Transcripts For CSPAN2 Talking Back Talking Black 20170529

And i want to thank you for coming tonight. Im a librarian at mid Manhattan Library. Im happy to present john mcwhorter. Were lucky here at mid Manhattan Library because john has come more than once. He has been very kind aboutthat this is his third visit. Tonight he will speak about his most recent book, talking back, talking black. Truth of about americas lingua franca. He is a associate professor of Columbia University where he teaches linguistics, American History and africanamerican studies. He is columnist for Time Magazine and regular contributor to the atlantic and the wall street journal and the Washington Post and he is 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 mcwhorter, please. [applause] thanks, phyllis. Folks. Thanks for coming here tonight. What i want to talk to you about is not too long the last book i published which was talking back, talking black. It 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. It always bothered me. I never heard it that way but the misperception continues and we linguists, this crowd known as linguists, shake our heads at this idea that the general public, including the educated general public has with there is something wrong the way the black people talk. We always say the public just doesnt get it. But to tell you the truth i started to feel as if a lot of why the the public doesnt get it was linguists f b linguists i include myself. I thought, somebody needs to put something out there that maybe addresses all of this in a new way. First, what do i mean by black english . These days if the troll the academic literature you call hit africanamerican vernacular english or aave. I learned it in black english in the 80s, and i formed habits. I will stick with black english. But what is meant by that . Okay, it doesnt only mean the slang that is more commonly used by black people and especially black young people and others. Thats part of it. But it is not only the slang. We linguists are not shaking our head about slang. People dont like dissertations about slang. I would not waste a book about slang. The slang is 1 8 of it. That is not what we mean by black english. What we mean is two other things. First of all there is the different now in linguistics we call it foe nollgy. But in real world we call it an accent. You could say the white people have an accent. Any american has a sense on some level there is a black way to sound. If it bothers you for me to say that, i will be talking about that in 15 minutes but most people have a sense that you can usually tell a person is a blackamerican even if youre not looking at them, you could tellissenning over the phone even if no slang is used. That is proven scientifically again and again. Americans both white and black are very, very good at that. To a linguist, black english has different phonology than black english. The slang is a sound system. It is how you put words together. Linguists call that grammar but we learned that is not a good word to use in the real world because the way were all taught grammar is that grammar is about a bunch of things that people do wrong. And so to the general ear, to the extent black english has grammar it is bad grammar. To the linguist, what black english has is different but legitimately coherent grammar. The grammar is absolutely essential to the way were speaking. The sound system and the grammar. That is what im 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 is impossible to put an exact figure to it, especially because as with almost anything were talking about continuum and declines. It may be in only the sound. It might be the sound and the grammar but the vast majority, in other words this corresponds to the gut sense that we have that there is a black way of speaking or a black sound. So that is what i mean by black english. It is not the same thing as southern whitening like. I will get to that. Its a black heritage potential. That is what black english is. A great many people think of it as trash. This goes on decade after decade after decade. There are scholars who have come before me who have done magnificent detailed work on black english. Yet whenever the dialect comes up in the news for whatever reason people have the same misimpressions. It is frustrating and i wondered if it has to be that way. Now there are two things that linguists have often said about how black english should be perceived. There are two major prongs, there is a message that weve given the public. One of them is that if you dont like black english, that you dont like black people. That if you diss black english you are a racist. That has been said not in so few words but that is point people make in classes. You can read it in books and have conversations about it. I dont think that goes through. Not just because some of you may know i have a reputation on being a contrarian on race issues. Any linguist would agree with me. People that Say Something about black english that it is bad grammar say the same thing about poor southern whites grammar is very sim lear. No one is saying that they are using perfect english grammar and black people doing the same thing are getting it wrong. There is a general sense in this country in the general educated angloworld that most people walk around breaking the rules of their own language. There are all of these grammatical constructions that people say wrong. People say less books than fewer books. That it is wrong billy and me went to the rather than billy and i went to the store. Yes, i could do a whole talk on that but we have a sense that people mess up their grammar. So you can listen to black people using constructions that are considered bad grammar in the same way as very similar and often the same constructions as seen as bad grammar when white people use them. You dont have to be a racist. Something i heard many whites would say i would be a racist if i didnt think that would be bad grammar. I understand black people have been condemned to bad grammar by slavery and jim crow but our job is to teach them out of it, not pretend it is okay to use bad grammar. You may disagree, thats not a bigot. Racism alone doesnt help us here. Im not saying it is not part of it. Certainly racism plays a part but is it the only part and more to the point can the racism itself be changed . But it is not the only part and by not the only part, i dont mean it is 85 . It is really not the only part. Another aspect of it is that linguists will say black english is okay because it is systemic. What that means is that you look at