Timeline for What is it that allows a person to determine that a black person is speaking? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 10, 2017 at 0:49 | comment | added | Casey | Probably what you are observing is people speaking with the vocabulary and grammar of standard American English but with prosody more typical of African-American varieties of English. | |
| Aug 5, 2016 at 17:54 | comment | added | Chloe | @Mitch No that's an example of a separate grammar. I'm talking about standard English. | |
| Aug 5, 2016 at 17:50 | vote | accept | Chloe | ||
| Aug 5, 2016 at 17:49 | comment | added | Chloe | @HotLicks Oh wow I never considered that. That could explain it. | |
| Aug 1, 2016 at 6:02 | history | closed |
Jim Janus Bahs Jacquet Mazura stevesliva NVZ♦ |
Needs more focus | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 13:18 | comment | added | Mitch | You probably just want one obvious thing that says 'that dude must be black'? Language is pretty complex: there's the barely perceptible lilt in ones speech and then there's obvious things like distinct vocab and grammar. And then there's the fact that ethnicity is as determinable from language as from religion. Quick answer: as in the article, one example, dropping 'is' - 'she is fine' -> 'she fine'. | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 12:14 | comment | added | Hot Licks | There are differences in tonal quality of the voice that are caused by the shape of the head, mouth, and nasal cavities (and possibly the lungs and windpipe). Since some black people have inherited such shapes that are different from the typical European-American shapes, sometimes such differences in tonal quality can suggest the racial background of the speaker. Beyond that, of course, ones cultural background often affects "accent" (eg, I can fairly easily detect the fact that a "normal seeming" person of apparent European-American descent is from certain parts of the US Southeast). | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 10:21 | comment | added | Mazura | Arbitrarily? Absolutely nothing. There is no scientific basis for this. | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 8:22 | answer | added | KWinker | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 7:15 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Your basic premise here is flawed. There's no way of knowing the race of a speaker without looking at them (and sometimes that won't suffice either). A good example would be James Earl Jones who voiced Darth Vader in the original Star Wars films. Only people who actually knew who he was and that he was the voice actor had the faintest inkling that Darth Vader’s voice was ‘black’—everyone else pretty much just assumed that Darth Vader was completely white. | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 6:29 | history | edited | user66974 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 53 characters in body
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| Jul 31, 2016 at 5:52 | comment | added | herisson | "I know some black people speak very well and it's impossible to know their shade." For one thing, these things aren't necessarily the same. "Speaking well" is not a well-defined concept, and I think you're likely to offend if you say that people who do speak with an identifiably "black" accent are not speaking well. For another thing, doesn't this completely undermine the basis of your question, "What is it that allows a person to determine that a black person is speaking?" You've said it yourself: this can't always be determined. | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 4:53 | review | Close votes | |||
| Aug 1, 2016 at 6:02 | |||||
| Jul 31, 2016 at 4:48 | comment | added | Jim | If indeed they didn't speak with a separate dialect and/or have an accent then it would be impossible, But for the cases where one can tell, it's precisely because they have a different accent and/or use a different dialect. | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 4:47 | comment | added | Joffan | If the way someone - anyone - speaks sounds distinctly different, that's what 's called an accent. If you can't identify what's distinctive about it, that doesn't change the fact. | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 4:45 | comment | added | Chloe | Interesting, but unrelated: joe.org/joe/2009february/comm1.php | |
| Jul 31, 2016 at 4:33 | history | asked | Chloe | CC BY-SA 3.0 |