Accent can also be influenced by any kind of 'corrective' training. I had a notable lisp, the work that was done to minimize that gave me an accent that sounds quite different from others in my area/family, enough that I'm asked where I'm from because of it; yet, I live in the same town I was raised in, including when my lisp was very obvious.
this is so relatable. because of the effort put in to correct my lisp, I have a more standardised accent. and my middle school teacher used to make fun of me, saying thinks like "you are so pretentious" "why don't you talk like everyone else" this was definitely my worst nightmare growing up.
Hi Very interesting. Thank a for sharing this fact. I wish I had a chance to hear that. I could never thing that a circumstance of that nature could have a result of that nature.
Boy, do I know how that feels - me and my brothers all drop r's (post-vowel Rhoticism) and they did a lot of work to try and get me to not drop r's, because it wasn't common to do that where I grew up (if I was from England or Northeast US or Australia no one would have noticed). By the time I learned to make the 'ar' sound I had already learned how to speak without it. Growing up, I was often asked if I came from - Like, I lived in the same town my whole life people, come on...
Code switching and the expectation from certain groups associated with a certain code is really nothing unique to america or even english. I was born and raised in west germany, completed my education there and then moved to southern austria as an adult. During the 12 years I lived there, I would constantly hear from colleagues or friends that I "didn't need to be so high and mighty" with them. It took me quite a while to figure out that Carinthians (and probably most austrians) regard their dialect as the informal way to speak and _Hochdeutsch_ (which I was speaking) as a very formal code - kinda like the New Yorkers with their R's. But once I found out, I started to use this to my advantage, because while it came with the air of a more formal way of talking, it also came with the assumption of higher education and sophistication. Although a junior EMT back then I was quite frequently called _Herr Doktor_ by older patients, just because I didn't speak the local dialect.
True, although I don't think CC was in any way trying to imply that code switching is unique to English or anything like that. They were simply using English as an example to help explain the concept.
That's so accurate. I attended college in the south of Brazil, which is perceived to be richer and more sophisticated, due to the European immigration history. Plus, I'm white and blonde, so people naturally assume I'm of Europe descent. So my "professional" and "academic" vocabulary were formed there. I use it to my favor, whenever I want to be taken more seriously, I embody this accent with intent and people really pay more attention.
@@conspiracy_risk7526 I interact with a lot of Germans and I can tell you that is definitely not what he meant. Germans use English differently because it is not their native language, just how I use German differently because it is not my native language.
All of this others influencing our language is so much more prominent in Hindi speakers becuase hindi has so many dialects and similar languages like punjabi and gujrati, lots of loan words and phrases from these languages. Infact the line between a different language and a dialect of hindi is blurred and I don't know if my grandmother's tongue awadhi is actually a language or not.
The issue is not white people using AAE words, but black people being penalised for doing the same. We should all be able to speak in the way we find most natural, while being mindful of context.
I'm absolutely loving the series. LangFocus with Paul has a great video in AAE as well as various other versions of English including comparing British English with American, and also how English influenced Jamaican Patois or Haitian Creole
LOL! That is so cool! xD, but technically not true, because written language also travel by speed of light. Also, If you send a message by WhatsApp to a friend the speed will depend on your internet XD.
Since I started studying linguistics I've become extremely aware of features of my own dialect. I've lived all across the south of England and some of the differences are really striking. One feature of local spoken English is a really noticeable R-sound which for the life of me I just can't do. In my native dialect there is only a partial rhotic, and R-ending syllables just have long vowels ("kaa" instead of "car"). My girlfriend teases me for it (in a nice way) all the time.
Another "bubbler" vs. "water fountain" story: my Arabic professor in college learned British English as a child. He told us a story of how, when he first moved to the US, he told someone he was "putting up in an apartment" (living in an apartment). But the person he was talking to asked why he hasn't moved out if he's "putting up with it" (tolerates it).
Also influenced by the media you consume - I grew up in Texas, but at a time when PBS was mostly older British shows, which I preferred, so Monty Python and Dr Who changed my accent noticably. I also had a negative reinforcement of accent - most of the people who beat me up or ostracized me sounded more obviously Texan, so I made a conscious effort to avoid some of their dialectical quirks
I'm no linguistic researcher, but I'd guess some dialect differences between classes are similarly negative - a deliberate attempt not to sound richer or poorer
Apparently lots of Americans find it odd when they come to England and find that our accents and dialects are so different when geographically they can be only a couple of miles apart
It's insane. My city is 15 miles wide. It takes 5 hours to drive from Colorado to missouri (through kansas). I've driven from kansas to Oregon a few times. That's a 3 day drive 36+ hours straight through.
I think just cuz our country is so big and accents change over longer distances than in the UK, but they change a lot here as well. Like I have a different accent than my neighbors, but I think that's cuz I'm black and they're white, but my parents have different accents cuz my dad is from LA and my mom is from South Carolina and I have a completely different accent from them because of where I grew up.
