & Ruth Enid Zambrana) and the systems themselves intersect and interact in different ways to produce unique effects which are dynamic across time and space and context (see: Cathy J. Cohen, Patricia Hill Collins, Rita Kaur Dhamoon).

At the end of the day, too, this whole conversation is also excruciatingly Western-centric, and most often Americentric. The white trans mascs (and any other white queers) decrying the concept that men could ever be oppressed for their being men, that men’s experiences of oppression could ever be shaped by their manhood (or their proximity to it), betray their ignorance to men’s experiences outside of their specific version of Western patriarchy. It betrays their understanding of patriarchy, white supremacy, and feminism as having been wholly informed by white radical feminists who appropriate the language of Black feminism while maintaining essentialist perspectives that reify and protect the same patriarchy they want to critique. As though patriarchy is just about men holding power over women and not also about men holding power over other men, not also about women’s complicity in maintaining and perpetuating it, not also about Western nations holding power over the Global South, not also about kinship organization, not about nationalism, not about colonialism, not about international and transnational politics, not about capitalist globalization.

I suppose this turned into something much bigger than it was originally meant to be, but I have fucking had it. I am fed up with white trans mascs from Western countries whose understanding of feminism is stalled at the stage where they’ve learned that white neoliberal feminism is bad because it’s not anticapitalist or intersectional enough but they haven’t actually learned what the fuck that criticism means because they think or behave as though “intersectional” is just another word for “diverse,” which they also maintain a neoliberal understanding of. I am also fucking heartbroken for all the trans mascs who are willing to lean into this patriarchal role where they close off their own emotions and dismiss their own problems and downplay the reality of being a transgender person at their particular intersection all because they’ve been convinced that men’s problems aren’t real problems, that the oppression they experience because they are transmasculine people is nothing to do with their masculinity or association with or proximity to (and subsequent distance from) manhood.

To claim that there is nothing unique about transmasculine experiences of oppression at the intersection of trans identity and gender is to willfully ignore reality in quite the same way that transphobes do when what they protest is “trans ideology.” Trans people will exist whether you personally believe our gender claims or not, right? So to fail to incorporate us into your reality is to have the temper tantrum of a toddler all because the world and its people aren’t as simple and uniform as you wanted them to be. Similarly, transmasculine people will experience oppression at this intersection regardless of what you want to call it, but to demand that we capitulate to language that flattens our experiences along the lines of either being transgender (it’s literally just transphobia) or our proximity to womanhood (it’s literally just misogyny), or even the two together but-not-really (it’s transphobia and misogyny but it’s not because of your proximity to manhood), is to suggest that there is nothing unique about our experiences of transphobia and misogyny as transmasculine people. Is to suggest that unless and until we are perceived as men by society, our experiences with oppression and penalization (and privilege by this logic, but notably not in practice) are indistinguishable from those of cisgender women and there is no value in discussing, dissecting, naming, or otherwise acknowledging anything transmasculine people experience—and then on the flip side, when society does perceive us as men, suddenly our experiences with oppression and penalization (and privilege by this logic, but notably not in practice) are indistinguishable from those of cisgender men, and so there is no value in discussing, dissecting, naming, or otherwise acknowledging anything transmasculine people experience.

We’re either basically cis women or basically cis men, whichever is more convenient and makes it easier to disregard us in the moment.