Even though HBO’s television show The Wire ran from 2002-2008, today it still remains hugely popular with television audiences around the country. This show continues to captivate viewers with its frank and realistic portrayal of life in the city of Baltimore. Each of its five seasons focused on characters in different urban domains including the drug trade, the seaport, local government, the education system and the print media, all as they interacted with Baltimore’s police department. The Wire has been praised by viewers for its anti-network stance and its devotion to presenting life in an American city in a way that is both authentic and thought-provoking. For linguists, perhaps of one of the show’s greatest achievements is its portrayal of local Baltimore accents.

While many television shows and movies have shied away from having actors make use of local dialect features, The Wire has put the Baltimore accent in the forefront with many of the lead characters and supporting cast incorporating it into their onscreen dialogue. It may not have been too much of a challenge for these actors either, since a large percentage of the predominantly African American cast hails from the Baltimore/DC area.

The cast is made up of three types of actors: (1) local professional actors, like Robert F. Chew who plays Proposition Joe and was born and raised in Baltimore (2) non-local professional actors, like Idris Elba and Dominic West, who are both from the U.K. and play Stringer Bell and Jimmy McNulty respectively and (3) local residents who appeared in the series but had little or no experience in acting prior to the appearances on The Wire, the most well-known being Felicia “Snoop” Pearson. Here it is the local actors, both professional and non-professional, who bring in the Baltimore accent and give The Wire a linguistic authenticity that separates it from other TV shows.

Probably one of the most noticeable features of Baltimore African American English is what linguists call u-fronting, where the sound in a word like “do” gets pronounced as “dew”. It’s called fronting because while the u sound (pronounced “ooh”, not “you”) is typically produced with the tongue at the back of the mouth, speakers who have this feature tend to pronounce it closer to the front of the mouth. u-fronting in Baltimore AAE is unique because this feature is not typically found in African American English, rather it is primarily found in dialects of English spoken by white Americans, such as in California English (think of the pronunciation of “duuuude”).* You can hear u-fronting in the clip below, when Proposition Joe uses the phrase “do as you do” (listen to the pronunciation of ‘do‘ in all instances). In this scene, drug kingpin Prop Joe is attempting to make a deal with rival Marlo Stanfield that would have him be part of “the Co-op”, a democratic alliance of drug deals in the region.

You can hear u-fronting again in the clip below when Donut, played by Baltimore native Nathan Corbett, describes a particular car as “a nice one too… sitting on 22s” (22s refers to 22 inch rims).

It’s not just black Baltimoreans who have u-fronting in their dialect, but white Baltimoreans as well. White Baltimoreans tend to pronounce o (“oh”) at the front of the mouth too, although this does not appear to be occurring in Baltimore AAE. Here’s a clip of middle school assistant principal Marcia Donnelly, played by Baltimore actor Tootsie Duvall. Pay attention to her pronunciation of the words ‘no‘  and ‘so‘ to hear o-fronting. To hear more u-fronting, listen to Duvall’s pronunciation of ‘who‘ , ‘knew‘, ‘classroom‘ and ‘two‘. In this scene, Donnelly is filling in the school’s principal on the numerous problems they’re encountering at the beginning of the academic year.

As we’ve said in many posts, African American English is spoken by men and women from a variety of ages, regions, professions, social classes, and even different ethnic backgrounds. While the Wire’s cast of AAE-speaking characters includes police officers, politicians, teachers and journalists, a large proportion of the cast portrays drug dealers, killers, robbers and addicts. It could be argued that this is because the show deals with very specific themes of corruption and urban decay, and therefore having the predominantly African American cast play these parts is a necessary part of the narrative. Regardless, we hope that in the future we will see more television shows that not only showcase local dialects of AAE, but we also show African American English speakers in an increasingly positive way that reflects the diversity of their backgrounds.

For more on the features of African American English in Baltimore, check out this great podcast in which we here at Word. were interviewed. In the podcast we also had the chance to talk about other features Baltimore AAE,  specifically a phenomena in which words like “carry” are pronounced as “curry“.

*u-fronting has been attested in a few other dialects of African American English, including Memphis, Tennessee and Columbus, Ohio.

Welcome to “Holla Back”, where we respond to reader questions and comments. We love receiving feedback from readers and we encourage you to keep it coming!

Darren, from Canada, sent us the following question via email:

I had a question about AAVE and alternative words used for “good” and “bad.”