Yeah, In America the accent usually changes on the scale of 100s of miles, although there is more accent variation on the East coast, having to due with the fact that English has been spoken there for about twice as long. The most extreme example of this is the whole Western side of America and Canada, where the accent changes slow enough it is hard to tell whether someone comes from your hometown or 1000 miles away.
@@danktankdragkings7117 yeah well in England 100miles is a long way, in the USA 100 years is a long time. Here in Cambridge there are 2 (native) accents - Town and Gown (University) that geographically coexist
The last part brought back some flashbacks! 😢 In my country, the majority of tv studios is the capital (in the south) so, most of the actors, presents and news anchors speak with a southern accent. Years of this lead to people believing that only the capital accent is the correct one and all the others are wrong and show a lack of education and manners. This even lead to school textbooks showing pictures of "normal people" with the right pronunciations (and words) and next to them a farmer in dirty clothing (for ex) with a regional pronunciation of the same sentence ; in the bottom was a paragraph "explaining" why the dumb farmer was wrong and why the child should know better! It was really sad and it took me years to undo that programing!
People can switch between more than two codes too. My family is very provincial working class kiwi - so when I speak to them I use a stronger accented kiwi-English and certain vocab (eg., saying 'yous'). But I've also been to university and I work in government, so when I'm at work I tend to use more of a standard kiwi-English, with less extreme vowels and less swearing and folksy idioms. Then I used to live in Colombia, where I hung out mostly with Americans, Canadians, and Brits - so with them I'd use a kind of international-ised kiwi-English, with very moderated kiwi vowels and american vocab (americans are generally not great at understanding other dialects). But then I was also teaching English, so I'd use an ESL-English with my students, which didn't even sound kiwi. It had super clear annunciation, vowels moderated to the point of almost being British-with-American-Rs, and very a limited vocab of common words and simple grammar.
Funny story - I'm an Australian and I've never really used typical 'Australianisms' in my speech growing up. Then I moved to the UK and suddenly I was using them a lot more - words like "strewth", "fair dinkum" etc, ones that I would never use back in Australia. But at the same time my accent was becoming much more Multicultural London English as well, due to the friends I was hanging around with, and it was all happening without any thought.
I'm originally from New Orleans, where apparently AAE and SAE are the closest in sound of anywhere in the culture. I've always found it interesting that the habitual be in New Orleans is normally completely absent from SAE (used consistantly, as in most places in AAE) except for very specific situations. The habitual be is used with the verb "to have" and similar specifically to mean that that action has been going on for a long but undefined time. When asked, "How long have you had that car?" people who speak both forms would both say "I've had it for five days," for "I've had that for ten years," but both would say "I['ve] been having that car." To mean "for a long time that I haven't kept track of." I'd been noticing that even before I got into linguistics and new what it meant. :-)
hey! I spent the past four years in New Orleans so I know exactly what you mean! I'm also getting into linguistic now and it's really interesting you brought this up
Can I ask a perhaps dumb question? If AAE is indeed becoming popular amongst white Americans and people overseas, isn't this a good thing overall? Like, isn't it a credit to AAE that so many want to use it? Does it not put AAE in a position of power? I get kind of uncomfortable with this idea that people are only allowed to do things based on their ethnicity, it seems segregationist. Anyway, I really loved this video, it was probably my favourite yet. Loved learning about the 'habitual be'. I do a lot of code-switching myself between English, Italian and Arabic. It can be very amusing, it expands your ability to make puns for a start, which I always love.
It would be if the creators weren't discriminated against for using their own inventions. It's like taking a test and someone copies off of your test, you get an F but the copier gets an A.
@@memyselfandi4356 Then it strikes me the answer is to work on preventing discrimination on the basis of language, rather than insisting that other people can't use the same language. That's not how language and communication works, and society will not improve if everyone is cordoned off from each other. The focus is in the wrong place with all this "stay in your lane" rubbish. Plus, telling people what they can and can't do based on their looks or ancestry is pretty sinister. You might even say... racist. Plus if something is limited to a minority group, mightn't it then more easily become a tool bigots use against them, than if it were widespread? I don't think people are thinking this through enough.
I noticed my accent change depending on the accent of the person I'm talking to. I have a North-American accent. But if I speak with a Brit or an Australian, my accent would change a little taking some features of the other accent. I heard of a study saying that the more your accent differs from the "norm" the more you are discriminated.
There's also another factor in language dialects that might be skipped in this: another nearby language. The various dialects of "low Indonesian", for example, is pretty much based by what language they speak in their home, as Indonesian is often a "learned-in-school language" and not the "in-house language". There's code-switching, there's word assimilation, even some _grammatical_ borrowing if it's adventurous enough. It's all an adventure, that's almost unexplored due to the academic's (rather understandable) fixation on formal Indonesian.
