>> now here's john mcwhorter. >> before we begin, ask you to take the time now to please turn off your cell phones. keep in mine that c-span is videotaping this evening so at the end when we do our q & a, there's a microphone up in front. we ask that you please come and stand at the microphone to ask your questions so that we can hear you. otherwise we will not be able to hear or see you if you're sitting down. thanks.

my name is cynthia and i want to thank you for coming tonight. i'm a librarian here at mid-manhattan library and i'm very happy to present john john mcwhorter. john has come more than once. been very kind.that. this is his third visit. tonight he'll be speak about miss most recent book, "talking back, talk black" -- joan mcworther is an associate prefer of english and comparative literature at columbia university where re teaches linguist sticks, western service, and american studies. a "new york times" best selling author, "ted" speaker and a the author of 16 books, and tonight

he is going to be speaking about his most recent book "talking back, talking black." without further adieu, john mcworther, please. >> thank you. for coming. my last book pay talking back, talking black "had a very compact thesis. i wanted to see if i could make the general public have a more positive view of the dialect that most black americans use in casual situations because the general idea is that black english is some sort of lapse or stain or scourge.

that bothered me. never heard that way but the mr. perception continues, and we linguists shake our head at the idea that the general pock, including the educate public have, is there's something wrong with the black people talk. started to feel as if a lot of why the public doesn't get it is linguists' fault, and i include myself so i thought, somebody needs to put something out there that maybe addresses all of this in a new way. first, what die mean by black english and these days if you call the academic literature you will more often fine it called african-american vernacular english. i learned it as black english in the '80s and i formed habits,

i'm going to stick with black english, but what is meant by that? okay. it doesn't only mean the slang that is more commonly used by black people,s' especially black young people than other. but it's not only the slang. we linguists aren't shaking our heads about slang. would not waste a become on just the slang of black english. the slang is maybe one-eighth of it. that's not what we mean. what we real where mean twice other things. first of all, there is the different -- in linguistises we call i sonnology in the real world you call it an accent. you could see white people have the accent but any american has a sense on some level there's a black way to sound and if it bothers you for me to say that it will be talking about that in about 15 minutes.

most people have a sense that you can usually tell that a person is a black american, even if you're not looking at them. you would know from looking into their over the phone even notify slang were being used. that's been pron science particularly again and again. americans both white and black are very good at that. to a linguist, black english has a different ponology. it's a system and how you put words together. the way we're all taught grammar is grammar is a bunk ol' thing -- a bunch of things that people do wrong, and to the extent that black english has grama, it's bad grammar. and english is legitimate grammar.

more to the point the grammar is absolutely central to what we mean by there's a different way of speaking. so slang, which i'll never mention again, and then really mainly the sound system and the grammar, that is what i'm talking about when i say black english. and who speaks it? definitely not all black americans. definitely not. there are black americans who do not speak black english on any of those three levels. however, it's impossible to put an exact figure it to, especially because, as with almosting anything that is interesting, we talk about decline. they control it only in the sound or the sound and the grammar but the vast majority. this corresponds to the gut sense we have that there is a black way of speaking or a black

sound. so that's what i mean by black english. not the same thing as southern white english. it's a black heritage. that's what black english is. and a great many people think of it as trash, and this goes on decade after decade after decade and there are scholars who have come before me who have done magnificent, detailed work on black english, and yet whenever the dialect comes up in the news for some reason, people always have the same misimpression and it's frustrating. i've wondered if it has had to be that way there are two things that linguists have often said about how black inning like be perceived. there are two major prongs. there's a message we have given the public. one of them is that if you don't like black english, then you're not liking black people.

that means that if you diss black english, you're a racist. that's been said, not usually those words but that's a point people make in classes. you can read nit a become or have conversations about it. don't think that goes through and not just because i have a reputation of being a contrarian on race issues. any linguist would agree on me. the people who think that black english are bad gram user say the same thing about poor southern white grammar, which is very similar. nobody is saying those people are using perfect english grammar and black people doing the same thing are getting it wrong. there's a general sense we have in this country in the educated angelo -- people are breaking language and people say less books rather than fewer books and it's wrong to say billy and

me went to the store rather than billy and i win to the store. could do a whole talk on that but we have sense that people mess up their grammar, and so you can listen to black people using construction that are considered bad grammar in the same way as very similar and often the same construction are seen as bad grammar when white people use them. you don't have to be ary assist. something i've heard white people say i would be a racist if itself didn't think this bad grammar. understand black people have been condemned to bad grammar because of slavery and jim crow. you may disagree but that's not a bigot, so racism alone doesn't help us here. i'm not saying it's not part of it. certainly racism plays a part. but is its the only part and more to the point, can the racism be changed? it's not the only part.