the things that are different in blacking like and they actually follow rules in the same way as your own language follows rules. So that means that it is a structured and legitimate form of speech. And you know, i, im sorry to say this, to my own dissertation advisor and all the people who came before me and frankly the ones right along with me and ones that have come after, but folks, some of you are watching, i will say it, the system tisty argument doesnt convince the public and it doesnt and youve seen it. What i mean is Something Like this. The verb, to be, which is very different in black english than it is in standard english. So a black person might say, she my sister. You dont have the verb, to be. Then again the same person would never say, i your sister. That is bad grammer in black english. It has to it be im. You use the word to be with some persons and numbers but not others. And so it is omitted as linguists put it only in certain contexts as we put it. So if a martian were learning how to speak black english for real and would be indistinguishable they a lot to learn how that to be would learn. It would surprise you how high the stack of papers have been written about the verb to be in black english. It is complicated. Nobody would want a mafia torun the town. Poinciana is very systematic, i couldnt believe a piano at gunpoint, nobody wants to see her on a toy piano. Felicity alone doesnt make the argument so here we are. And that phrase that we are is where i started, i thought is that it, is it basically a matter of saying your racist if you dont like the dialect and or the system matter, where while the American Public thinks thats an appropriatesystem and so , talking back, talking black yes across for quick points. Designed to other or maybe around the peripheral argument and im going to quickly outline what they are. One of them is black english is full of things that it does not do that mainstream standard english does. The verb is not there so you can simply send blackout is broken. What is less covered is that black english is more complex in many ways then mainstream standard english but we have a hard time hearing it because all we can here is the quote unquote bad grammar , the slang also gets in the way. There are things in black english that would be more challenging for a foreigner to learn and if they had to learn the language of the wall street journal. Ill give you two quick ones. In all of these things found the light what we classify as slang, theyre not slang. Theyre beautiful, for example, you could listen to, i picture a little black boy for the first time i heard it was one of my cousins. Sounds like an overusing ad when theyre telling a story and so what had happened was she had come to my house and she had said i want some lemonade and i said ill go get you some that i came out and dropped the picture and i had bent over on the floor to clean it up and she had said what are you doing . I said im having a bad day. And youre wondering, where does it end. Then you notice the head is at the end. Some people listen to that anything that person doesnt know how to use the pluperfect, thats not what it is. Black english has some things you can find in languages spoken by obscure groups of people all over the world that has a narrative class that strikes it from the regular path, you can find this in many language if youre a linguist that describes language you wait for it. It will be the path you use to Say Something like i still do lemonade on the floor but then theres going to be a path that you use its going to be some different suspects, some prefix of words that use when youre spinning through a narrative. It would be as if in english we didnt have the ed path but then we had some other suffix that we use. Black english happens to be as each variety that has a narrow path so its not in my cousin doesnt know how to put ed on the end of things but when hes telling a story id say hes a grown man now but he would use it now because hes a fluent speaker of black english when you telling a story, he piles in the hats. When you think about that, anymore than any of us could really explain when you use a and when you use the if we really thought about how we use it going throughout the day. Human beings beach language selfconsciously, same thing with black english so nobody walks around thinking about narrative path, theres an awareness, theres a sense of a joke that people will say what had happened, that one thing. But really its a kind of grammar and its more complex than what you have to do to tell a story in standard english. A better example is john, heres somebodys science and the natural thought is well that person is saying something blackly and you might think what you mean done eight, while you say done eating . And in general why not just you ate it, whats that usage and you move on thinking like people talk wrong. Don is really interesting. And i dont mean just subtle in that its endless complexity meaning that does no system at all, that would be a way of tricking you into thinking something is complex. Its actually a very precise usage but it took people a long time to figure out and its interesting, the recent past like you done eight which was something we had 10 minutes ago, but no, there are other things that you could use done for. Somebody could say i dont have a crush on you since you were 12. That is recent, that was presumably a long time ago. Its a recent passage between its challenging but its not random. Nobody walks around using some bit of stuff in a language randomly. Thats not what black people are doing any more than anybody else is doing and it turns out that don marks expectations and what i mean is that whenever you hear a black person using done where its you dont speak black english you would just use the path, what theyre talking about is something you wouldnt have expected so you donated is somebody who thought it was going to be them for them to eat. I dont had a crush on you since you were 12 means you wouldnt have known it but here you are 40 and ive had a crush on you since you were 12. Its not how do you get here, i dont took the subway. No, unless the subway was just yesterday and it was your first time or Something Like that, otherwise just took the subway. This is grammar, this is what people study. This is this thick, black english has lots of those things. Im giving you two for the purpose of time. Black english is full of these things so you listen to it as trash causes got the slang and it breaks mainstream standard english rule but was part of harder to hear is there