Some Irish sayings use English words with Gaelic grammar and syntax, such as 'I've a thirst on me' or 'Top of the morning to ye'. It makes for some lovely and lyrical use of language.
Super interesting! I often catch myself talking differently depending on my audience and where I am. School speech vs casual speech are very different.
I love your videos! Please make videos about linguistics theories such as Eve Clark’s language acquisitions theory and Chomsky’s universal grammar theory. Thank you!
I live in Austria and I am a white female American. My accent makes it hard for some people to understand my German. However, what I find interesting is depending on how some feels about American culture will be the underlying reason if they think my accent is “cute” or “embarrassing”. Linguistic discrimination is part of everyday life for foreigners in Germany and Austria; which is why most try very hard to learn the language and change their accent; myself included.
There's a lot of classism surrounding people's accents in Britain too. I was taught to hate my own accent and I'm only now unlearning that in my mid 20's.
Being an immigrant means I've developed my own weird Frankenstinian dialect of English: I mainly speak UK English, but there are different dialects of English *in* the UK and I got influenced by at least two of those; but there are also I-don't-know-how-many US English dialects that influenced the way I speak because of how much American media I was exposed to while learning English And then I started using TH-cam and tumblr and as a result words and phrases like DFTBA or dooblydoo making their way into my vocabulary. That's also how I started using the word y'all And then there's Polish words that I use even in English - like blacha or parówka - because either I keep forgetting the English translation or I remember it but it just doesn't sound right
I study Portuguese and English language and literature at college. It is so weird to see a crash course about something I actually know a lot about lol
Like AAE, Irish has a habitual tense also and has filtered into Hiberno-English. Instead of just 'be', Irish people tend to say 'do be'. e.g He does be eating cookies
A lot of things in this video kinda goes over my head and may take me some time to get down to, but I always enjoy every single moment being exposed to something new. Thanks Crash Course :3
I live in Switzerland and I really don't get the map shown at 1:50. What is it supposed to show? Because in Switzerland we speak four different languages with hundrets of dialects, so what kinds of groups are shown in this map?
A sociolinguistic study of insults and derogatory terms would be fascinating, but I imagine observer bias would affect that even more than with pronunciation - people are far less likely to use terms they know are insulting in front of strangers, especially ones holding clipboards
hi, linguist here - there is a well established research field on this! Go to google scholar and search slurs+linguistics, you'll find all sorts of great work :)
In Australia we call it a bubbler. I wonder how Australia, Wisconsin and Rhode Island all had "bubbler" pop up when each of those places have so much "water fountain" between them
But I don't think any variety should be gatekept. You call out the double standards by destigmatizing its use in the original creators community (African Americans) and not criminializing the use of it outside of the community. Language is culture. And culture is shared not gatekept.
Language is as often used to set one group apart from the others as to simply communicate. Medical or scientific jargon serves this purpose as does, for example, Cockney rhyming slang.
I love exploring accents. I always wonder if the Internet and social media will eventually make accents fade away and become more neutral or if it will just end up another form of code-switching like she discusses in vlogging for TH-cam videos.
I also want to note that disability impacts the way people speak. I'm from the Southern United States, I grew up in a semi rural area, and I'm multiracial (white and Filipino). But many people think that I'm Alaskan, or Canadian, or from Somewhere Else Unidentifiable because I have a speech impediment... and because it's harder for me to speak, physically, the way that I make sounds just has a lot to do with the physicality of how I let words come out. I'm also an autistic adhd person, and my neurology also impacts the way I use words, and it's often very different from how other people I know speak. It can often feel lonely, to have a specific identity and a specific brain and to not be understood or communicated with mutually by most everyone around me.
Hi! Could you provide sources and useful links to the material covers in this crash course? For example, I would be interested to learn more about pragmatics or sociolinguistics but don’t know where to start.
I grew up internationally, so I become super good at code switching, to the point that I don’t realise I’m doing it and I’ve seen people pull funny faces when I talk back to them in their accent or some thing close to it. I need to be understood and that’s easier if it’s in their own accent as opposed to my natural mixed one 😂
I often don't know if a particular new-to-me word/phrase/etc originated from AAE or from internet slang. If it's internet slang I have no problem just picking it up if I want and using it but as a white girl I definitely do not want to be appropriating black culture. I also married someone who is black and sometimes I pick up his speech patterns without really realizing it, especially if there is a phrase that just doesn't have a good equivalent. Like, "He was in his feelings". That's just so useful and descriptive. And saying "a minute" when you really mean a time period that could range from days to years. It's not the grammatical differences as that is an obvious sounding difference to my ears, it's the short words and phrases that just slip into speech over time.