and by it's not the only part i don't mean aid 85%. it's not the only part. another aspect of it is that linguists will say black english is okay because it's systemic. that means you look at the thing that are commit black english and they actually fall rules in the same way as your own language follows rules. that means it is a structured and legitimate form of speech. and you know, i'm sorry to say this to my own dissertation adviser and all the people who came before me and the ones right along with me and the ones that have come after but folks -- i know you're watching andry say it. the systemic argument done -- i mean the verb "to be" which is very different in black english than in standard english. so, a black person might say, he

my sister and you don't have the verdict to be but the same per would never say i your sister. that's bad grammar in black english. it has to be i'm. you use the verb to be with some persons and numbers but not others. so it's omitted as linguists put it only in certain contexts as we put it. so we'll learn how to speak black inning wish and be indistinguishable, they have to learn how to the to be is used. it's a high stack of paper about the verb "to be" in black english. i get kneeling feeling that most people think is, okay, it's systemic buteye i that are leaving the verb "to be" out at all. it's english and you're supposed to clue and it mate be structure evidence but it's bad structure.

the mafia is a system. nobody wants a mav that ya to run a town. a piano is systemic. systemickity does not milwaukee the rules. that's where i started with this book itch thought, is that it? a matter of saying you're a racist if you don't like the dialect and/or, it's systemic? well, the american public thinks it's a broken system. and so, talking back, talking black, gets across four fix points designed to get under or maybe around the typical arguments. i'll just quick i outline them. one of them is this. black english is full of things that it does not do that main stream standard english does.

this verb "to be" is not there. black english is more come complex than mainstreet standard english but all we can hear is the bad grammar, the slang also gets in the way. so all sorts of things in black english that would be more challengerring to the foreigner to learn than learning the language of "the wall street journal." two quick ones. all these things sound like what we classify as slang. they're not slang. they're beautiful. for example. you could listen to -- i picture a little black boy their first time i heard is is one of my cousins. sound like they're overusing had. so what had happened was she had come to my house and then she had said i wants' lemonade, then i had said i'll get you some,

then i had come out and i had dropped the pitcher and i had bent over to clip i and she say what are you doing some i said, i had a bad day. had, had, had, where does it ebbets, then you notice the had is at the end. now, some people listen to that and think, well, that person doesn't know how to use the -- that's not what it is. black english has something you can find in languages spoken by obscure groups of people all over the world. it has narrative tax -- task that is separate from the regular task. if you're a linguist you wait for it. there's going to be the pastor -- the past that you use to say i spilled the lemonades on the floor, and then a different sufficient fix profix or some little word. as if in the english we didn't have the e-d.

black english with a speech variety with a narrative. not that my wasn't know how to put e-d on the end but when he is telling a story -- hi would use it now because he announce speaker of black english. when he is telling a story he piles in the hads. we wouldn't think about that anymore we explain when you use a and the, win talk about the day. human beings speak language subconsciously, same thing with black english. nobody walks around thinking of had. if there's an awareness people would see it is a joke. it's a kind of grammar and more complex than what you have to do to tell a story in standard english. another example, done. you done ate it? you hear somebody say, and the natural thought is, that person

is saying something blackly and you mean, done ate? shouldn't be it done eating? or ate it. and you move on. done is really interesting, and i don't mean just shut until that it's endless complexity meaning that there's no system at all. that would be a way of tricking you into thinking something is complex. it's actually a very precise usage that took people a long time to figure out. it's interesting. at first you think, is it the recent past like you done ate it? which presumably happened ten minutes agoment no there other things people use done forment i done had a crush on you since i was 12. that's not recent. it's distant past, it's in between. it's challenging but it's not random. nobody walks around using some bit of stuff in a language randomly.