A friend on FB posted this recently:

It’s interesting to me that African American Vernacular English has coined so many words for good (e.g. dope, fresh, def, bad, ill, nice) and only one for bad: wack.

I don’t think this is true, but I have had trouble coming up with specifics. Are there AAVE words for bad aside from wack?

Darren’s question is a great one, and in fact we had to put some thought into synonyms for “whack”. Here’s how we responded:

AAVE has a rich vocabulary that includes many words that can function as “bad”. As you mentioned, “whack” is a common one, but here are some others that you may not have heard of, along with examples from urbandictionary.com

busted- “unatrractive, lame, or boring”. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=busted

trifflin- “gross, dirty, ugly, nasty, poor, kife,custy”. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=triflin

jank (or jankety)- ”broken; unnecessarily redundant, superfluous, or meaningless; stupid or ridiculously moronic; bootleg or of questionable quality” http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jank

Obviously several of these words have meanings that can be narrower than simply “bad”, or that generally apply to a specific type of person or item. Unfortunately there’s presently no searchable AAVE Thesaurus, so coming up with synonyms can be challenging.

If readers have other suggestions that can help answer Darren’s question, we encourage you to post them here in the comments. Also, feel free to post questions or email us, and maybe we’ll answer your question in a future Holla Back!

Rapper Jay-Z and Gwyneth Paltrow

Awkward experiences with the N-word occur frequently, especially in the realm of hip-hop. Imagine this: you’re singing “Forget You” by Cee-Lo Green at karaoke with your friends, and you come to this part:

“Oh sh** she’s a gold digger, just thought you should know ni**a”.

The N-Word has the power to stop anyone’s karaoke jam in its tracks. What’s a music lover to do? Mumble something else? Forget the word entirely? Laugh it off?

Talking about and quoting hip-hop lyrics can be challenging, and may seem downright inappropriate when uttered in communities or around people who may take offense. Recently, actress Gwyneth Paltrow found herself the target of backlash on Twitter, after tweeting “Ni**as in Paris for real” while attending a Jay-Z and Kanye West concert in Paris. Paltrow later defend herself on Twitter by writing, “Hold up. It’s the title of the song!”.

Does Paltrow have a point? We here at Word have written extensively about the N-Word in several previous posts, and the following two questions continue to arise:  Who has the license to use the word? In what contexts is the word not offensive?

Paltrow’s defense was that she wasn’t using the word as a slur, but rather simply referencing the title of the hit song by Jay-Z and West.

In a previous post, “Why Black People Can Use the N-Word: A Perspective“,  guest blogger Luvell Anderson writes:

Uses of the word by African Americans typically aren’t offensive…whereas uses by others (with some exceptions) generally are offensive.

When non-black individuals like Paltrow use the word in reference to someone else’s use of it (like in the title of a song) is it a more appropriate use or still a deregatory term? Is there simply no context in which non-black persons can use the N-word without it being offensive? Celebrities and bloggers are divided on this issue. On The View, co-host Whoopie Goldberg questioned Paltrow’s actions, saying:

I would ask Gwyneth this. I don’t know that there’s ever a time that a white person can say that and not get a backlash for using it.

However, other black celebrities disagreed with Whoopie.  Rapper NaS defended Paltrow by saying:

She’s the homie. She’s cool. Gwyneth gets a pass. Real people get a pass…We pick and choose…Gwyneth Paltrow is a real n****, that’s my homie. That’s how I’m on it.

Rapper Nas

License to use the N-word (non-offensively) is controversial and not everyone agrees on who gets to use the word and in what contexts. NaS argues that the ability to use the word comes from “being real”, but Whoopie isn’t sure whether a white person ever has a right use it. Authenticity is in the eye of the beholder and when it comes to the N-word, as we’ve seen here, it’s always important to recognize the word’s history and social power.

Though Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, many slaves were not immediately freed due to resistance by slave owners in the Confederate states. On June 19th, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to enforce emancipation. General Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3, which read:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

The holiday has been celebrated as Juneteenth ever since.

Modern-day Juneteenth celebrations often include a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, performances of traditional African-American song and dance, and family activities.

Happy Juneteenth from all of us at Word!

On “Why Would You Study that Bad English”:

Commenter Stan writes,

“To support the use of AAE is tantamount to saying you’ve gone nowhere, you’re behind, and you’re going backwards. As far as I’m concerned, all dialects that aren’t SAE are backwards”.

