Selected YouTube Discussion Sub-Thread About Whether Black People From Britain "Talk White"

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases selected comments from a YouTube video's discussion thread. Those selected comments are part of a sub-thread in which people discuss whether Black people from Britain speak the same as White people from that country. That topic grew out of larger discussion prompted by the theme of the spoke word composition which addressed the idea of Black people "talking like they are White".

The African American spoken word video that led to this discussion is also featured in this post.

The Addendum to this post quotes two comments from a hyperlinked article entitled "In the U.K., do black people have a distinct dialect in the same way that there is a black dialect in the U.S.?"

The content of this post is presented for folkloric, linguistics, and socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Ernestine Johnson for her spoken word composition and thanks to Arsenio Hall for featuring that spoken word performance on his television show. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.
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This is part of an ongoing pancocojams series on "African American Vernacular English", "code switching" and other related linguistics customs.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/07/selected-comments-from-2012-online.html for a closely related pancocojams post entitled "Selected Comments From A 2012 Online Discussion About Young White Londoners "Talking Black" "

Also, click the tags below to find other posts in this series.

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SHOWCASE VIDEO: Ernestine Johnson Performs 'The Average Black Girl' on Arsenio Hall Show



Ernestine Johnson, Published on Apr 14, 2014

Ernestine Johnson kicks off the show with an amazing and moving performance of "The Average Black Girl." You will get chills from this performance.

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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S COMMENT ABOUT THE TERM "EBONICS"
The term "Ebonics" is frequently used in these featured comments to basically mean the same thing as "African American Vernacular English". However, the term "Ebonics" has its own history in the United States and isn't formally used by American linguists and/or American professionals. Furthermore, few African Americans formally or informally use the term "Ebonics" to refer to the ways that individual Black Americans speak or write some of the time or all of the time.

Click http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/AAVE/ebonics/ for information about "Ebonics".

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SELECTED COMMENTS
These comments are part of the sub-thread that is described above. Comments that were posted to date (July 26, 2017 5:54 PM) that aren't quoted in this post were either entirely made up of profanity abbreviations or were exchanges about religion that have nothing to do with this specific topic.

Numbers are assigned to these comments for referencing purposes only.
1. Qopel, 2015
"How come in England, the blacks talk just the same as the whites? No Ebonics, no accent. I couldn't tell a white from a black British person over the phone. Go figure."

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2.Thabiso Mhlaba, 2015
"Most British people have much crazier accents than most American ones as far as deciphering the meaning of a sentence."

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3. tatyee, 2015
"they actually do. You don't live in Britain so i'm not surprised you can't tell the difference. I have black british friends that make fun of black britains that "talk white." britain has plenty different accents. it's just racial divide isn't as severe or outright in britain. less morons there"

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4. ellensarah, 2015
"I'm from England and I was kind of wondering if the accents differ as much in the UK as they apparently do in the US. I actually grew up around a lot of black people because my school was international but they mostly had Nigerian accents (with some English mixed in depending on how long they'd been at the school). Now I'm in university all the black friends I have seem to speak with the same accent I do, and in the case of the one northern girl she sounds the same as the other white northern girls. We definitely discriminate based on accents but I think it's usually based on a colourless class discrimination, rather than race."

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5. Javan uHnah, 2015
"Black londoners have created their own ebonics actually. Ignorant."

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6. Qopel, 2015
"+Javan uHnah
..and they sound American when they sing."

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7. tatyee, 2015
"+Qopel I've noticed that too. that could be for commercial appeal though. like Iggy Azalea tryna sound like she's from the South when she raps." 

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8. Javan uHnah, 2015
"+Qopel Who are you referring to?...."

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9. Qopel, 2015
"+Javan uHnah
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and all other British bands"

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10. Javan uHnah, 2015
"The beatles and rolling stones do not have american accents (when they sing) liar."

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11. Qopel, 2015
"+Javan uHnah
Oh, right...they have Chinese accents...my bad."

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12. Javan uHnah, 2015
"+Qopel The beatles are all Liverpudlian. And yes, although that may have similarities to an American accent. It's still a british accent. The Rolling Stones did sing in american accents quite a lot tho. Thats true. Apologies.

However what does this have to do with black londoners? Who yes, have their own unique idiolect separate from of british people? Just like African Americans have ebonics."

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13. ellensarah, 2015
"+Javan uHnah
I have plenty of black friends who are from london and they all sound indistinguishable from white londeners."

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14. pikanoob, 2015
"because its entirely cultural"

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15. Javan uHnah, 2015
"+ellensarah Listen to grime artist and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Are watch kidulthood. That type of idiolect was pioneered by black brits. Only in recent years, more white londoners have started to speak this way, because just like in America everyone wants to black nowadays."

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16. ellensarah, 2015
"+Javan uHnah
I listened to some now but it all just kind of sounded like a typical working-class London accent to me, did you have a particular artist in mind?
In fact one video was a list of the best grime artists which included a white artist and a black artist and they both sounded like normal working-class Londoners."

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17. Javan uHnah, 2015
"+ellensarah There is a difference between cockney and the idiolect used by grime artists. I suppose it might seem similar to an outsider, but the vocabulary gives it away. For example, black people have come up with this phrase "mans just in ends", meaning "I'm at home".
In black londoner idiolect, people refer themselves in the 3rd person time, "mans", which means "I". That's something you wouldn't hear in a cockney accent.

Makes me wonder tho, why they haven't given this language an official name yet."