that's not what black people are doing anymore anybody else is doing. turns out that done is counter-expectation, and whenever you hear a black person using "done" where if you don't speak black english you would use the past. this is something you wouldn't have expected. you done ate it? somebody thought would be there are for him to eat if dub had a crush on you suns you were 12 mean wouldn't have noun it bit you are now 40 and i had a crush on you. and i done took the subway. just took the subway. this is grammar. this is what people study. this is books this thick. black english has lots of those things. i'm giving you two for the purpose of time. black english is full of these

things solve you listen to as trash because it has slang and breaks mainstream standard english rules. there are thing that are more complex than what we think of as english, and i wish that that had been made clearer to the public than it has back because it has to be stressed. people respect complexity. not that it's different but complexity, and black english is very complex. that's the first thing. second thing. if we're on our way to understanding that black english is not wrong, and it's not not wrong because the people who speak it are black but is a not not wrong because it's systemic and complicate, then we can address this prickly issue whether it's wrong say that somebody does or does not sound black, because it can be really tricky to talk about sounding or

not sounding black because given the way black english is perceived, and given the way black people are often perceived, it's very hard not to hear that person had a black sound as meaning something negative, sounding like some kind of slur. the idea must be there's something wrong with the black sound. then we think it must mean that the person uses bad grammar, quote-unquote, et cetera, et cetera. but actually, what would be surprising is if there were no black sound, because human speech starts in one place and then there's some people who go in this direction some people who go in that direction. now, latedin -- latin started here. people who went this direction spoke spanish bosselatedin changed in random ways.

same thing with dialect. people speak a different english than people over here and this is every bit the point, even when the people live like this because it's not always a matter of gee -- geography. you talk like the people you's most intimate with. sounds are always changing in any language. listen to most americans now it's going to be point under 40 and you'll notice there are more likely to say, i caught a fish rather than i caught a fish. very subtle. but the a-u sound is melt interesting the a sawn. hawks make lacy circle inside the -- lazy circles in the sky. ever more common. more regions in america decade.

that's a sound change. that's one example of what is happening in all human speech all the time. so, of course, black people have a sound. the sound has nothing to do with sinuses. it's just that the vowels are a little bit different. this has been studied in sources so obscure that it seems almost wilful. nobody wants to touch this. you find it in journals that have nothing to do with linguistics where they only sprint one issue and it's in finland but it's been proven again and again, a person will study one vowel at a time, and basically never tell the world. great. so, about three years ago i decided what would happen if you just used especially modern technology and analyze a few black people's vowels and a few white people's vowels. wouldn't you find the vowels sit in a different place the mouth?

i put two students on this, coal -- cole, and sam. and it was just like this. one morning i was driving and listening to npr and i had hand experience, and somebody was talking about tax policy and i thought, black. how do you know? in the back of my mind. i wasn't tabulating is this person -- no. i just -- that's a black person. and how do i know? and it was interesting because we're trained to think, no, if you're white, i'm a racist for even supposing that, and black people often think, no, there's not a black way to talk because it seemed like it's playing into the whole idea that there's racism. on a certain level. but i think all of us know, southern whites don't sound exactly like black people. what i was listening to on npr was not a southerner, it was black person. check and it whatment i thought what were the vowels? there are some. it's kind of hard to talk about in this format.

it would be kind of boring, but there are different vowels. there's also a different tamber. this is just where you happen to produce your sound. itself you're an opera singer your taught to place your voice in a different way. different languages have different tamber in that way. different tie -- dialects have different tamber there are subtle factor's tamber that tip you off subconsciously that this person is viola davis and not melissa mccarthy. an interesting thing is, what about your kids? your kid -- i asked my mother, 1973, i'm sure people ask it all over the place and imaginer who white and your kid says howell you can always tell somebody is black even if you can't see them, you.

the impulse is to say that's not true. black people sound like southerners and you know that's not true. or the impulse is to say, no, everybody talks in different ways, shouldn't stereotype. your kid has an iq over 40. they're going to think, i'm not stereotyping. i'm hearing the truth. what do you tell the kid? and i think that we need to get comfortable saying, black people have a slightly different sound because they often spend more time with one another just like white people sound more like one another because they tend to spend more time together and that's true of all human groups that's not racist, it's just true and harmless. there's knock wrong with the way viola davis sounds as our posed to the way melissa mccarthy sounds but she definitely sound black. she does the voice of a queen on the disney cartoon series, forever -- sofia i. it's in my house because i have

small children, once i had my back turned and the queen said something and i i had never seen that character, and it what that little bell that went off. the queen is black. is she? and i turned around and i forget what the keen looks -- the queen looked luke and i went on imdb and who does the queen? viola davis. was hearing what any american can hear. there's a black sound '. i have a chapter about that in the book. third thing. in the book, is the answer to an objection that is traditionally leveled against arguments that black english is okay. they can't talk that way in a job interview. somebody always says that. somebody is talking about what some of the complexity might be about how you shouldn't mock the language because you're mock thing speakers and somebody would say that's true but through can't talk that way at a job interview. but, okay, nobody said they were going.