That's normal human communication, we all change the way we speak, the vocabulary we use etc depending on who we are talking to, and who is part of our group of family and friends. I think it's a beautiful thing. It shows a bond between people. There are expressions as you point out that are just better in different forms of speech, dialects, languages. I incorporate certain Italian and Arabic words and phrases into my everyday speech due to my partner too. This American concept of 'cultural appropriation' is just toxic; it stops people from connecting with each other the way we are meant to as humans. Don't let a few people who do the wrong thing spoil the whole beautiful human experience.
Though in writing I think style guides might be necessary for clarity and cases like Oxford's comma ...well true that someone do need to make it and it be agreed upon...
You should really link your sources in the description. It is part of the scientific method and is a great way to distance yourself from all the unscientific information on the internet.
Yes, but it's super complicated! There are lots of signs that include hand shapes that might be read as letter forms, but the words don't start with (and sometimes don't even include) those letters. Sign languages also often have different grammars than the written forms, reflecting the differences between the two forms of expressed language. For instance, "to be" and verb conjugations in general are often absent from sign languages. Also regularly absent are are things like grammatical gender, or plurals. But sign languages also differ in other ways. For instance, word order often changes: French sign language puts possessives *after* nouns; ASL allows for a wide array of different word orders to suggest emphasis and stress; and so on.
Absolutely not. A signed version of a language - like Signed Exact English - is what you're probably thinking of: A word for word translation. It's clunky and slow and not generally considered part of an actual sign language. It's more like a writing system but with signs instead of symbols. Sign languages are totally separate languages from the spoken languages in the same geographic area. The reason sign language borders sometimes line up with spoken language borders is because of politics, education, and cultural exchange. So Canada uses ASL except Québec where LSQ is more common, both of them related to French SL as mentioned in the video. But ASL is totally unrelated to BSL, because in the 19th century, when promoting signed languages for deaf education gained momentum, the US and Great Britain were mostly enemies.
Disappointed a bit in the American-centricity of this episode; socio-linguistics was established enough to be taught at my university 30 years ago, so surely there must be some interesting examples from non-USAian. Oh, and I still struggle with the "everything goes" approach preached at the end, but that's an entirely different debate
I KNEW YOU WERE MIDWESTERN IN THE FIRST VIDEO WHEN YOU CALLED A WATER FOUNTAIN A BUBBLER!! (I'm from the Madison area but I never called it a bubbler because neither of my parents do and I was homeschooled for several years)
You must have moved early cuz you can say "wis-CON-sin" rather than "wes-KAHN-sin". (Sorry no IPA keyboard!) I'm so happy you drink out of bubblers. Do you eat cheese curds with your spotted cow? 😁
Accent can also be influenced by any kind of 'corrective' training.
I had a notable lisp, the work that was done to minimize that gave me an accent that sounds quite different from others in my area/family, enough that I'm asked where I'm from because of it; yet, I live in the same town I was raised in, including when my lisp was very obvious.
this is so relatable. because of the effort put in to correct my lisp, I have a more standardised accent. and my middle school teacher used to make fun of me, saying thinks like "you are so pretentious" "why don't you talk like everyone else" this was definitely my worst nightmare growing up.
Hi
Very interesting.
Thank a for sharing this fact. I wish I had a chance to hear that. I could never thing that a circumstance of that nature could have a result of that nature.
Boy, do I know how that feels - me and my brothers all drop r's (post-vowel Rhoticism) and they did a lot of work to try and get me to not drop r's, because it wasn't common to do that where I grew up (if I was from England or Northeast US or Australia no one would have noticed). By the time I learned to make the 'ar' sound I had already learned how to speak without it. Growing up, I was often asked if I came from - Like, I lived in the same town my whole life people, come on...
Code switching and the expectation from certain groups associated with a certain code is really nothing unique to america or even english. I was born and raised in west germany, completed my education there and then moved to southern austria as an adult. During the 12 years I lived there, I would constantly hear from colleagues or friends that I "didn't need to be so high and mighty" with them. It took me quite a while to figure out that Carinthians (and probably most austrians) regard their dialect as the informal way to speak and _Hochdeutsch_ (which I was speaking) as a very formal code - kinda like the New Yorkers with their R's. But once I found out, I started to use this to my advantage, because while it came with the air of a more formal way of talking, it also came with the assumption of higher education and sophistication. Although a junior EMT back then I was quite frequently called _Herr Doktor_ by older patients, just because I didn't speak the local dialect.
True, although I don't think CC was in any way trying to imply that code switching is unique to English or anything like that. They were simply using English as an example to help explain the concept.
That's so accurate. I attended college in the south of Brazil, which is perceived to be richer and more sophisticated, due to the European immigration history. Plus, I'm white and blonde, so people naturally assume I'm of Europe descent. So my "professional" and "academic" vocabulary were formed there. I use it to my favor, whenever I want to be taken more seriously, I embody this accent with intent and people really pay more attention.
@@conspiracy_risk7526 Yes, I realize that. Did I make it sound like that? I'm sorry, english is _cleary_ not my native language...