are all these things in that are more complex than what we of english thats the first thing and and i wish that had been made clearer to the public that has been because it has to be, people respect complexity, not just difference but complexity, black english is very complex, thats the first thing. Second thing, if we are on our way to understanding black english is not wrong and that its not not wrong because the people who speak in our black but is not not wrong because its not only thematic but complicated, then we can address this prickly issue of whether its wrong to 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, its very hard not to hear that person black sound as meaning something negative as sounding like kind of slurry. The idea is they must have something wrong with the black sound and we think it must mean that person uses bad grammar quote unquote, etc. But actually, what would be sizing as if there were no black sound because human speech starts in one place and then theres some people who go in this direction and some people who go in that direction. Now latin started here, the people who went in this direction ended up speaking french latin changing in various random ways. The people who went in this direction ended up speaking spanish because latin changed in random ways different than the ones over there. Same thing with dialects. Some people over here, theyre going to end up speaking a different kind of language and people over here and this is every bit the points even when the people live like this because its not always a matter of geography, its also social identification, youtalk like the people you are most intimate with. English is going to change in Different Directions and sounds are always changing in any language. Listen to most americans now, its gotten to the point under 40. And youll notice they are more likely to say i caught the fist rather that i caught a fish, very subtle. Theres no value judgment attached to it but the all sound is nothing into the house down. I caught a fish, sushi is raw fish. Approximate lazy circles in the sky. It isnt the way you talk, the more common. More recent in america every decade. Thats a sound change. That is one example of whats happening in all human speech all the time. So of course, black people have a sound. The sound has nothing to do with sinuses or anything like that, its just the vowels are a little different. This is study in horses so obscure that it seems almost willful, nobody wants to touch it. You find in journals that have nothing to do with linguistics, journals where they only seem to print one issue and its in finland or Something Like that but its been proven again and again person will study one vowel at a time and easily never tell the world. So about three years ago i decided what would happen if you actually use especially modern technology and analyze a few black peoples vowels and a few white peoples house. You find the vowels just sit in a different place . I put two students on this, call men and sam having rich, thank you guys and really it was just like it was one morning i was driving and visiting to npr and i had an experience like a lot of us have often, somebody was talking about tax policy and in the back of my mind i thought, how do you know . In the back of my mind. I wasnt sitting there tabulating, no but i said thats a black person and i thought how do i know . It was interesting because were trade think know, if your wife im a racist for even supposing that and black people often think know, theres not a black way to talk because it seems like its playing into the whole idea theres racism on a certain level what i think all of us know southern whites dont sounded exactly like black people but what i was listening to on npr wasnt a southerner, it was a black person. And i thought to myself what are the vowels . And there are some. Its kind of hard to talk about in this format, it would be kind of boring but there are different files. Theres also a different timber which has nothing to do with anatomy but just where you happen to produce your sound, if youre an opera singer youre taught to play your voice in a different way. Different languages have different timber in that way. Different dialogue has different timbre in that way. Theres very subtle factors of cameras that give you all subconsciously that this person is viola davis and not Melissa Mccarthy. And you know instantly and it could be analyzed scientifically, its interesting. That got out there and an interesting thing is, what are your kids . Your kids are going to ask, i asked my mother 1973, im sure people asked it all over the place and imagine your wife and your kid says how come you can always tell somebodys black even if you cant see them mommy to mark the impulses to say thats not true, black people sound like southerners. And you know thats not true. Or the impulse to say no, everybody talks in different ways. You shouldnt stereotype. Your kid has an iq over 40, theyre going to think im not stereotyping, im hearing the truth so what do you tell a 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 is for them more time together and thats true of all human groups. Its not racist, its just true and harmless. Theres nothing wrong with the way viola davis sounds as opposed to the way Melissa Mccarthy sounds but she definitely sounds black and i can tell you the cause 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 had never seen that character and it was that little bill that went off. I thought the queen has left, is she . I turned around and i forget what the queen looks like but i went on to imdb. Does the queen, its violent davis . It wasnt an accident and i dont have any special powers, i was hearing any american can hear. I have a chapter about that in the book. Third, in the book is the answer to an objection that is traditionally leveled against arguments of black english is okay. I cant talk that way in a Job Interview. They always say that, somebody is talking about what some of the complexity might be about how we shouldnt mock the language because theyre mocking the speakers and somebody will say yes, thats true but they cant talk that way at a Job Interview. Nobody said they were going to. Nobody needs to be told that. And i think that why you get a response is the cause of a sense that we often have that the way somebody speaks casually is going to interfere their ability to speak the formal variety there they are, just like english, thats even worse because everybody thinks its a mistake so assume that if you talk that way you will be able to