nobody needs to be told that. and i think that why you get that response is because of a sense that we often have that the way somebody speaks casually is going to interfere with their ability to speak the formal variety where i that are. with black english it's worse because everybody thinks it's a mistake. even if we understand that it's not mistakes, there's a sense if you use that system it will keep you from using the standard. that is an american kind of misimpression, perfectly understandable american misimpression, because our dialect diversity here is relatively thin. english has not been here for 2,000 years as it has been in england where different ways of speak have didn't doing this much longer. so there are kinds of english there that barely sound like

english to us. america is 15 minutes old and we don't have that depth of this. not going to call i dialect diversification. that sounds like a disease. but there hasn't been as much of this going on. creole, south carolina, hawai'i pidgeon, but those varieties are spoken literally on the geographical margins of the speaks and louisiana creole french is extinct and it's not that many people who speak those. for the most that there are dialect differences but there's a certain vanilla speak to the way english goes here. black english is the most die very gent form of english -- divergent form of english that most people in the united states hear. what we miss is that living in two very different dialects of the same thing is a very ordinary human experience, and in the legion's places where this is normal, no-worrieses

that speaking the home thing is going interfere with speaking the formal thing. nobody in sicily is worried that somebody who speaks sicilian is going to use nate job interview instead of standard italian. in sicily, standard italian is one someone takes in college and then there's sicilian which is different enough from that that it if you rolled the dice again and sicily war separate country, sicilian would be considered a different language and if you have seen "the god godfather" or -- to hoe the characters speaking textbook college classroom italian be redick hisment when you see a sicilian in, say, the godfather, speaking that language they're speaking something almost as different

from italian as spanish. but they speak standard ill at that timan in school in the job interview no debate in sicily whether sicilian threatens standard italian. would never occur to anybody. similar is in most arab speaking countries you. know somebody who speak as i rannic. they really moon i speak latin and french. they speak two things them standard language, then what they learned on their mother's knee is something so different that it is, although often the speakers feel funny having it put this way, it's a different language. moroccans, the language they learned at home is like french. then they went to school and learned latin. a moroccan will say i learned moore rock can and then i learn arabic. any araric arabic speaker -- the

idea this egyptian arabic is a threat to standard arabic, no. as i mention this there's an article in the "the new yorker" that addresses that. this article dwells on standard arabic and egyptian arabic. black english is the same thing. it's that black english speakers are going to hit you with some terminology -- diglosic two tongued. not a tumor just made up for black people in the united states. this is people speaking all over the world; the idea that you learn something on your mother's knee or father's knee, and then you good to school and pretty much that same way of speaking what's your teachers use and that same way of spikes on the printed page and everybody around you speaks that way and so you have learned this

standard formal way of speaking at home. that sounds so normal to us. that's very strange as a linguistic experience. i venture at least every second person in the world would never dream of that being the situation, and that was even more the case until about 200 years ago when literacy became widespread in many parts of the world such that vernacular languages were used on the page. for a very typical experience -- no figures on this bought very typical experience the way you speak most spontaneously is with your family and friend. you go to and cool and what's own the paging different. it's not a different but it's -- you make your way and you learn that school way. that is humanity. that's how it works.

only about 100 of the world's 7,000 languages are written in any real way. so most people have to make kind of a jump. black english is that situation. black people have a larger english than most white people. i wanted to call on of my very first books "a larger english" and they didn't like that. so what i meant was that black people have more english. so, nobody is going to try to use black english at a job interview. if we understand it's really an okay form of speech but different, something else that any black person intuit is there's a way you speak here and then another way you speak there. so black english is not a problem in that way. so the job interview issue just falls awayment then there's the fourth and final thing. minimum minimum central.

there's something that minstrel speech and white people made fun of black people and came up with a cartoonized version of black speech. there's something about minstrel speech and black english, and speak black english has something to do with this cartoon version of black speech foisted upon us started in 1840s by whites. whatever that relationship is supposed to be, it lingers. there's a sense that to celebrate the language to say someone has a black sound, all of that has something to do with minstrelty and a lot of that comes down to actually one word, "am. "so if one is inclined to looking through old minstrel show scripts or watching

horrible old movies or books," uncle tom's cabin "you get used to people using" am "minute more. those am the best cigar is ever smoked. they were making 2014 black speech and that is the sort of thing that birdie about black english and black people talking differently because there's that history. that's completely understandable but bears mentioning that because black english is normal human speech, coherent human peach, -- speech, used by the sophies tick indicatinged brain, it changes. all language does and black english has changed, too, and not just in the slang. anybody knows that an episode of "good times" now has slang that sounds quaint, sounded fierce and urgent at the time.