@@conspiracy_risk7526 I interact with a lot of Germans and I can tell you that is definitely not what he meant. Germans use English differently because it is not their native language, just how I use German differently because it is not my native language.
Next week is the IPA!!! I'm STOKED!!!!
jeɪ!
I prefer lagers. 😜
Same. (:
IPAs are brewed, it's not gin!
I hope there is at least a mention of Alexander Melville Bell's Physiological alphabet.
All of this others influencing our language is so much more prominent in Hindi speakers becuase hindi has so many dialects and similar languages like punjabi and gujrati, lots of loan words and phrases from these languages. Infact the line between a different language and a dialect of hindi is blurred and I don't know if my grandmother's tongue awadhi is actually a language or not.
The line between language and dialect is a very blurry one. It's why we can't give an exact count of the number of languages that exist in the world.
I find the term "language variety" to be more useful in capturing the ambiguity of 'langauge' and 'dialect'
Instead of trying to distinguish between the two
I am writing my senior thesis about this right now lol
@@ericBorja520 As one of my professors was fond of saying, the difference between a language and a dialect is a flag.
The issue is not white people using AAE words, but black people being penalised for doing the same. We should all be able to speak in the way we find most natural, while being mindful of context.
Hear! Hear!
I'm absolutely loving the series. LangFocus with Paul has a great video in AAE as well as various other versions of English including comparing British English with American, and also how English influenced Jamaican Patois or Haitian Creole
*Fun fact:* _Every language in this Earth travels at the speed of sound except sign language. It travels at the speed of light._
LOL! That is so cool! xD, but technically not true, because written language also travel by speed of light. Also, If you send a message by WhatsApp to a friend the speed will depend on your internet XD.
But every language's speed limit is the speed of thought
Fixed the audism: Spoken language move at the speed of sound, signed languages move at the speed of light.
Except when you're reading.
I don't get it
Since I started studying linguistics I've become extremely aware of features of my own dialect. I've lived all across the south of England and some of the differences are really striking. One feature of local spoken English is a really noticeable R-sound which for the life of me I just can't do. In my native dialect there is only a partial rhotic, and R-ending syllables just have long vowels ("kaa" instead of "car"). My girlfriend teases me for it (in a nice way) all the time.
Another "bubbler" vs. "water fountain" story: my Arabic professor in college learned British English as a child. He told us a story of how, when he first moved to the US, he told someone he was "putting up in an apartment" (living in an apartment). But the person he was talking to asked why he hasn't moved out if he's "putting up with it" (tolerates it).
Also influenced by the media you consume - I grew up in Texas, but at a time when PBS was mostly older British shows, which I preferred, so Monty Python and Dr Who changed my accent noticably. I also had a negative reinforcement of accent - most of the people who beat me up or ostracized me sounded more obviously Texan, so I made a conscious effort to avoid some of their dialectical quirks
I'm no linguistic researcher, but I'd guess some dialect differences between classes are similarly negative - a deliberate attempt not to sound richer or poorer
Apparently lots of Americans find it odd when they come to England and find that our accents and dialects are so different when geographically they can be only a couple of miles apart
It's insane. My city is 15 miles wide. It takes 5 hours to drive from Colorado to missouri (through kansas). I've driven from kansas to Oregon a few times. That's a 3 day drive 36+ hours straight through.
I think just cuz our country is so big and accents change over longer distances than in the UK, but they change a lot here as well. Like I have a different accent than my neighbors, but I think that's cuz I'm black and they're white, but my parents have different accents cuz my dad is from LA and my mom is from South Carolina and I have a completely different accent from them because of where I grew up.
Yeah, In America the accent usually changes on the scale of 100s of miles, although there is more accent variation on the East coast, having to due with the fact that English has been spoken there for about twice as long. The most extreme example of this is the whole Western side of America and Canada, where the accent changes slow enough it is hard to tell whether someone comes from your hometown or 1000 miles away.
@@danktankdragkings7117 yeah well in England 100miles is a long way, in the USA 100 years is a long time. Here in Cambridge there are 2 (native) accents - Town and Gown (University) that geographically coexist
Whatever happened to Gav in this video. Hope they wasn't fired
The last part brought back some flashbacks! 😢
In my country, the majority of tv studios is the capital (in the south) so, most of the actors, presents and news anchors speak with a southern accent. Years of this lead to people believing that only the capital accent is the correct one and all the others are wrong and show a lack of education and manners.
This even lead to school textbooks showing pictures of "normal people" with the right pronunciations (and words) and next to them a farmer in dirty clothing (for ex) with a regional pronunciation of the same sentence ; in the bottom was a paragraph "explaining" why the dumb farmer was wrong and why the child should know better!
It was really sad and it took me years to undo that programing!
What country? Just curious
Are you referring to Northern and Southern English accents?