speak standard but even if we understand that is not mistakes, theres a sense that if you hear that system, it will keep you from using the standard. That is an american kind of misimpression, a perfectly understandable american misimpression because our dialogue diversely here is delicately the same, english had been years for 2000 years as it has in for example england where different ways of speaking have been doing this for much longer and so theres kind of english there that barely sound like english was. America is 15 minutes old and so we dont have that debt of it, im not dialect diversification, that sounds like, there hasnt been as muchof this going on, some , creole south carolina, hawaiian vision, louisiana french but those varieties are also can literally on the geographical margin of the space and the louisiana creole french is essentially extinct. And its not that many people who speak those. The most part there a direct difference but there are certain vanilla aspects to the way english goes here, black english is the most divergent form of english that most People Living in the United States have any reason to hear. So what we met is that living in two very different dialects of the same thing is a very ordinary Human Experience and in the legions of places where this is normal, nobody worries that speaking the whole thing is going to interfere with speaking a formal thing. Nobody in sicily is worried that somebody speaks sicilian is going to use it in a Job Interview instead of standard italian and in sicily, standard italian is the italian metalanguage fan can take some of them college or Something Like that, and theres sicilian which really is different enough from that that if you roll the dice again in a sicily where a separate country, sicilian would be considered a separate loan rollins language is different and if you see Something Like the godfather or some episodes of boardwalk empire youll see characters using sicilian rather than standard italian because its different enough that to anybody who knows the territory to show those characters speaking textbook College Classroom italian would be ridiculous. Whenever you see one of those sicilians in say the godfather speaking that language, theyre really speaking something almost as different from italian as spanish but that person speaks entered italian in school in the Job Interview. Theres no debate in sicily about whether sicilian threaten standard italian, it would never occur to anybody. Similar is in most arab speaking countries, you know somebody who speaks arabic when they say i speak arabic a really mean i speak latin and french. A speak to let things, the standard language and what they learned on their mothers need is something so different that it is although often the speakers feel funny having it put this way but its cultural unity. A different language. You know in morocco in the language they learned at home is like french. Then they went to school and they learn Something Like latin, a moroccan will say i learned more often and i learned arabic. Any arabic speaker that you know unless theyre roughly from walden is like that, they wouldnt say theyre bilingual but the idea that egyptian arabic is a threat to standard arabic, no. As i mentioned this, theres an article in the new yorker last week that actually addresses that almost beautiful beautiful language, a linguist gets this article and thinks this article is going to run five minutes but it dwells on entered arabic and egyptian arabic and the idea that people need to let go of the egyptian because it threatens the standard, no. If anything, its the other way around. Black english is the same thing. Is is that black english teachers are and im going to be with terminology, diagnostic. Twotone. His term 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 mothers knee or fathers need and then you go to school and pretty much that same way of speaking is what your teachers use and that same way of speaking is all in 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 is very strange for the linguistic experience. I would venture that these 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 language was used on the page. For a very difficult experience, no figures on this botanical experience is that the way you speak the most spontaneously is with your family and friends, you go to school and whats on the page is something rather different, its not a different language but its different, its as if you say how whats on the page, you just have to know. Nobody imposes it, its the way its always been. And you make your way and you learn that school way. Thats humanity, thats how it works. Only about 100 of the world 7000 languages are written in any real way so most people have to make a job. Black english is that situation. People have a larger english than most white people. I wanted to call one of my very first books a larger english and they didnt like that. So what i meant was black sophomore english. Nobodys going going to try to use black english at a Job Interview. If we understand its really an okay form of speech but different, Something Else that any black person into its is there a way you speak here in another way you speak there. So black english is not a problem in that way. The Job Interview is it just falls away. Then theres the fourth and final thing. Theres this unsavory sense that many people have that theres something about menstrual speech, that is minstrel shows in which white people made fun of black people and came up with a cartoon eyes version of black speech, that something about menstrual speech and black english such that to embrace black english, to speak black english has something to do with this Cartoon Version of black speech foisted upon us starting in 1840s by whites. Whatever that relationship is supposed to be, it lingers. Theres a sense that to celebrate the language, to say someone has a black sound, all that has something to do with minstrelsy. And a lot of that comes down to actively one word. Am. So if one is inclined to looking through old minstrel show scripts or watching horrible old movies or Something Like that or books that one reads, uncle toms cabin, you get used to people saying am much more than anybody would use it in standard english so those am the best cigars i ever smoked sort of thing and you think see . They were making fun of black speech and thats the sort of thing that worries me when people talk about black english and black people talking differently because theres history. That is completely understandable, but it bears mentioning that because