These turvey began last few to turnoff herself los keep in mind that cspan is videotaping so at the end with our question and answer please use of microphone at the front and stand at the front of the microphone to ask your question otherwise we will not be able to keep air or sea. Thanks for coming tonight here at the mid Manhattan Library and i very happy to introduce john recorder he has, more than once this is his third visit in tonight he will speak of his most recent book, a talking black as an associate professor of english at Columbia University teaching linguistics and the New York Times best selling author and columnist for Time Magazine with the atlantics and the wall street journal and the author of 16 books and tonight he will speak about his most recent book. [applause] thanks for coming tonight to what i want to talk about for not too long is the last book that i published is called talking back, talking black and want to see if i could make the general public have a more positive view of the dialect that most black americans use with casual situations so the general idea that it is a lack or sustain i never heard it that way but that misperception continuous in to we will shake our heads at the idea of the general public including that educated public has there is something wrong with the way black people talk as the public just does not get it. So i started to feel as if a lot of why the reason as a linguist i include myself so i thought somebody needs to put something out there that addresses this. What do i mean by blackie english . With the academic it would be called africanamerican vernacular either did as black english in the 80s so i will stick with that. But what is meant by that . Doesnt only mean the slang that is more commonly used by black people that is part of it. Were not shaking our heads people dont like those dissertations about slang and would not just right that just of the slain that is maybe 1 8 but what we really mean is first of all, now with linguistics you call it phrenology but in the real world you call that the accent to be the white people have the accident but any american knows there is a black way to sound. Most people have the sense a person is a black american even if youre not looking at them to listen to them over the phone. That has been proven scientifically again and again so black english has a different phrenology so the slang but it gives a system then how are you put words together we learn that is not a good word to use because grammar is about of bunch of things so to the general fourier year that is bad grammar so that is different but equally legitimate and coherent. But it is absolutely central so this lying and then that system and the of grammar from when i say black english is definitely not all black americans some do not speak black english on any but it is impossible to put the exact figure because that vast majority control twos some degree it could be the grammar and the sound but this corresponds to that that since there is a black way of speaking so that is what i mean by blacking bush. And a great many people that this goes on a decade after decade and there are scholars who have come before me to do a magnificent detailed work paillette whenever that dialect comes up they have the same misimpression and i wonder if it has to be that way. There are two things that inquest have often said that there is a message we have given the public that if you dont like black english inherently you are not liking black people and you are a racist. That is the point that many people make in class is and have conversations i dont think that is true just to have a reputation to be a contrarian on racism but people lit think black english is bad grammar even white river because that is very similar nobody is is perfect english grammar but the general sense that we have in this country in the educated world in general that most people walked around breaking the rules of their own language. A sale less books instead if you were they say billy and me instead of billy and i that we have the sense they mess up their grammar so you could listen to black people with those constructions considered bad grammar very similar as bad grammar with the way people. You dont have to be a racist but i would be if i did not accept that but i am understand like through slavery and jim crow but i tried to teach them out of it dont pretend that it is okay. So racism alone i am not saying it is not a part of it because it does play a part but is it the only part and can the racism be changed . I dont mean 85 percent. Another aspect is that a link west will say black english is okay because it is systematic if you look at things different they actually follow rules as your own language so that means it is a legitimate form of speech. I am sorry to say this to those who came before me and i know youre watching but that argument does not convince the public. The verb to be is nonstandard english a black person would never say i your sister use the verb with some members but not others so only in a certain context so if a marshall was learning black english you would be surprised about the verb to be in blocking black english but outside the of one of few academics think it is systematic but if if english is supposed to include that that is bad structure it is a bad system. Nobody wants a mafia to run the town it is very systematic nobody wants to hear so that doesnt make the argument alone. So this is where i started this is a matter to say if you dont like the dialogue to say yes it is a broken system so we come across six four . Points to go around a the typical argument. Black english is full of things that it does not do so this verb to be is not there so what is left is black english is more complex in many ways than mainstream standard english because all we can hear is the bad grammar. Theyre all sorts of things that our more challenging if they had to learn the language of the wall street journal. So they all sound like we classify as slang. They are not part of their beautiful. Picture little black berets boys so what had happened to say i want some lemonade and i will go get some tonight drop the pitcher then she said would be doing i said i am having a bad day. And then you were wondering