Summary Part III

Spoken Soul: Summary of pgs. 100-150

This section of the book discusses the vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and history of the Spoken Soul. The goal of the authors is to reveal the systematic rules of spoken soul, beginning with the vocabulary and pronunciation, and then analyzing its grammar.

“Ebonics has no dictionary, no textbooks, no grammar, no rules. It is rebellious and outside rule-based language.” Quoted from an America Online Contributor, 1996.

“If Black English isn’t a language, them tell me, what is?” –James Baldwin, 1979

These quotes represent the different views of Spoken Soul. The authors, begin this section of the book with the following quotes in an attempt to answer the question: what are the requirements to make a dialect a legitimate language. This was a question, I mentioned in Summary I, and I truly interested in finding the answer.

The authors, then begin to list the requirements needed to consider something a language. A language must have rules of grammar, pronunciation, and meaning. Within its grammar, there must be rules for modifying or combining words to express different meanings and to form larger phrases or sentences.

The authors assert that Spoken Soul has a rule of grammar that allows the speaker to move negative helping verbs such as ain’t and can’t to the front of a sentence to make the sentence more emphatic. They provide a detailed analysis of the grammar and phonology of Spoken Soul as evidence that it should be considered a legitimate language. The authors disagree with the claim that Ebonics has no formal meaning or dictionaries. They argue there are numerous books on the vocabulary of Spoken Soul. The authors will admit that, since slang words are always changing, new studies will always be needed, and advocate for the creation of a full-fledged Ebonics dictionary with pronunciations, etymologies, and historical attestations that parallel the Oxford English dictionaries.

According to the book, regarding the history or origins of the Black Vernacular, some scholars contend it bears the vivid imprint of the African languages spoken by the slaves who came to this country.

Other scholars maintain that the devastating experience of slavery wiped out most if not all African linguistic and cultural traditions, and the apparently distinctive features of spoken soul come from older British dialects,(peasants and indentured servants whom the slaves encounter in colonial times.

The theory of the vernacular having some influence from West African languages is based on the fact that the slang compound words “bad-mouth” and “crossed-eyed,”which are literal and metaphonical expressions found in the Mandigo language “da-jugu” and in the Hausa language “maum-baki.” The author argues that the reason why many African Americans pronounce the English “th” sound for [t,f,d,v] is simply because the West African languages spoken by the ancestors of today’s African Americans did not have the “th” sound in their native languages. Africans were forced to substitute the “th” sound with consonants in their language that were similar in sound.