black english is normal human speech, coherent human speech used by the massively sophisticated human brain, it changes over time. All language does and black english is changed over time to and not in this line. Anybody knows that an episode of good times now has slang that sounds quiet which im just old enough to remember sounding urgent at the time but not slang, once forgets slang. Its the sound system and the grammar that changed too. Black people 100 years ago didnt sound like black people now. And its hard for us to know because theyre not with us to show it. But things were quite 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 doesnt sound like a black preacher would today and often he sounds vaguely irish or caribbean, listen to black singers in the 1890s and the lots which i tell you now because you dont have to go to a library, its all online. And you will listen to dark skinned black people who sound more west indian irish than anything that wes spent as a black sound today and you listen to one of them and you think that person must have just been screamed, they all sound that way. If you listen to recordings of exslaves made in the 30s and there were a great many made where you can listen to somebody talking was born in 1840s, they dont sound like jamie fox and morgan freeman, a sound like something that no longer exists in what is is just that the vowels were in different places. Fascinating. Same thing with the grammar and that includes this and business. One of the joys of science is counterintuitive and something i never thought was real until i decided to check it out couple years ago was that black people did use to use and in that way. You would never know it because it sounds so utterly foreign now. But actually, it was done just as today he is using a way where familiar with. People going there all the time and in adifferent way with and the way that you know it , its from for example home to harlem. Harlem renaissance, he writes a loving portrait of black migrants from the south or black migrants from the south. There always popping off with these hands. He wasnt making fun of anybody he was trying to get a loving, actual anthropological portrait of these people and their lives in harlem in the 1920s and nobody uses be in the way that we are used too which is confounding. Youre waiting for it because its a core of black english today but they used am and you go through transcripts of the exslaves, they use and all the time. Theres one sentence somebody says charcoal and honey and good for the baby. I dont know what that meant but if somebody is talking about childcare and you said charcoal honey and good for the baby and that the transcript ofsomebody actually speaking. Its so common that you end up realizing later, that is the way people talk because those are the sorts of things that change over the years in any human speech so menstrual speech is often quite distorted and in the book i talk about the distortions. Not completely distorted, theres an extent to which the way black people were depicted speaking in minstrel shows was reflective of the way that dialect sounded then as opposed to now. So minstrel shows were absolutely repulsive. Even more so than we think sometimes, in many places they were just entertainment. It wasnt that you went to this or that or maybe we will go to a minstrel show, minstrel show was all there was. If you watched people doing skits they were going to be blacked up and doing little dances that were supposed to be black, thats how entrenched it was but the language wasnt complete distortion. It gives you a window into something that many of us would consider a nontopic. The history of black english its not just slang , its a whole other system of speaking black english. Those four things are what the book is about and to wind up ill give you two quick things that it sheds a new kind of light on. For example, harry reid and i believe 2010 was discovered to have said that barack obama can speak negro dialect when he wants to. And everybody thought what does he mean . The negro was unfortunate but harry reid is somebody whos had the benefit of a very long life and the truth is that negro dialect is what it was called in the earliest scholarly sources. He didnt know what to call it. Is it called ebonics . What do you call it . Many people said is he saying barack obama uses bad grammar . No, its not bad grammar. Rock obama can things. He can speak in the black english in the proper situation. Calling it negro dialect is not very graceful, he was referring to something that makes barack obama a larger speaker then, george w. Bush is too easy, and say david letterman. Hes a larger speaker. He has a larger repertoire. He speaks negro dialect when he wants to so it wasnt menstrual speech. What he couldve said was black english. I dont think you have any reason to know the africanamerican vernacular but to be honest ive 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 hes being funny. Many white people think hes only pretending to speak that way and its condescending to black audiences. Some people were let into on msnbc by a black correspondent who thought rock obama should not talk that way in public at all. Very interesting. No, he has a larger english and uses black english with big surprise, black people he is by dialectal, thats what harry reid was saying, it just wasnt gracefully phrased. One more,. Ask , ask. People say that question means black people need to stop that, its wrong. Number black people use axe because axe is one of this dialogue which means black english. Its not because its hard if you are descended from africans. Black english is comfortable. Black english is casual. That is what acts is. It is not a lapse. It is 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. That im making some sort of Ivy Ivy League defense of the disadvantaged person saying this is the way my family talks. 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 called kneejerk liberalism. I am arguing on the basis of what anybody who happens to have gotten a degree in linguistics would agree with. I am arguing not on the basis of opinion, not of my gut but of fact. One of those facts is, this applies to everything i said, but back to acts for a second, one of those facts is, ask and axe competed as far as back as old english. Reading read beaowulf. You have axe in there. Chaucer of all people preferred axe. That is where what is the with axe. It is symptom of a larger english. Talking back, talking black is exactly what i explained to you, i was trying to talk back about talking black. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible] please stand at the mic. I dont have a question. I just want to make a comment. My question [inaudible] i was thinking that. Anyway, you mentioned tambre. Could you do something with that, please . One aspect of it is something that phonetics call shimmer. It is difficult to demonstrate this because knob has conscious control over it, but to the extent intuition, might be associated with black women but associated with black men, that is huskeyness that is this shimmer. There is a slight quality. You couldnt teach anybody this if they wanted to be taught it. It is what you subconsciously grow up imitating from the people around you. There is that shimmer that leads to the fact that there are many black people who dont have the vowels that im talking about. So sometimes were talking about the difference between mainstream standarding like feel, black english fill, fill. How am i feeling. That is subtle there. That is vowels. I can do that by measuring somebodys mouth. Not me who does it but my students do it. The shimmer is a little subtle letter, if somebody has the vowels, the npr im not sure how they would use the gender pronoun 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 is because of this different tambre. It is magnificently subtle. Do you have [inaudible]. Shows the tambre that youre talking about . It is not in a word. Not a word. Not a sentence. Not the kind of thing, i couldnt demonstrate this anymore than you could walk like your mother. It is Something Like, it is something subconscious. And so what i mean by the tam buy is, if youre going home on the subway, read your kindle and notice that you know the color of everybody around you. When one person is saying very standard and that guilty light goes on in your head, think black, how did i know . Well there was a huskeyness. You will have heard precisely the tambre of i mean. I wish i could do it for you like i could play some notes on a claire rin net but i cant do that. Clarinet. [inaudible]. I was born and grew up on the Lower East Side and a lot of young people spoke pig latin. Did you ever hear that pig latin . Yes. I dont know why but they, didnt speak order aniry english english ordinary english. And it went into music and i think they made movies about pig latin. Could you comment on that . Yes. Thats, that is a form of what has a technical term, it is called, there are various forms of gibberish. This is a term that people use and the popular kind of gibberish in that area of my own, i learned pig latin, yes. Its a little trick. Nowadays young ones use opish. Dog is. Something like that. You put op after everything. That is another kind of this gibberish. That is not language that is a word game. [inaudible]. I remember it well, thank you mr. Mcwhorter i enjoyed your lecture. Found it enlightening. I would like to machines that barack obama used code switching start off in one dialect and switch off to another. Uhhuh. When you agree people who are hispanic will say a few phrases in spanish and quickly switch codes go into english, could that be a good example of code switching . Same thing. Thank you. Black people can do that too, not just what is a different language. Yes, code switching. Hi, dr. Mcwhorter. Hi. My question is to what extent do you think that the traditional grammatical system we all learned in grade school has become arbitrary or off . You mean what youre taught are the proper grammar rules . Yes. Yeah. All of that is, all those things that youre taught are the right way to say it are in the empirical sense fictions. All of those little rules are something somebody made up, usually in the late 18th century based on no coherent principle at all. That includes ones we feel deeply, the rule about billy and i went to the store, i really dont have time that makes no sense but just something somebody made up. The fact of the matter is, we are human beings and there will always be some such thing as fashion. We have cant get away to it. All of us will subscribe to it. The truth is billy and me went to the store is perceived wrong. That will not change. You have to pick your battle. People need to be taught that there is bad collection of things you have to observe in formal situations if youre going to be taken seriously. That is the way it has to be. I think it is unfortunate because those rules just dont if you know the history of them, you realize why in the world are we still paying attention to that . It was just always some person who said it so were stuck with it. So the formal rules have to be taught. It would be unfortunate if not. However, what we need to realize is the person who says billy and me went to the store and that is what most people say, most of the time in the englishspeaking world are not making a mistake. They are using casual speech. You have to learn what casual versus formal is. If i could wave a magic wand, that you stuff would have to go. People should learn how to express themselves in graceful prose. There are all sorts of techniques this business about sentencing ending with prepositions and split infinitives, just in saying this, i can predict, i wonder if this will hold it off. Since cspan is here i can predict that in my box, as soon as this is put on the air, i will get all the angry emails that i shouldnt be a professor. That i need to learn this and he need to learn that. I, no, that is okay. You get used to it. And, you know what . Im going to keep being a professor. Send me one of those, im not leaving. [applause] thank you. Hi. I want to say thank you. Thank you. I wanted to ask about african grammatical retentions. I know that you know, more like in my grandmothers generation a lot of people who were from the west indies and the south and africa, africans i met now sounded very much the same. So if you could just talk about that also im very proud of our great oral tradition as african people. You know it is one of those things. I, there are a lot of people who have said that black english is african, whatever that is, african with english words. I wish that were true. That would be neat. There are languages like that and the west indian creole. Jamaican patwa or ones less known of suri nam creole which is what i have studied. Those languages, generally speaking they are African Languages with english words in them. Black english has so much more english influence that you cant just say that but black english as a sound system is influenced by African Languages. Not having r at the end of a symbol, sto instead of store. That is african inheritance and definitely