some people listen to that but black english has a big that is spoken of groups of people all over the world that is separate you can find it in many languages and you wait for it like i spilled the limited on the floor. But then there is a suffix or prefix that you use bin into the narrative so we is a different suffix. So it is set that my cousin doesnt know how to put the ending of the and they would use that now when telling a story he would not think about that. And nobody could explain when you use the word the. Human being speak subconsciously. There is the awareness of it that it is a joke so what is that . But really it is a kind of grammar so what better example is you done eight it . So the person says something black why dont you say you should be done eating . Then you move on the game black people talk wrong but done is interesting to be subtle that really there is no system at all. Actually it is a very precise usage it to a people long time to figure out. But the recent past like you done a bit eight it to. Id done had a crush on you. That was a long time ago. It is challenging but not random nobody walks around using that in a language randomly. It turns out it counters expectations whenever you hear a black person using the word done it is something you would not have of expected it. You done a bit . I then had a crush on you. You would not have combat. Have done that other why is this is what people study. Black english as a lot of those with to focus of time but black english is full of these. To break the mainstream standard english of all of those that our more complex i wish that was made clearer to the public because people expect complexity and black english is very complex. If we are on our way to a understand black english is not long because it is systematic then we can address this issue to say that they do or do not sound black it could be very tricky to root talk about to sell the black so given the way it is hard not to hear it as something negative. So then we must think it is bad. When the people live like this, its not always a matter of geography. Its also social identification. You talk like the people you are most intimate with. So sounds are always changing in any language. Listen to most americans know it is to the point under 40 and youll notice there more likely to say, i caught a fish rather than i caught a fish. Very subtle, no value judgment attached to it but the sounds are melting into each other. They make lazy circles in the sky. Just listen to it. Listen to the way you talk in your kids. Ever more common. More regions in america. Its a sound change. That is one example of whats happening in all human speech all the time. So course, black people have a sound. The sound has nothing to do with the sinuses or anything like that. Is that the balls are different. This is been studied in sources so obscure that it seems almost willful. Nobody wants to touch it. You find it in journals that have nothing to do with linguistics. Journals that only print one issue, but it has been proven again and again a personal study one vowel at a time and basically never tell the world. Great, so about three years ago i decided would happen if you just used modern technology and analyze black peoples walls and a few white peoples, wouldnt you find the vowel sit in a different place in the mouth. So i put two students on this, sam, thank you. Billy was just like this. One morning i was driving and listening to npr. I had an experience i suspect a lot of us have often. Somebody was talking about tax policy and in the back of my mind i thought black. How do you know . Wasnt thinking there tabulating is this person and africanamerican know, i just thought this persons africanamerican and its interesting. Were trying to think that im a racist for even thinking that. Black people often think theres not a black way to talk because it seems like his plane into the idea that theres racism. On a certain level. But all of us know southern whites dont sound exactly like black people. What i was listening to was not a southerner, black person and i checked and it was. And i thought to myself, what were the vowels and there are some. Its hard to talk about in this format, its kind of boring but there are different balls. Theres also a different but where you happen to produce your sound. If youre an opera singer youre taught to place your voice in a different way. Different languages have different camber. Different timbre. Theres very subtle factors of timbre that tip you off subconsciously that this person is viola davis and not melissa mccarthy. You know instantly and it could be analyzed scientifically. Its interesting. An interesting thing, what about your kids your kids last, i asked my mother 1973. Im sure people ask all over imagine your white and your kid says how come you can know still someones black even if you cant see them . The impulses to say thats not true, black people so like southerners. We know thats not true for the impulses to say everybody talks in different ways you should not stereotype. Your kid has an iq over 40 theyre saying im not stereotyping im hearing the truth. So what you tell the kid . I think we need to get comfortable saying, black people has a different sound because they often spend more time with one another just like why people spend more time together and so like one another. Thats true of all human groups. Its not racist is just true and harmless. Theres nothing wrong with the way violative sounds or Melissa Melissa mccarthy. But she sounds black and i can tell you she does the voice of a queen on the disney cartoon series, sophia the first. Yes its in my house because i have small children. And once i had my back turned and the queen said something and i never seen the character and was that little bill that went off i thought of the queen is black. Is she . I turned rent and i forget what the queen looks like but i went on and it was viola davis. I dont have a special powers i was hearing what every american can hear. I have a chapter about that in the book. Thursday in the book is the answer to an objection that is traditionally leveled against arguments that black licorice is okay. They cant talk that way in a Job Interview. Some was talking about was some of the