forget the slang. it's the sound system and the grandmotherar that -- the grammar that changedded too. black people then don't sound like black people now. they're not with us to show it but things were quiet different. it was different in the sound system. if you listen to an ancient gospel recording, listen to a gospel recording from the '30s, for example, and you listen to the black preacher talking you listen closely, he doesn't sound like a black preach we're today and often he sound vaguely irish or caribbean. his torn black singers in 18 90s and the '00s, and i tell you now and you will listen to dark skinned black people who sound more west indian/irish than anything that we sense as a black sound today. you listen to one of them you think that person must have been

strangle they all sound that way. you listen to recordings of ex-slaves in the '30s and there were a great many made where you can listen to somebody talk neglect 1840s. they don't sound like jamie foxx and morgan freeman. the vowels were in different places back then. fascinating. same things with grammar and this am business. one of the injuries science is the counterintuitive and nothing i thought was real until i checked it out was that black people did used to use am in that way. you would never know it because it sounds to utterly foreign now, but actually it was done. just as today "be" is used in a way that we're familiar with. people be going there all the time inch a very similar way it was "am. "you 0 know it from home to

harlem, claude mckay writing about poor black might migrants from the south. he was trying to give a loving portrait of these people and their lives in harlem in the 1920s, and nobody uses "be" in the way we're used to which is confounding. you're waiting for it because it's a core of black english today but they use the "am" and then you go through the transcripts of ex-alives and they use "am" all the time. charcoal and honey am good for the baby. it's something about talking about child cair and says charcoal and honey am good for the baby. it's so common that you realize, became, that is the way people talk because those are the sorts of things that change over the

years in any human speech. so, minstrel speech is often quite distorted. i talk about the actual distortions. there's an extent to which the way black people are depicted speaking in minstrel shows were reflective of the way the dialect sounds them as opposed to now. so minstrel shows were absolutely repulsive. and many places they were just entertainment. it wasn't that you win went to a this or that or maybe you'll go do a minstrel show. it was all there was. people singing and doing skits s and would be blacked up. but the language wasn't a complete distortion. it actually gives you a window into into something that many of us would consider a nontoppic. the history of black english. it's not just slang and mistakes it's a whole other system of

speaking black english. those four things are what the book is about, and to wind up, i'll just give you two quick thing it sheds a new kind oflight on. harry reid in i believe 2010 was discovered to have said that barack obama can speak negro die electric when -- dialect when he wants to. everyone thought, what does he mean? harry reid is somebody who has had the benefit of a very long life, and the truth is that negro dialect is what it was called in the earliest sources. he didn't know what could call it. ebonics? but negro dialect. people say is he saying that barack obama bro -- uses bad grammar snow no. presidentbarack obama can speako things and switch into black.

calling it negro dialect was not great but he is refer to something that makes barack obama a larger speaker than, say -- george w. bush ties reesey -- than, say, david letterman, a largerrer repertoire. speaks negro dialect when he wants to. it wasn't minstrel speech. what reid could have said was black english. no reason to know the term african-american vernacular. to be honest i've known both white and black people who thought there was something wrong with the former president, unfortunately, switching between mainstream and black english. people think he's being phony and white people think he is pretending to speak that way and it's condescending to black audience i was into by a black correspondent who thought barack obama should not talk that way

in public at all. very interesting. no, he has a larger english and he uses black english with big surprise black people. he is bidie electrical. that's -- bidialectal. >> one more. action. axe. ask, axe. people say, what's with that? the question is, what's wrong? black people use axe because axe is part of this dialect known as black english. why do they say axe? not because it's heard if you're descended by africas to go-k. axe is used because it was the form of ask that was most often used by the sort odd people from grate britain and ireland who black people worked likeside and

just lie legions of very white people across the pond, black people said, axe. it was perfectly natural. so, today, most black people switch between axe and ask, ask is formal, axe is black english. black english is the home variety, comfortable, casual, and so that is what axe is. it's not a lapse. it's because black people have more english than other people. now, there are those who may think that my saying that is partisan in some way. i'm making some sort of ivy league defense of the disadvantaged person, that i'm saying this because it's the way my family talks, that this has something to do with the crazy leftism in the academy. i beg anybody to consider that is not exactly my reputation in many circles.