the melody. Part of african english is the song it was created on. No english sound created by africans and their languages are tonal. It is kind of a continuum. The real african englishes are spoken in caribbean colonies or nigerian pigeon is like that. There is black english which is kind of in between but it is part of that general system. There is huge controversy over what the historical relationship was between gulla and black english. There are sides say there is no relationship. A lot of them for some reason are canadian. I love them to pieces many are watching, but they say that. Some people say gulla used to spoken all over the United States at that time where there was any black presence and that gulla slowly became black everybody like in those places. That is one of those things you want it to be that. Gulla spoken in wilmington, delaware, then it became black english. The evidence is not really there for that. The fight has gone on for 35 years. I think the truth is in the middle. There was some sort of relationship between gulla creole which is basically west indian and what became black english but a equal part of black english is british and irish stuff. Awful lot of those constructions are things said by white people in small towns and in the country. That feels odd to us because we dont know those people. Those are not the british people we meet. That has an interesting hybrid history. Some africa, but you will get more of the africa in west indian englishes. Good evening, professor mcworthter. Mcwhorter. Your talk brought a lot, a lot of questions to me and a lot of comments as well but not appropriate to go into right now but one of the questions i have for you is, ebonics the same as black english same as black english. Same thing. I talk about another question. When you talk about tambre, when, there was a an opera sung by black people, the name escapes me now, not porgy and bess, not an obscure opera, i will know it when i hear this, gertrude and stein. Right. She used that, she used black voices in that, if that, if that because of the tambre or is that Something Else . Like you to if you can. That is interesting. Nobody ever asked me about that. Wow. I happen to know the answer because i just happened to have read a book about the composition of that opera and what i know is that she didnt say that. However, ill bet she said it, i bet during rehearsal somebody said Something Like that. That is a tough piece. It isnt done much because the music is bad. So it is hard to say, but that wasnt why. The black people were used for pictorial reasons rather than for the tambre. Okay. Today if somebody wanted to say they wanted to use black people for the tambre, because it was racist to say there is one. She wasnt that way. I dont think she is on record having said that. Thank you, that is an interesting question. Any other questions . Do you have a question . I can do two more. This is my favorite part. Professor, my question is more about the gulla. I wonder if the name itself is from another language. I think gulla means gurl. Which is french. I wonder if there is racism involved. I think the gulla, is gurl and that the black people who have known that adopted it saying well if i am an animal, i will speak and ergo i am better because i am an animal which gives speech. So im wondering what is your thought on that . Nobody knows for sure where the term gulla is from. For it to be from gurl is interesting and i dont know, i dont know he what the source of your reasoning is, whether they speak french. Gurl means animal, your mouth. Right. But when a french person says you have a gurl, you are called an animal. So otherwise you have a boosh. So, i think that obviously having grown up in frenchspeaking countries i hear a lot of gurls being thrown around. That is short hashed way shorthand way of saying. What im asking is your thought . I believe gulla has the french root louisiana aspect. I wonder if that ties to the linguistics or etymology . Im sort of like not sure. You have goat to think all around a subject to come up with answers. That is a neat idea but im not sure there is a Strong Enough current of french, french creole in the history of gulla in particular i would be inclined to favor that explanation over the one that is usually ventured is that gulla comes from gola, as in angola because a lot of slaves came from angola. But the problem with that explanation is to your point, that the african language that survives, that is as songs people dont remember what they mean anymore is mende, which is up in is sierra leone. If you look at basketmaking patterns theyre mostly from up there as opposed to down south in angola. So the question will become, why would angola become the name of the language and nobody knows. So maybe. All right. Thank you, professor for the talk. Speaking of linguistics i have a finding i notice becausing like is not my second, not my first, native language i find the accent is formed by your first native language when you were twoyearold. You dont talk, you listen all day long for two years. So you take that accent. You deposit into your system. Very hard to change. It canning changed but for very few people. Like chinese, most people, when they say how are you doing, look at me know it is chinese. It is same thing. I came to america. I notice black people talking different from white people but i was thinking, i think it is because they carry their own language from every country. They were brought here as slavery like 200 years ago. That is, i think that is reason. So the sound difference is the most difficult in the accent for english, for any part of, for any race. So is that true . I just want to get some confirmmation. Im sorry, but no, not in this case but i can see how it would seem that way from your perspective, listening to different people. Black people have roots in africa, they sound different. That is definitely the way slaves who had grown up in africa would have sounded. So for example, in the the first roots miniseries but i forget how they had levar burton talking but he had a thick accent. Then you have the generation born in this country, theyre surrounded by many white who are native, so especially on a plantation, there were whites around but black people around you who had been born on the plantation too. What you got then was something brand new there that was different from the way whites spoke because slaves were their own community but it wasnt african. This is how we know, and this is something very clear in a city like new york. We know how africans sound when theyre