I don’t think Hank and John even realize how big of an impact they’re having on millions by crash course
I was so looking forward to this episode and it didn't disappoint. Probably my favorite aspect of language
I’m sitting here patiently waiting for an episode on psycholinguistics
I support this; throw some neurolinguistics in the mix as well
People can switch between more than two codes too. My family is very provincial working class kiwi - so when I speak to them I use a stronger accented kiwi-English and certain vocab (eg., saying 'yous'). But I've also been to university and I work in government, so when I'm at work I tend to use more of a standard kiwi-English, with less extreme vowels and less swearing and folksy idioms.
Then I used to live in Colombia, where I hung out mostly with Americans, Canadians, and Brits - so with them I'd use a kind of international-ised kiwi-English, with very moderated kiwi vowels and american vocab (americans are generally not great at understanding other dialects). But then I was also teaching English, so I'd use an ESL-English with my students, which didn't even sound kiwi. It had super clear annunciation, vowels moderated to the point of almost being British-with-American-Rs, and very a limited vocab of common words and simple grammar.
Funny story - I'm an Australian and I've never really used typical 'Australianisms' in my speech growing up. Then I moved to the UK and suddenly I was using them a lot more - words like "strewth", "fair dinkum" etc, ones that I would never use back in Australia. But at the same time my accent was becoming much more Multicultural London English as well, due to the friends I was hanging around with, and it was all happening without any thought.
I'm originally from New Orleans, where apparently AAE and SAE are the closest in sound of anywhere in the culture. I've always found it interesting that the habitual be in New Orleans is normally completely absent from SAE (used consistantly, as in most places in AAE) except for very specific situations. The habitual be is used with the verb "to have" and similar specifically to mean that that action has been going on for a long but undefined time. When asked, "How long have you had that car?" people who speak both forms would both say "I've had it for five days," for "I've had that for ten years," but both would say "I['ve] been having that car." To mean "for a long time that I haven't kept track of." I'd been noticing that even before I got into linguistics and new what it meant. :-)
hey! I spent the past four years in New Orleans so I know exactly what you mean! I'm also getting into linguistic now and it's really interesting you brought this up
I love this series so much
Can I ask a perhaps dumb question? If AAE is indeed becoming popular amongst white Americans and people overseas, isn't this a good thing overall? Like, isn't it a credit to AAE that so many want to use it? Does it not put AAE in a position of power? I get kind of uncomfortable with this idea that people are only allowed to do things based on their ethnicity, it seems segregationist.
Anyway, I really loved this video, it was probably my favourite yet. Loved learning about the 'habitual be'. I do a lot of code-switching myself between English, Italian and Arabic. It can be very amusing, it expands your ability to make puns for a start, which I always love.
It would be if the creators weren't discriminated against for using their own inventions. It's like taking a test and someone copies off of your test, you get an F but the copier gets an A.
@@memyselfandi4356 Then it strikes me the answer is to work on preventing discrimination on the basis of language, rather than insisting that other people can't use the same language. That's not how language and communication works, and society will not improve if everyone is cordoned off from each other. The focus is in the wrong place with all this "stay in your lane" rubbish. Plus, telling people what they can and can't do based on their looks or ancestry is pretty sinister. You might even say... racist.
Plus if something is limited to a minority group, mightn't it then more easily become a tool bigots use against them, than if it were widespread? I don't think people are thinking this through enough.
I noticed my accent change depending on the accent of the person I'm talking to. I have a North-American accent. But if I speak with a Brit or an Australian, my accent would change a little taking some features of the other accent.
I heard of a study saying that the more your accent differs from the "norm" the more you are discriminated.
I speak an African dialect and French. Do you think your accent will get close to mine in the event get the chance to talk?
Adopting other dialects is power-seeking. Discrimination is power-preventing.
There's also another factor in language dialects that might be skipped in this: another nearby language. The various dialects of "low Indonesian", for example, is pretty much based by what language they speak in their home, as Indonesian is often a "learned-in-school language" and not the "in-house language". There's code-switching, there's word assimilation, even some _grammatical_ borrowing if it's adventurous enough.
It's all an adventure, that's almost unexplored due to the academic's (rather understandable) fixation on formal Indonesian.
Some Irish sayings use English words with Gaelic grammar and syntax, such as 'I've a thirst on me' or 'Top of the morning to ye'. It makes for some lovely and lyrical use of language.
absolutely. ”roti, pak” is as same as ”saya beli roti, pak” in a certain context
YESSSS! THE LABOV DEPARTMENT STORE EXPERIMENT! YESSS!
Yay I love lessons from crash course
Interesting video. I always wondered what is the relationship between anatomy and language. How does one affect the other?
I LOVE CRASH COURSE! >:D
Really straight to the point!!
this was the best episode in the series yet, keep it up! Amazing work
Super interesting! I often catch myself talking differently depending on my audience and where I am.
