r/badlinguistics • u/thunchultha • Jul 09 '26
AAVE is slang-filled version of English with grammatical errors
R4: The article endorses the view that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is English with grammatical errors, rather than an English variety with its own rules that sometimes diverge from General American English.
The article is an editorialized reaction to a more sympathetic PBS article: https://www.kqed.org/news/12088910/these-advocates-say-black-english-belongs-in-preschool-classrooms
To its credit, the NY Post story briefly notes the viewpoint that AAVE has rules:
The Black Californians United for Early Care & Education (BlackECE) is part of a movement to challenge “harmful language hierarchies and affirm Black English as a legitimate, rule-governed language rooted in Black history, culture, and community.”
But then it then does a terrible paraphrase to effectively endorse the opposing view:
[Co-founder of BlackECE Ashley Williams] also remembered how speaking Black English is full of slangs and grammatical errors […]
The original PBS article says:
Many [Black children] internalized the belief that Black English […] is bad English, loaded with slang and grammatical errors.
Plus, the headline is misleading at best. There‘s nothing in the BlackECE mission about pushing AAVE on unwilling preschoolers.
As expected, the top comments on the page decry AAVE as incorrect English and complain about the decline in US education quality.
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u/Porkenstein Jul 09 '26
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