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18. GuYAh Berry, 2015
"+Javan uHnah You can identify me as a black Londoner but I don't speak like the Grime artists. I understand the point you are trying to make that but you are stereotypying in a way that Ernestine Johnson touches on. I think it would be better if you say most black Londoners speak like the Grime artists. However, maybe you haven't met many who don't :-)"

Also, in most Northern England dialects, they refer to themselves in 3rd person too, "Give us that " would be give me that", and they use the phrase "Me mam said you can take us there" meaning "My mum said you can take me there" So not just a black Londoner thing but actually it's colour and geographically-independent.

If you listen to the white Londoners, in East London or South, North or West they all have different accents- especially East London. This has nothing to do with Grime and has been like so for many decades.

"mans just in ends" actually means "I'm in my neighbourhood", "mans at yard" would be "I'm at home"
This just slang picked up over the years by people and it is definitely not limited to black people and I doubt it was solely created by them. Language changes very much over the years and it had done when black people did not live in the UK.

I don't mean any offense but your comments make it sound like you are a Londoner and every black person there speaks in the manner you describe: It is not specific to black people nor is it all black people XD.
Sorry for the long text Javan"

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19. Javan uHnah, 2015
"+Geraldine Abbey I'm a black londoner too, I don't speak like a grime artist either. This is getting tiresome
Do you know what a "road man" is? That's literally the kind of idiolect I'm talking about.
No any of that "me mam" liverpoolian stuff."

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20. ellensarah, 2015
"+Steven JG
Britain isn't big enough for different accents??"

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21. Chloe Calvin, 2015
"+Steven JG Yes they do, funny enough you brought up Jamaica because my parents are from there and Jamaica is Out of Many One People with different backgrounds and have different accents (thanks to SLAVERY). It is hard enough when the mainstream Kingston (the capital of Jamaica) street ghetto slang takes over the country's patios as the "national" language and Jamaica is only recognised for this dialect when the majority of the country speaks plain simple English.

I don't know why I bothered to answer your rhetorical question when clearly the answer is yes the "other small islands" you mean the rest of the WEST INDIES, YES they do have they're own accents as the British, French and the Spanish sold and trade slaves throughout Caribbean, so to answer your question the whole of the Caribbean has many different accents, some may sound the same but they're all different. I can tell difference with a person who speaks in Bajan Creole from a person from Trinidad right back down to Grenada to St Kitts.

Answering your previous comment Steven "Britain isn't large enough for people to for different accents" this statement makes you sound very stupid as Britain has the largest multicultural society in the world here in London where I live. The whole of the UK and Ireland have many different accents nationally and regionally. For an island the UK is a small world.

Ain't America unpopulated for it's size?

I had to educate your small mind and please enlighten me with your next reply I'll be looking forward to reading."
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Pancocojams Editor: Apparently, a question had been posted in this sub-thread about whether everyone in the West Indies has the same accent. It's likely that that comment was voted down and therefore is no longer part of that sub-thread.

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22. tatyee, 20155
"It's like me saying there is no difference between the Canadian and American accent, which I'm sure there is but I just don't hear it because I'm not from America. Or saying someone from Boston sounds like someone from New York or New Orleans or Miami. same way there are differences in the accents in America there are differences in the accents in the UK(Yes, even among the whites there)"

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23. ellensarah, 2015
"+tatyee
&, in my opinion, in most cities, there really isn't that much of a difference between black & white accents, a girl from liverpool tends to have the same accent, black or white. It's social class that tends to affect accents within the same city or town.
I know you have a different opinion, it's just my experience of all the black people I've met at Uni from different parts of the country, I don't hear a difference."

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24. Banshee Eighty, 2015
"In America, a certain idea of blacks was pushed. You either embraced this fractured culture or you attempted to assimilate. I don't think in England they had an all out campaign to segregate blacks and whites, but I could be wrong."

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25. I love nature, 2015
"England have several accents..not everyone speak "posh"."

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26. Marcus Thompson, 2016
"+Beleza Africana 😍😙 a lot more than several....."
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This is the end of this discussion sub-thread as of July 26, 2017.

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ADDENDUM
From https://www.quora.com/In-the-U-K-do-black-people-have-a-distinct-dialect-in-the-same-way-that-there-is-a-black-dialect-in-the-U-S
"In the U.K., do black people have a distinct dialect in the same way that there is a black dialect in the U.S.?
Even though there are different regional accents, is there a distinct dialect that is common among black people regardless of region (such as how black people in the south US have a different accent than in California but share a common dialect regardless of region)?"

5 Answers
Ernest W. Adams, lives in The United Kingdom
Answered May 30, 2015
"I would be careful about generalizing about a common black dialect in the United States; there are many black people in the US whose speech is indistinguishable from that of their white neighbors.

That said, the answer is no, and the reason is that black people in Britain are much more ethnically diverse. Some are recent immigrants from Africa, particularly West African nations like Nigeria and Ghana, while others are Afro-Caribbean descendants of people who came to the UK a long time ago and they sound exactly like the white people among whom they live. There was also a big influx of West Indians in the years immediately after the Second World War. The West Indian population has a dialect and an accent, but it's not shared at all with the African immigrants or with the native black British people."

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Angela Mackie-Rutledge, Black British & American expatriot
Answered Jun 2, 2015
"When speaking to people on the phone here in the UK, I cannot discern their race, but I can more easily tell their class.

I talk to a lot of black people both here and in the USA. The only thing with some commonality is a young (under 25), urban, London accent - but I've heard Asians, whites and blacks speak this way, so it's not distinctly black.

The answer provided by Ernest W. Adams seems to be pretty right on."

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