i do not make arguments based on what used to be call knee-jerk lib lewis -- liberalism. i am arguing on the basis of fact, not my gut. and back to axe. one over facts is that ask and axe competed as far back as old english. you're reading -- in a language that might as well be german and you have axeness there chaucr like axe. what is with sneaks -- with axe? it's a symptom of a larger english.

i was talking to you about talking black. thank you. [applause] >> i don't have a question elm just want to make a comment. [inaudible] question. >> you mentioned tamber. [inaudible question] >> one aspect of it is something

that is called shimmer, for example, and it is difficult to demonstrate this because nobody has conscious control over it but to the extent that and-intuition might be -- usually sorted with black women but black men there's a huskiness. that's this shimmer, and so there's a slight quality and you couldn't teach anybody that if they wanted to be taught it. it's just what you subconsciously grow up imitating from the people around you. there's that shimmer that leads to the fact that there are many black people who don't have the vowels that i'm talking about. so sometimes we're talking about the difference between mainstream nord english feel, black english, fill, fill. how aim filling. subtle. that's vowel. i can do that by measuring somebody's mouth. it's actually not me who doubt but my students who do it. the shimmer is subtler but means if somebody doesn't have the

fouls, fill you can also tell. the npr person who i'm not going to name because -- they would feel about this but that person is someone where they barely have the vowels but you know it in a heartbeat and it's because of this different tamber. it's magnificently subtle. [inaudible question] >> it's not the kind of done i couldn't demonstrate this any more than you could walk like your mother. it's something like -- it's something subconscious and what i mean by the tamber is, if you're going home on the subway, read your kindle and notice that you know the color of everybody around you and when one person is saying something very standard and that guilty light guess on in your head and you

think black, think to yourself, how did i know, and part of it will be you'll think there was a huskiness. you will have heard precisely the tamber that i mean. i wish i could do it for you like i could play some notes on a clarinet but i can't do that. >> i was born on the lower east side and a lot of young people spoke pig latin. did you ever hear pig latedin? >> yes. >> i don't know why but they -- didn't speak ordinary english.

>> i think they made move individuals pat big latin. could you talk about that. >> there irvarious forms of gibberish. a term that people use and the popular kind of gibberish in that era -- and i learned pig latin, too, now days the youngins use something called d -- op after everything. that is another kind of this gibberish. that's a word game. those are always -- >> itsa, at yea -- >> i remember it well. >> mr. mcwhorter, i enjoyed your lecture and like to ask, it was mentioned that barack obama used code switching to be able to start off in one dialect and

then switch off into another. would you agree that when people who are hispanic will say a few phrases in spannish and then quickly go in english. is that good example of code switching? >> same thing. black people can do that, too but just not into a different language. code switching. >> my question is to what extent do you think that the traditional gramatticcal system we all learned in grade school has become arbitrary at all? >> you mean what your taught are the proper grammar rules? >> yes. >> yeah. all of that is -- all those things you taught are the right

way to say it are in the empirical sense fiction. all of those little rules are something somebody made up, usually the late 18th century, based on no coherent principle at all and that include this ones we feel deeply. the one about billy i went to the store. don't have time but it makes no sense. just something somebody made up but the fact on matter is we're human beings and always going to be such thing as fashion, and we can't get away from that. all of us are going to subscribe to and it the truth is, billy and me went to the store is perceived as wrong. nat going to change you. have to pick your battle. and so people do need to be taught that there's a certain collection of things you have to observe in formal situations if you're going to be taken seriously and that's just the wait it has to be. it's unfortunate because those ruled just don't -- if you know

the history of them, you realize, why in the world are we still paying any attention to that it? was just some person who said it. but we're stuck with it. so, the the formal rules have to be taught. it would be unfortunate if not. however, what we need realize is the person who says billy and me went to the store -- that's what most people say most of the time in english speaking world are not making a mistake. they're mayoral casual english. you have to learn casual and formal. people should learn how to express themselves in graceful prose and there are techniques but this things about sentences ending in prepositions and split infinitives but just in saying this can predict -- i wonder if this -- since c-span is here i can predict that in my box as

soon as this is put on the air i'll get all these angry e-mail is shouldn't be a professor, that i need to learn this and i need to learn that. i -- >> sorry. >> that's okay. you get used it, and i'm going to keep being a professor. so if you want to send me one of those, i'm not leaving. [applause] >> thank you. >> hi. i want to say thank you and i want to ask about african grammatical retention. now more like in any grandmother's generation people who were from the west indies and the south and africas i've met now sound very much the same. so if you could talk about that and also, i'm really proud of our great oral tradition as african people. >> you know, it's one of those things. there are a lot of people who have said that black english is