complexity might be. How you should not mock the language because youre mocking the speakers. Somebody will say yes, thats true but they cant talk that way at a Job Interview. But nobody said they were going to. Nobody needs to be told that. And why you get that response is become votes of the sense we often have that the way somebody speaks casually is going to interfere with their ability to speak the formal variety. With black english thats worse because everybody thinks its mistakes. They seem if you talk that way you wont be able to speak stander. Even if you understand its not mistakes that is an american kind of misimpression. Perfectly understandable. English hasnt been here for 2000 years as it has where different ways of speaking have been doing this for much longer. So the english there barely sounds like english to us. Americas 15 minutes old. So we dont have that depth of this. Im not going to college i like diversification. There has not been as much of this going on. Some, louisiana creole french. These errors out of the geographical margins and then visit extinct and not many people speak those. For the most part dialect differences but black english is the most average and form of english the most People Living in the United States have reason to hear. So what we miss is living in two different dialects is a very ordinary human experience. In the legions of places where this is normal nobody present speaking the whole thing is going to interfere with speaking the formal think. Nobody in sicily is worried that someone who speaks sicilian will use it in a Job Interview instead of standard italian. The sicily standard italian is what they would take in college and then sicilian is different than a enough from the that if you roll the dice it would be a separate romance language. If you see Something Like the godfather youll see characters translated using sicilian rather than standard. Its different enough to show the characters speaking textbook college would be ridiculous. When you see one of the sicilians in the godfather speaking that language theyre speaking something almost as different as i italian. That person speak standard italian in school similar, as in most arab speaking country you know somebody speaking arabic. When they speak arabic they really mean i speak latin and french. They speak to things. A standard language than what they learned on their mothers day is something so different that it is, although often the speakers feel funny being put this way because of cultural unity. Its a different language. The moroccan the language they heard at home is like french. Then they went to school and is Something Like moroccan. A moroccan will say i learned moroccan and then arabic. Any arabic speaker you know is like that. The idea that egypt should arabic is a threat know, as i mention this last week it addresses it at beautiful length. This article is going to run five minutes but it actually dwells in standard arabic if its anything its the other way around. Black english is the same thing. Black English Speakers are going to be to tongue. This is not just made of for black people in the United States, this is people speaking all over the world. The idea that you learn something on your mothers knee or fathers day go to school for pretty much the same way of speaking is what your teachers use. The same way speaking is on the printed page and everybody around you speak that way. You have learned the stander formally of spng that sounds so normal to us its very strange. I would venture that at least every second person in the world would never dream of that being the situation. That was even more the case about 200 years ago where literacy became widespread in many parts of the world. Killer languages were used on the page. A very typical experience is that the way you speak most spontaneously is with your family and friends. You go to school i was on the pages something rather different. Not a different language, but different. Its as if you say house but was on the pages domicile. Nobody imposes it thats just the way its been. You make your way and learn that school way. That is humanity. Thats how it works. Only about 100 of the world 700 languages is written in a real way. Most people make a jump back in english is that situation. Black people have all larger english the most people. I wanted to call one of my very first made it like that. What i meant is black people have more english. Nobodys going to try to use black english as a Job Interview. We understand its really an okay form of speech but different. Something else that any black person is theres a way speak he here in another way speak there. Black english is not a problem in that way. The Job Interview just falls away. Then there is the fourth and final thing. Minstrel. An unsavory sense that many people have that theres something about minstrel speech, that is shows in which white people white made fun of black people and came up with a cartoon iced version of black speech. Theres something about it that such that to embrace black english and speak black english has something to do with this Cartoon Version of black speech based upon a starting in the 1840s by whites. Whatever that relationship is supposed to be at lingers. A sense that to celebrate the language to say someone has a black sent that all has something to do a lot of that comes down to one word, and. If one is inclined to looking through old scripts are watching horrible movies or books that one reads, you get used to seeing black people using a. M. Much more than anyone would use it in standard english. Anything, they were making fun of black speech and thats the thing that worries me when people talk about black english and black people talking differently because theres that history. Thats completely understandable. But appears mentally that because black english is normal human speech coherent human speech used by the sophisticated human brain it changes over time. All language does im black with english has changed over time and not just in the slang. Anybody knows that an episode of good times has slang that sounds quaint which sounds fierce and urgent, forget the slang. Its the sound system in the grammar that change too. Like people 100 years ago did not sound like wh