Many people share Stan’s opinion that all dialects that aren’t “Standard American English” are inferior, but as we’ve written before this is often due to Standard Language Ideology which is prominent throughout our culture. American children are taught in public schools that there is one “proper” way to speak and write and that anyone who speaks differently sounds somehow “uneducated” or “uncultured”.  Commenter Jon M. points out that ideas about which dialects are prestigious have a lot to do with historical circumstances and traditional ideas about language and race.  As scientists, linguists are trained to look at different dialects as functioning systems of communication that have no intrinsic value as “good” or “bad”. One objective of this blog is to challenge the school of thought that AAE is somehow objectively less valuable than Standard English or any other dialect.

Commenter Chris writes,

“Most everyone feels the same about the best dialect being the one that they speak…By best we usually mean that we feel comfortable with hearing and using it”.

Chris’ comment is really insightful, because often are ideas about language are informed by our surroundings. Thus, it may be comfortable for individuals to feel that “the best” or “most normal” dialect is the one that they have had the most exposure to. One interesting phenomenon that supports this theory is the way that people talk about others “having an accent”.  According to Anetha Fraser Gupta, on LinguistList:

“An accent is a way of pronouncing a language. It is therefore impossible to speak without an accent. Some people may think they do not have an accent. Or you may think that there are other people who do not have an accent. Everyone has an accent”.

No two individuals speak exactly the same as one another, and individual and group differences contribute to diversity and help us to understand the world from the perspectives of others. Clinging to the unscientific idea that there’s some kind of “proper” or “correct” way to speak can limit our ability to understand new ideas and learn from those who are different from ourselves.

Thanks for all your comments and we look forward to hearing from you more in the future!

Adam Levine from Maroon 5 with Wiz Khalifa, performing on “The Voice”.

“Where Have You Been” by Rihanna is this week’s new entry in the Top 10 on the Billboard Charts. This week’s hot summer songs have a lot of African American English (AAE) features yet to be explored. Particularly noticeable this week is AAE being featured alongside Standard American English (SAE) in songs that combine both hip-hop and rock elements.

Let’s look at the lyrics:

• #3 “Payphone”-Maroon 5 Featuring Wiz Khalifa

• #5 “Starships”- Nicki Minaj

“Bad b**ches like me is hard to come by”

As we’ve written before, Nicki Minaj is often liberal with the use of AAE in her music. In this lyric, Nicki does not employ subject-verb agreement as one would in SAE, but rather uses the AAE variant. In AAE, a plural subject like b**ches is often followed by a singular verb. This is particularly common with high frequency verbs like is.

• #7 “Wild Ones”- Flo Rida featuring Sia

“Somehow, someway, gotta raise the roof”

Here, Flo Rida invokes the imagery of raising the roof (a popular hip-hop lyric and accompanying hand motion since at least the early 90′s) to discuss how he’s going to get the party started.

• #8 “Boyfriend”- Justin Bieber

“Spend a week wit your boy/I’ll be calling you my girlfriend”

Usher protege Justin Bieber incorporates AAE into his bubblegum pop style with this new track. Bieber uses the word wit instead of with, changing the word final th to t, which is a typical feature of AAE.

• #9 “Where Have You Been”- Rihanna

“I  Ø been everywhere man/looking for someone”

Rihanna often uses AAE in her songs, and this new hit is no exception. Here we see the use of the perfect tense (been) with deletion of the verb have. For example, in AAE one can use I been instead of I have been(SAE).

There was a bit of movement on this week’s chart as compared to last week: “What Makes You Beautiful” moves up one spot to #6, “Wild Ones” moves down one to #7, “Boyfriend” moves up one spot to #8, “Where Have You Been” enters the chart at #9, and “Glad You Came” slips two spots to #10. We wanted to highlight some more AAE features contained in these tracks, though we wrote about some different AAE features in these songs last week. We’ll be back next week to keep you posted on the use of AAE in the hottest songs of the summer!

*Top ten songs as recorded by Billboard Hot 100 for the week of June 16, 2012

Janelle Monae and the band Fun., composed of Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dos, and Nate Ruess.

African American English (AAE) ushers in the holiday week, popping up all over the Billboard Charts. These top ten hits seem to be playing with AAE vocabulary, like swag, and tense-marking-suffixes. Check out some samples of the African American English features in these chart-topping songs:

• #2 Call Me Maybe- Carly Rae Jepsen

AAE lyric: “Before you came into my life/ I missed you so bad/ and you should know that/ I missed you so so bad”

Here, the Canadian pop star uses -ly reduction when she substitutes bad for its Standard American English (SAE) equivalent badly. Even though this is an example of the consonant cluster reduction feature of AAE, -ly reduction occurs in many dialects, including non-standard American English.

• #3 Payphone- Maroon5 featuring Wiz Khalifa

AAE lyric: “So you talk about what you see at the top/ or what you could’ve saw”

AAE lyric: ” Now I know that/ I’m not/ all that you got”

In this line we see use of got in lieu of it’s SAE equivalent has, which is a grammatical feature of AAE.

• #5 Starships- Nicki Minaj

AAE lyric: “And if you Ø a G, you Ø a G, G, G./Jump into my hoopty hoopty hoop/ I own that”

As usual, Nicki shows us a thing or two by employing her AAE vocabulary amidst her mix of AAE grammatical features. For this sample, we focused on the word hoopty and G. According to Urban Dictionary, a hoopty is a car (typically an older model) that’s “usually cheap and/or broken down”, although it seems like Minaj is referring to an impressive classic. The site also defines a G as a gangster or someone who is attractive, clever, wealthy, and sociable. Nicki Minaj also uses zero copula (Ø), which is when the present-tense verb is/are is absent. In SAE, the lyric “and if you Ø a G” would read: and if you are a G”.

• #6 Wild Ones- Flo Rida  featuring Sia

AAE lyric: “All black shades when the sun come through/Uh-oh.”

This lyric reveals the AAE feature absence of third person present tense -s, which is the /s/ that attaches to a verb to signal that someone/thing does something. The AAE lyric “when the sun come through” is equivalent to “when the sun goes through” (SAE). Flo Rida also reduces most of his gerunds to n’ throughout this song.

• #7 What Makes You Beautiful- One Direction

AAE lyric: “The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed/ but when you smile at the ground it ain’t hard to tell/ you don’t know-o-o”

Here we find ain’t replacing the SAE form is not/ isn’t in the British-Irish boyband’s speech. In AAE, ain’t can only occur in linguistic situations where contraction (is not –> isn’t) is allowed in Standard American English. Like other features of African American English, ain’t is found in other dialects, including nonstandard British English.

• #9 Boyfriend- Justin Bieber

AAE lyric: “I got money in my hands/ that I’d really like to blow /Swag, swag, swag/ on you/ chillin’ by the fire”

The teen heartthrob broke out his AAE guidebook for this one. In this lyric alone, there is use of got for have (I got vs. I have (SAE)), gerund reduction (where the -ing in chilling (SAE) becomes chillin’), and a few vocabulary items. First we have swag, defined by Urban Dictionary as style, overall confidence, and demeanor. Chillin’ in this case refers to lounging or spending time together.

• #10 Drive By- Train

AAE lyric: “On the other side of a street I knew/ stood a girl that look  like you”

This is an example of the consonant cluster reduction feature of AAE. The SAE word looked is reduced to look since the word-final -ed is pronounced as a [t].

Nadia, top left, pictured in cap.

To speak about African American English is to also speak about the children and the communities who speak this language. The Academy Award winning 1993 feature film,  I Am A Promise, documents one year in the life of African American children attending Stanton Elementary School, an elementary school in urban Philadelphia.

The film opens with the following information:

“Stanton Elementary School is located in North Philadelphia, a troubled inner city neighborhood. Stanton is designated a Chapter One School which receives federal funds to help educate disadvantaged poor children who test below national norms in reading and math. All of the students are African American boys and girls between the ages of four and ten. At Stanton over 90% of the children come from single-parent homes and live in poverty.”

In this film, one cannot help but be moved by Nadia, a precocious ten year-old who has a gift for writing. We learn that although Nadia is the daughter of two parents who at the time are addicted to drugs, she is a straight-A student in the academically-gifted track at Stanton Elementary School. At the age of eight, a homeless Nadia takes it upon herself to seek out a healthier environment with a neighbor who she becomes a positive grandfather figure to her. The clip below from I Am a Promise introduces us to Nadia and her grandfather.

In the film, Nadia highlights the year 2011 as the year that she will be 31 years old and married. We at Word. wanted to know what happened  20 years later to the little girl who held such great promise? As Rickford and Rickford note in Spoken Soul (p. 163), “African American students, particularly the majority, who come from working-class and underclass backgrounds, have been failing in schools nationwide. Or rather, schools nationwide have been failing African American students.” What happened to Nadia, a child who grew up in an environment like so many African American children, where kids are forced to deal with abject poverty, neglect, hunger, and crime, all while pursuing an education, and a life of hope and promise?

