Talking Black In America

I'm Jamaican married to an American living in America. Family get togethers can be a real verbal exercise for me! Patois, standard English and the ever necessary Black English cadence all kinds of flow. It's a beautiful thing🤣

Black people have always mastered two languages. We have to. We have our barbershop / hair salon language...the family barbecue language...the neighborhood language...then we have our 9 to 5 cubicle / water cooler / office/ make-a-living language. We're quite adept at turning each off, and on as necessary.

We are an amazing people despite the horrible injustices done to us, we still perservere! We are God's children. I adore my people.

This is black culture at its finest, we can't let no one take this away from us.

I was adopted at 8 yrs old. I used to be ashamed of how my adopted mom talked. B/c she would use words like day long, dumpky, yonder. So I asked her why she spoke like that. She didn't get mad at all. She showed me a photo album and that's when I learned that she was Gullah Gheechee . I did a project on her later on in middle school for L.A. class. What I thought was broken English or sounded like slave-talk was a whole different language!

A person could say a few words and it felt like a thousand pictures. That is pure Poetry.

I am black UK 🇬🇧 born of 🇯🇲 Jamaican parents. People of my community, as well as myself, have always code switched. White professional, to Jamaican patois. Home, work or when with family or friends, our dialect will change. Over the decades, patois has blended into the English language to the point where many white/black youngsters in the inner cities have evolved the language. I agree Gullah does sound a lot like Jamaican patois.

It is a good thing black Americans are telling their stories. Explaining their culture.

I communicate with people in a manner that is needed.

Beautiful, just Beautiful!!! My Folk are and will always BE Amazing!!!

I moved to Charlotte NC from Charleston SC and I was immediately teased and laughed at. I decided to replace my anger with the opportunity to teach a bit of history! Working in corporate America forced me to slow down, enunciate, and pronounciate, I now speak with a more universal dialect. I'm often asked, "Where are you from, everywhere?" 😊 Of course, when I'm around my people, my dialect changes to Gullah with a slower crawl. "When you laugh at me, you mock your ancestors, for the white man has stripped you of your roots, leaving you clueless of who you REALLY are." ~L.Forrest

I wish we embraced our own dialect more. When other cultures do it, we consider it bilingual. We deserve the same respect and appreciation for our style of language.

The Scottish have their way of speaking. Welch and the Irish have their way of speaking, but no one gets more criticism than black people. It's just their way of saying, you're not good enough. I was raised in the south, and to be honest, a lot of the white people have their way of speaking, but they get criticize a lot less.

Thank you for this video. I am from Trinidad and felt the connection with the language.

Our family was originally from South Carolina, then brought to Georgia. My grandmother, who passed last year in January, spoke Gullah. She was the last that still spoke that vernacular. 😢😢😢

Beautiful production. Thank you and Happy Black History Month

We folk have two languages that we speak. Corporate and street. I've mastered both.

I had to take time out to watch this documentary since I'm from Harlem born and raised and can't leave out the Bronx. Its documentaries like these that gives me a reality check of who and what I am, and to always keep it real for real for real.

Loved it! As a little white girl in Poland I was always quite jelous of the joyful athmosphere of the black church. Catholic church is so serious and fearful. I was a little disapointed that when we did a christening in my husband's Catholic church in Guadeloupe (Caribbean) it was the same vibe as we have in Poland, but their culture is a lot like the African American culture, very lively, so having this serious mass felt at odds. I like how you speak, you have your own secret language of belonging and that is something to be proud of. For me the way you speak is like poetry - remove needless words, add your own spin.I think that's why there is so much good black poetry. You experiment with language and keep it alive. I loved that little train story at the end. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Some white people do want to copy you and that's a compliment. Do YOU!

This is just another african language with English words. I speak pulaar and wolof(west afrika),I see similarities in the rhythm,imagery,change of tone... Culture is way more deeply entrenched than we think,we are one people.peace