speaking english as a second language. I dont mean an african who has grownp with english but an african who learned english later. It is an accent that sounds very different to most of us but only commonly heard in the United States for about 40 years and if you this about it, this person from nigeria doesnt sound anything like the black person from chicago. That is you true. In my idea, black americans are you true american, they have been here as long as white people, right . Uhhuh. So it is so different, if i heard somebody from africa, like 20 years ago, 10 years ago i can tell difference immediately. I dont know why i can tell. This is not black american. It is, he is not american. He is africanamerican in my eyes. And black americans they were born here, they have been here for generation already. But then i have another thing to ask you. When i keep talking english with everybody here, we have americans here i can get rid of my accent quickly but if i switch back to, if i talk on the phone with my chinese friends on social network for couple months my english is not as fluent as i can be. I think that is the part of me to become better talk good english. I think that deposit is kind of like, it is always in your system but it is, you can get rid of it but not all the times. No, you cant, and it is hard and the same the other way. Yeah. That is why but black american, for generations still have a slight difference when they talk. Just slightly . The analogy is correct, when the community is separate in that way some influence from the far away place from the original home can persist but in black english, the vast majority of the difference is due to the segregation that happened here. Definitely as i was saying to the other person, there is a dusting of african influence. Hi. I lived in atlanta, im from here. I lived in atlanta in the 1990s. A lot of people used tell me i sound beachchy. I dont know what that means. Have you ever heard of that expression . Geechi is gulla. I wasnt hearing it just now but [laughter] i just want to make one more comment about a lot of black english is being consciously musical, people really know and almost like there is a beat to it. Yes. And that when youre angry there is a certain beat. When youre joyous, and black men are great when they spike musically. No matter what i say in this setting about that i am wrong but that is definitely a part of the dialect and that is what you could call the diaspora aspect of it, in that, i think there is commonality with caribbeans and actual africans. Yeah, it is another way that the dialect gives a largeness. It is a broader, richer repertoire Many Americans have had any way to possess, and yet, to end this on a positive note, i can assure you within the south, two years there will be some news story in which black english is involved and you will hear all sorts of think, drop the bs and bad grammar, degradation, et cetera. I have this hope that just my little book will change opinions on that matter across the United States and beyond. I hope you will all join me in pushing that effort home. Thank you. [applause] i need to drink some water. So im going to get my bottle of water. At americas efforts to promote democracy worldwide. Third on the list, jd vance with his recollection of his childhood in a rust belt town in ohio. Hillbilly. Eegy. David mccullough with collection of speeches, the american spirit. Followed by bill oreillys latest book, old school. Our look at current nonfiction bestsellers according to the conservative book club continues with women who work, by ivanka trump, daughter and assistant to president trump. Followed by the true jesus by david limbaugh. 8th is extreme ownership. Navy seals jacques cowill link and leif babins account of their mission to help u. S. Forces secure ramadi. Next on the list bill oreilly and historian Martin Dugard history of japans defeat during world war two, killing the rising sun. Former bestsellers, president george w. Bushs paintings of american soldiers, portraits of courage. Many of these authors have or appear on booktv. Watch them on our website, booktv. Org. We live in an era of very rapid change, rapid technological change. Rapid integration of global economy, high less of integration. All these are dislocating forces. Theyre very positive in lots of way. Theyre positive in terms of generating growth. Diversity has a lost benefits but it, people feel dislocated as a result. I think what theyre saying is. We want a level of government control over this we realize government cant stop the world, make us get off but can control the pace of change to greater extent. That is commonality what is going on here and what is going on in europe. At what point does slowing the pace of change become protectionism . At what point does it basically move almost like a spectrum being open and being closed, dealing with immigration issues . How do you, how does one, if you will, get the goldilocks position on right speed of changes . It is seems like its a king knut challenge youre setting up for yourself . The goldilocks position is called politics. You read edmund burke. He says politics is how we go about balancing the different demands in society. If you look at the trade stuff. Go back to the vote on the tokyo World Trade Agreement in 1979. The house vote was 395 in favor, 4 against. Overwhelmingly the American People and representatives are in favor of liberalizing trade. By the time you get to nafta, the vote in the house is 234200. Majority of bill clintons democrats vote against him. People are saying were not quite so sure anymore. By the time you get to the Central American Free Trade Agreement and fast track authority, republicans hold the vote for an hour. Hastert and dick armey, big guys, go around intimidating republican members to get on board. I talked to mark foley of florida, said it was the worst experience of his life. In order to get a single vote needed to get fast track through the house to get Central American trade agreement. Somebody paying attention to politics would say, look we do not have broad societal support for full speed pedal to the metal liberalization. Maybe we need to slow things down. Watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. [applause] good evening, everyone, mime name is john heubusch. I have the honor being executive director of the Ronald Reagan foundation an institute. I want to thank you all joining us this evening. In honor of our men and women who defend our freedom around the world in uniform would you please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance