Post 7-- AAE

The otha day, I was walkin’ down the street and thinkin’ ‘bout my ol’ friend Jackson. We been such good friend, and then one day, outta nowhere, he said he ain’t want to be my friend no mo’. It was sad. I BEEN feelin’ bad about it. Then, as I turned the corner, I saw him. He aksed me, "How you doin’?" I said, "I'm okay. How you doin’?" He said, "Okay." I tol’ him I be the new manager of my sto’. He said, "Congratulation." He said he been workin’ really hard at his job and he be sorry that he ain’t talked to me in a while. He said I look goo’, and be hopin’ that we could get together sooner rather than later. We shook hand and said goodbye.

To translate, I replaced was, is, and had been with be or BEEN, and I switched isn't or didn't to ain't. I took the last consenants off some of the words and took the s off the end of some words as well. I also switched ask to aks.

I think that there should be some focus placed on teaching speakers of African American English to speak Standard English, if only so they can understand their teachers and take tests. I think that people look at speakers of African American English differently than speakers of other languages because they were most likely born here and speak a dialect of English, while other ESL students have to learn English for the first time. So people think that AAE speakers don't need to be taught English, and that they should be able to pick it up on their own, not realizing that the dialect they speak is a basically a completely seperate language from the Standard English that most classes are taught in.