We found her. And what she tells us is that her ‘grandfather’  is responsible for her success in life. While others doubted her ability to overcome her circumstances, Nadia’s grandfather believed in her. His unwavering support helped her stay focused and motivated because she never wanted to disappoint him. After high school, Nadia went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and later started her own beauty salon. She is currently writing her memoir.

Nadia at 30 years old in 2011.

In this powerful film, the analyses of the educational system and the ways in which it fails young, talented African American comes from the   highly dedicated principal, Deanna Burney.

The historical  plight of  many African Americans due to economic and racial segregation and  inequality had been well documented as the cause of the achievement gap that exists between African Americans and White Americans. And while this distance  has been improving, the gap continue to exist. So perhaps Nadia serves as an inspiration for young African Americans who must find the resilience to succeed in spite of limited resouces and historical odds stacked against them. Nadia reminds us:

If you see someone in any of those situations, just pretty much do whatever you can to help them because when you like that, you need it…I’m no different. It’s just that I see different and I want different. You know what I mean? So you can put that in a child that lives in an abandoned house on a corner that barely got shoes to go to school. You can make them want something for themselves. Just show them that someone else wants it for them.

The take away lessons for us all from Nadia’s life is that all children need to feel supported and nurtured throughout their education. They need to feel as though what they do matters, not only for themselves, but for those around them. Such a simple, yet crucial element to academic success is not always available in working class communities where often times parents themselves have historically  grown up in depressed situations where they have not had opportunities to advance educationally, socially and economically. Or, parents must work multiple shifts at work just to put food on the table. Then, it is critical that the educational system plays a role in  fostering  a community in which students can learn, in addition to  finding positive self-reinforcement.

Special thanks to Renee Blake’s  Spring 2011 Graduate Class on African American Language (NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis), especially Devon Moss, Lashaya Howie, Sereetta Adams and Lucy Odigie.

YouTube sensation, Jose Hustle.

Written by guest bloggers LaShaya Howie and Akintoye Moses.

We BEEN considering how to break down the linguistic features of African American English.  BEEN contemplating the oral tradition of boastin’ and braggin’ within the African American experience. The bottom line, is that we BEEN in need of an examination of the complexities of how we, as African Americans, have BEEN using language in profound ways.

Jose Hustle, YouTube phenomenon since 2008, gained notoriety though his charismatic bragging in several of his clips which have gone viral.  Repeatedly, he boasts about his excessive material possessions –his abundance of Ralph Lauren Polo gear, his multiplicity of flavors of Vitamin Water, his ridiculous stacks of paperwork on his desk. Yes —stacks. of. paper.

But something in addition to Jose’s obsession with consumption is drawing hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers.  Let’s be serious.  Who cares that he has hundreds of Polo t-shirts, some “still in the pack”?  Does it really matter that the mini fridge in Hustle’s dorm room is stocked with every flavor of Vitamin Water? Paperwork???… Who really cares? Actually, we care. We care because we recognize and appreciate that Jose Hustle is performing common aspects of the African American oral tradition.

Jose Hustle has become famous using the catchphrase “I BEEN had ________ (polo/vitamin water/ etc.)”. This phrase makes use of a syntactic construction not found in standard English (“BEEN had”). It’s thought that the first “BEEN had” video was done by a rapper named Ju from the group D4L, in his single Been Had Money. This video then sparked the creation of a number of response videos, including Hustle’s, which went on to gain internet notoriety. But that doesn’t mean everybody gets what he’s saying. In fact, one YouTube commenter had this to say about Been Had Polo:

@youngsheed1: you seem to be confused about the meaning of the phrase “I’ve been had”. It doesn’t mean “i have” (some object) with emphasis, it means “I was the victim of a scam (or similar).”, and takes no object. In addition, the stress generally goes on the “had” (I’ve been HAD!), not the “been”, unless you wanted to emphasize that you’ve /already/ been had.