african -- whatever that is -- african with english words. wish that were true. that would be neat. there are languages like this and it's the west indian creole, and his known such as creole of -- those languages -- it's generally speaking but they are african languages with english word inside them. black english has so much more english influence that you can't say that, but black english's sound system is definitely influenced by african languages. from, not having r at the end of a syllable so stow instead of store, mo in instead of more, and it's the melody. the song it's sung on. and no english sounds like that, that wasn't create by africans

and their languages are tonal. the real african englishes are spoken in care ben colonies or -- caribbean colonies, nigerian -- that's -- there are sides where day say that -- there's no relationship. a lot of them for some reason are canadians, i love them to pieces, but they say that. then there's some people who say that gulla used to be spoken all over the united states where there was any black presence and that gulla became black english. that's one of those things you want it to be. that gulla was spoke in delware and then became black english. evidence is not there for that and the fought has gone on for 35 years.

the truth is in the middle. there was some sort of relationship between gulla creole and west indian and what became black english but an equal part of black english is actually british and irish. construction are things said by white people in small towns and the country and that feels odd to us because we don't know those people. those aren't the british people we ming but hat an a hybrid history. so some african, you're going to get more of the africa in west indian englishes. >> good evening. your talk has brought a lot of questions to me. and a lot of comments as well, which i -- this is not appropriate to good into right now. but one of the request is have for you is, is ebonics the same

as black english? >> same thing, yeah. >> okay. then i'll take just a -- ask another question. if -- when you talk about timber, is it when -- there was an opera that was sung by white people -- name escapes me now -- not pouring porgie and bess. think gertrude stein -- some used black voices in that. ...

what i know is that she didn't say that however, i will that she said it. all that during rehearsals someone said something like that so, that is a tough peace and it isn't done much because the music is bad so, it's hard to say but that wasn't why. the black people were used for real reasons rather than for the timber. it's funny because the people wanted to use back for the timbre they'd be afraid to say that there is one. she was not have thought that.

thank you, that's an interesting question. >> any other questions? >> i can do two more. this is my favorite part, i told you. >> my question is about the collar. i wonder if the name itself is from another language? i'm the of the opinion that gullah means french for mouth. i'm wondering if the name gullah and the black people had known that adopted it saying that if i am an animal i will speak and ergo, i am better because i am an animal which speaks.

so, i'm wondering what is your thought on that. >> nobody knows for sure where the term gullah is from. for it to be from gaul is interesting and i don't know what the source of your reasoning is. >> i speak french. gaul means animal. when a french person tells you you are a goal, you are an animal. otherwise you have a. [inaudible] obviously, having grown up in a french speaking countries i hear a lot of goal of being thrown around and that is a short way of saying. [inaudible] i am now asking what is your thought because i really believe that gullah has that french fruit, the louisiana aspect and

i'm wondering if that ties in to the linguistics or entomology and i'm not sure. >> you got to think all around the subject in trying to come up with answers. that's a neat idea but i'm not sure there's a strong enough current of french or french creole in the history of gullah, in particular, that i would be inclined to favor that explanation over the one that usually answered which is that gullah comes from gola as in angola because of that slaves came from angola but the problem with that explanation is -- to your point is back the african language that survives through songs and people don't do what they mean anymore is monday from sierra leone. if you look at the basket making

patterns they are mostly from up there as opposed to down south in angola. the question would be, why would angola come the name of the language. windows. so, maybe. >> thank you, professor for the talk. i have a finding because english is not my first language. i find that the accident is formed by your first native language when you are two years old, you listen all day long for two years and you catch that accident. you put that in your system. it's very hard to change. it can be changed but for very few people. like chinese, most people don't

even look at me and it's the same thing. i came to america and noticed black people talking, different from white people but i say it's because the carrier over from the language in africa when they were brought here from slavery like 200 years ago. so, the difference is the most different in the accident for any part of any race. is that true? i'm looking for confirmation. >> i'm sorry but no, not in this case. i can see how it would seem in that way from your perspective. that is definitely the way slaves, who'd grown up in africa, would have sounded for

example, in the first group's miniseries, i forget how they had levar burton talking but he had a very thick accent. then you have the generation that are born in this country and they are surrounded, not only by their many whites were native and especially on the plantation there were whites around, but there were black patient people around you would been born on the plantation too. what you got then was something brand-new that was different than the weight whites spoke because slaves were their own community but it wasn't african. this is how we know, this is something clear in the city of new york. we know how african sound when their speaking english as a second. i don't mean an african has grown up with english but an african who learned english later. it's an accident that sounds very different to most of us because it's only been commonly