School speech vs casual speech are very different.
thanks so much i have even comment on TH-cam but you inspired me and montivated me
I love your videos! Please make videos about linguistics theories such as Eve Clark’s language acquisitions theory and Chomsky’s universal grammar theory. Thank you!
I love Crash Cawse
I live in Austria and I am a white female American. My accent makes it hard for some people to understand my German. However, what I find interesting is depending on how some feels about American culture will be the underlying reason if they think my accent is “cute” or “embarrassing”. Linguistic discrimination is part of everyday life for foreigners in Germany and Austria; which is why most try very hard to learn the language and change their accent; myself included.
There's a lot of classism surrounding people's accents in Britain too. I was taught to hate my own accent and I'm only now unlearning that in my mid 20's.
Being an immigrant means I've developed my own weird Frankenstinian dialect of English: I mainly speak UK English, but there are different dialects of English *in* the UK and I got influenced by at least two of those; but there are also I-don't-know-how-many US English dialects that influenced the way I speak because of how much American media I was exposed to while learning English
And then I started using TH-cam and tumblr and as a result words and phrases like DFTBA or dooblydoo making their way into my vocabulary. That's also how I started using the word y'all
And then there's Polish words that I use even in English - like blacha or parówka - because either I keep forgetting the English translation or I remember it but it just doesn't sound right
I study Portuguese and English language and literature at college. It is so weird to see a crash course about something I actually know a lot about lol
It is very fitting that I got *really* stuck on how Taylor said "Appalachian," LOL!
Hurray, looks like we're gonna dig into the IPA and phonetics next time!
Like AAE, Irish has a habitual tense also and has filtered into Hiberno-English. Instead of just 'be', Irish people tend to say 'do be'. e.g He does be eating cookies
Super informative, thanks a lot
I love this, I want someone to point out different things I say and how I say them and try to figure out who I am.
A lot of things in this video kinda goes over my head and may take me some time to get down to, but I always enjoy every single moment being exposed to something new. Thanks Crash Course :3
I live in Switzerland and I really don't get the map shown at 1:50. What is it supposed to show? Because in Switzerland we speak four different languages with hundrets of dialects, so what kinds of groups are shown in this map?
A sociolinguistic study of insults and derogatory terms would be fascinating, but I imagine observer bias would affect that even more than with pronunciation - people are far less likely to use terms they know are insulting in front of strangers, especially ones holding clipboards
hi, linguist here - there is a well established research field on this! Go to google scholar and search slurs+linguistics, you'll find all sorts of great work :)
There's actually a lot of difference between English used within India! This was excellent! Thank you :)
Love that my favorite professor was mentioned in this video :))
Amazing info!!!!
Alright, sociolinguistics, where's Labov?
EDIT: 5:45 There he is!
Interesting very true
In Australia we call it a bubbler. I wonder how Australia, Wisconsin and Rhode Island all had "bubbler" pop up when each of those places have so much "water fountain" between them
That's interesting, what part of Australia are you from? I'm from Tasmania and we don't call it a bubbler, we would call it a "drinking fountain".
@@eamongilligan3262 Im from Victoria and I often use 'tap' or drinking/water fountain
I love this
i'm not trying to rush through the video the intro music just sounds better in 1.5x
Great video!
as a 49yo brazilian I saw my accent move from being ridiculed to being uber praised in my short lifetime. 😅
I like words! ^.^
Finally someone who talks about how everyone appropriates AAVE like it's funny. It's not!
Why you guys have to upload one episode per week?
This one came just in time
But I don't think any variety should be gatekept. You call out the double standards by destigmatizing its use in the original creators community (African Americans) and not criminializing the use of it outside of the community. Language is culture. And culture is shared not gatekept.
Language is as often used to set one group apart from the others as to simply communicate. Medical or scientific jargon serves this purpose as does, for example, Cockney rhyming slang.
I love exploring accents. I always wonder if the Internet and social media will eventually make accents fade away and become more neutral or if it will just end up another form of code-switching like she discusses in vlogging for TH-cam videos.
Great video! I was particularly interested by the experiments described. Can't wait for the next video!
I love that so much of this episode comes from "Because Internet" by Gretchen McCullough
Can crash course do a crash course art because you guys did a crash course game so I was just wondering if you guys can do a crash course art
I don't see many difference in Brazilian standard Portuguese than other forms of communication in the same language. Maybe slangs.
Does anyone know what 2003 study they're referring to (re: the accent challenge)?
I also want to note that disability impacts the way people speak. I'm from the Southern United States, I grew up in a semi rural area, and I'm multiracial (white and Filipino). But many people think that I'm Alaskan, or Canadian, or from Somewhere Else Unidentifiable because I have a speech impediment... and because it's harder for me to speak, physically, the way that I make sounds just has a lot to do with the physicality of how I let words come out. I'm also an autistic adhd person, and my neurology also impacts the way I use words, and it's often very different from how other people I know speak. It can often feel lonely, to have a specific identity and a specific brain and to not be understood or communicated with mutually by most everyone around me.