Unfortunately what this commenter doesn’t realize is that Jose’s use of the phrase “BEEN had” means something different in African American English (AAE) than it does in Standard American English (SAE). In fact,  Hustle is making use of what noted linguist, John Rickford, calls  “stressed BIN” (BIN=BEEN), which is a marker of African American English. It is called “stressed BIN” because of the emphasis the speaker places on the word been in the sentence. Contrary to what the above commenter thinks, the SAE equivalent of “I BEEN had polo” wouldn’t be about getting taken advantage of, but would actually be something like, “I have had many Polo items and for a very long time.”   In one word, Jose’s use of stressed BEEN captures this same meaning; consistency sustained over a long period of time.  Jose says, over and over, that he “BEEN had Polo.” Polo ain’t new to him and he has several t-shirts, jackets, and flip flops to prove that his collection ain’t going nowhere.

Besides his use of BEEN, Jose’s use of language is consistent with African American English oral tradition in another way.  According to another noted linguist, Geneva Smitherman, AAE consists of several distinct features of verbal performance.  In other words, our use of language is often an artistic expression. One of these features is boasting, or more specifically, what Smitherman calls braggadocio. She describes braggadocio as boasting about one’s “physical badness, fighting ability, lovemanship, and coolness.”  In this regard, Jose Hustle epitomizes the pursuit of coolness. We, and the other nearly 240,000 viewers watch, respond, imitate, and in many ways, relate to Hustle. Is it because his piles of Polo make him cool? Maybe. Or is it because we are wowed by his use of language? Perhaps. Or maybe we are attracted to his use of language as art.

Jose Hustle may not change his name to Jose Linguist anytime soon, but he is skilled in what he does—and he may not even realize it because it comes so naturally. He draws you in. He makes you notice him. Maybe he even makes you envy him.  His use of language is undeniable. Through Jose’s flaunting of his material possessions, he commands notice and visibility; triumphantly using an essential part of the African American experience, language.

LaShaya Howie is an enthusiastic recent graduate of NYU with a Master’s in Africana Studies and Museum Studies. She currently works at Weeksville Heritage Center, an African American historic site, in Brooklyn.

Akintoye Moses is an educator, photographer, and poet from San Francisco.  He currently lives in New York City, where he is pursuing an M.A. from New York University at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. 

In many cultures, proverbs are used to counsel, impart wisdom, and motivate others.  The beauty of proverbs is that while their use and interpretation reflect universal human experiences, they also carry localized meanings and frames of reference unique to individual cultural groups.  Proverbs allow community members to orally transmit knowledge and cultural values to one another.

Geneva Smitherman, one of the foremost experts on African American English (AAE), maintains that ‘the use of proverbs as a rhetorical tradition’ in the African Diaspora ‘reflects the continuity of the African consciousness among new world Blacks’.

The education I received while growing up in the rural south was not limited to one source.  Though I attended school Monday through Friday, I also went to Sunday school and church, participated in cultural events at home and in the community, and spent a little bit of time out in the streets.  My mother wit, or God-given wisdom, helped me navigate many difficult situations, adding to my personal growth and development.  But I learned some of my most important life lessons from my elders in the form of proverbs.  These proverbs are a source of truth and inspiration that I will carry with me always.  I discuss a few of my favorites below.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• To this very day, my grandfather reminds me not to be naïve or gullible by telling me don’t take no wooden nickels.

•  My great-grandmother would say, every closed eye ain’ sleep and every goodbye ain’ gone, which means that things aren’t always what they seem.  This proverb lets us know that people are always watching our actions.

• Feed ‘em with a long-handled spoon means that there are certain people in life that you have to keep at a distance.

• If by chance someone tells you that you got to ease your hand out the lion’s mouth, it means that you must take great care in getting yourself out of a sticky situation.

•  Using an analogy from needlework, my great-grandmother used to tell my mother to knit and tuck, meaning that as you work and go about your daily life, you should constantly save or ‘tuck’ something away for hard times.

The cultural knowledge stored in proverbs is often not fully appreciated until you reach adulthood.  I find myself using proverbs more and more, mainly when speaking to African American peers and those younger than me.  Sometimes, however, I test them out on elders to display my competence in African American English and my home culture after so many years of formal schooling.

In sum, proverbs play an integral role in the formative experiences of many African Americans, and they help to guide their steps throughout the rest of their life.  They’re a source of wisdom for me, which I, in turn, share with others, providing cultural continuity for future generations. In this way, the circle remains unbroken.  And as the old saying goes, though the players may change, the game remains the same. 

Simanique Moody is a postdoctoral researcher in the Linguistics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Her research examines the grammatical structure of African American English and the historical relationship between African American English and Gullah-Geechee in southeast Georgia.  She is also interested in contact linguistics and language variation. A profile of Simanique and her work appeared in Word. last fall.