heard in the united states for 40 years. if you think about it, this person from nigeria doesn't sound anything like the black person from chicago. >> black americans, in my eyes, black americans are true americans because they have been here as long as white people. so, yes, it's so different and if i heard somebody from africa like 20, ten years ago i can tell the difference immediately. he's not american, he's african-american. the black american because they were born here and have been here for generations already but i have another thing to ask you. when i keep talking english with everybody here i can get rid of my accent quickly but if i switch back -- my talk on the phone with my chinese friend for

a couple months my english is not as fluent as i can be. i think that is part of a theory to become i talked better and talk with english. it's always in your system but you can get rid of most of it but not all the time. >> no, you can't and it's hard. >> that's why black americans for generations still have the slightest difference when they talk. >> the analogy is correct in that when the community is separate in that way some influence from the faraway place, original home, can persist. but in black english the vast majority of the difference is due the segregation that

happened here. deftly, as i said to the other person, there is a dusting of african influence hi, i lived in atlanta in the 1990s and people say that i sound. [inaudible] have you heard that expression? [inaudible] is gullah. [laughter] i wasn't hearing it just now. [laughter] >> i want to make one more comment. i think a lot of black english is about being consciously musical that people really know and like there's a beat to it. when you are angry there's a beat and when you're joyous there's a certain beat so there's a lot of connection to music. also, romantically come up black

speak musically. >> no matter what i say in the setting about that i am wrong but that is definitely a part of the dialect and that's what you could call the aspect of it there's a cosmic reality with caribbean's and actual africans. yes. it's another way that the dialect gives a largess that is a broader, richer, repertoire than many americans have had anyway to possess. and yet, to end this on a positive note, i can assure you, within about two years there will be some new story in which black english is about you also to things about drop to beat and bad grammar and degradation et cetera but i have this hope that just my little book will change opinion on this matter across the united states and beyond. i hope you will all join me in

pushing that effort home. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at some authors recently featured on the tvs "after words". our weekly author interview program. rachel snyder and jonathan reported on how low and moderate income families manage money. utah senator, mike lee, recalled the forgotten men and women who fought against a large federal government during america's founding. in the new america president and ceo, anne-marie slaughter examines how technology has impacted foreign affairs.

in the coming weeks on "after words", motherboard and senior editor brian merchant will retrace the creation and development of the iphone. syndicate a calmness naomi klein will offer her thoughts on the trump presidency and what it means for the future of american politics. this weekend on "after words", temple university press are keith davis will look at gender identity. next i was inspired to write this book by a very strange policy that we have in the city of philadelphia which was our public transportation authority used to require that everybody who bought a monthly pass had to have a sticker, a gender marker and am for mail or ask for female. this created a sex identity discrimination within the city and one transgender woman, charlene, was a friend of mine and an activist for transit rights in philadelphia and brought a lawsuit against the company for gender identity discrimination because when she

offered her after mark passed she was turned away and the individual bus driver said she can't use us because you're not a woman, in my opinion. then she brought back a pass with an eminent sticker on it and the same thing happens. you are not a real man, you can't use the past. this got me thinking -- in that case, it's clear that there is no legitimate reason to have our sex identity on a pass to get on a bus. in the city of philadelphia the spark a lot of grassroots activism to get the stickers removed from the bus passes. eventually, the city got rid of them but it never admitted that had discriminated against charlene or anybody else based on their gender identity. it got me thinking that if this is ridiculous in this instance

what about other sex ids that will we carry around the car drivers license or passport's, birth certificates, are they necessary. >> "after words" airs on the tv every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previews afterward programs on our website but tv .org. >> every summer, but tv visit capitol hill to ask members of congress what are you reading. here's a look at some of their answers. >> i just finished up double in the gold by gilbert keith. it's all about the life of thurgood marshall before he was anyone's judge both litigating cases in the south at tremendous risk to himself. >> there is a daniels but i want to read bringing out the best in people. i think every once in a while --

to get a new perspective on how you lead a team, i always say you need people and you manage assets. >> kingdom of ice which harry reid had recommended and i just wrap it up with the traffic novel called all the light we cannot see by anthony door, moving into a narrow road to the north which is another novel and the sixth extinction by elizabeth pool. >> we also want to hear from you. send us your summer reading list via text or video or post to our basic page at facebook .com/com or e-mails booktv at sea-span .org. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everybody.