Loving this series, Taylor! Really looking forward to the Phonology video!
Hi! Could you provide sources and useful links to the material covers in this crash course? For example, I would be interested to learn more about pragmatics or sociolinguistics but don’t know where to start.
Where was Gavagai?!
at 0:08 , "Language Files" textbook in the background table is a very common Intro to Linguistics book in university. It was for me as well.
I hear that /aɪ/ raising, fellow Inland North American English Speaker
@sociolinguistics is the best subfield
I grew up internationally, so I become super good at code switching, to the point that I don’t realise I’m doing it and I’ve seen people pull funny faces when I talk back to them in their accent or some thing close to it. I need to be understood and that’s easier if it’s in their own accent as opposed to my natural mixed one 😂
I often don't know if a particular new-to-me word/phrase/etc originated from AAE or from internet slang. If it's internet slang I have no problem just picking it up if I want and using it but as a white girl I definitely do not want to be appropriating black culture.
I also married someone who is black and sometimes I pick up his speech patterns without really realizing it, especially if there is a phrase that just doesn't have a good equivalent. Like, "He was in his feelings". That's just so useful and descriptive. And saying "a minute" when you really mean a time period that could range from days to years. It's not the grammatical differences as that is an obvious sounding difference to my ears, it's the short words and phrases that just slip into speech over time.
That's normal human communication, we all change the way we speak, the vocabulary we use etc depending on who we are talking to, and who is part of our group of family and friends. I think it's a beautiful thing. It shows a bond between people. There are expressions as you point out that are just better in different forms of speech, dialects, languages. I incorporate certain Italian and Arabic words and phrases into my everyday speech due to my partner too. This American concept of 'cultural appropriation' is just toxic; it stops people from connecting with each other the way we are meant to as humans. Don't let a few people who do the wrong thing spoil the whole beautiful human experience.
This is really interesting!
Though in writing I think style guides might be necessary for clarity and cases like Oxford's comma
...well true that someone do need to make it and it be agreed upon...
You should really link your sources in the description. It is part of the scientific method and is a great way to distance yourself from all the unscientific information on the internet.
will you ever do videos on learning a language?
is sign language based off the spoken language of the region?
Yes.
Sometimes
@L @@moisessanchez8099 thank you! i appreciate the explanation too. i was curious if that were the case with sign language
Yes, but it's super complicated! There are lots of signs that include hand shapes that might be read as letter forms, but the words don't start with (and sometimes don't even include) those letters. Sign languages also often have different grammars than the written forms, reflecting the differences between the two forms of expressed language. For instance, "to be" and verb conjugations in general are often absent from sign languages. Also regularly absent are are things like grammatical gender, or plurals. But sign languages also differ in other ways. For instance, word order often changes: French sign language puts possessives *after* nouns; ASL allows for a wide array of different word orders to suggest emphasis and stress; and so on.
Absolutely not. A signed version of a language - like Signed Exact English - is what you're probably thinking of: A word for word translation. It's clunky and slow and not generally considered part of an actual sign language. It's more like a writing system but with signs instead of symbols. Sign languages are totally separate languages from the spoken languages in the same geographic area. The reason sign language borders sometimes line up with spoken language borders is because of politics, education, and cultural exchange. So Canada uses ASL except Québec where LSQ is more common, both of them related to French SL as mentioned in the video. But ASL is totally unrelated to BSL, because in the 19th century, when promoting signed languages for deaf education gained momentum, the US and Great Britain were mostly enemies.
I would love to hear more about transcultural communication on this channel. It's such a timeless and recent topic as well
Disappointed a bit in the American-centricity of this episode; socio-linguistics was established enough to be taught at my university 30 years ago, so surely there must be some interesting examples from non-USAian. Oh, and I still struggle with the "everything goes" approach preached at the end, but that's an entirely different debate
I think I'm in love with Taylor
🤩🤩🤩
Yo man bruv fam innit.
1:47 What is this map of Switzerland supposed to show?
I KNEW YOU WERE MIDWESTERN IN THE FIRST VIDEO WHEN YOU CALLED A WATER FOUNTAIN A BUBBLER!! (I'm from the Madison area but I never called it a bubbler because neither of my parents do and I was homeschooled for several years)
You must have moved early cuz you can say "wis-CON-sin" rather than "wes-KAHN-sin". (Sorry no IPA keyboard!)
I'm so happy you drink out of bubblers. Do you eat cheese curds with your spotted cow? 😁
👍🏽👍🏽
Fun fact Every language on earth travels at speed of light except sign language. 🌎
I thought Bostonians drop the r, NYers use a soft r sound.
where'd sabrina go from crashcourse kids
More conservative dialects are objectively more correct because linguistic drift happens through the accumulation of errors.
Indonesian could be triggered by that last quote
great perspective on racism and language.
But her accent is very neutral (sounding).