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AAVE, Black English, Creole Experts

You can forget words, but not the language: Children learn languages much more readily than adults, but if contact with the language is lost, knowledge will completely fade. But it turns out the capacity to recognize it won't. Hindi and Zulu have some basic phonetic components that don't appear in English, making it difficult for English speakers to recognize some words. Researchers tested some people in the UK that had contact with these languages when young, but hadn't seen it in so long, they flunked basic vocabulary tests. It turns out they could still pick up the phonetic differences that their peers would miss.

Professor
John Rickford

LINGUISTICS | EXPERTS | AAVE

Dr. Rickford has worked on AAVE since the early 1970s and he is also a creolist and speaker of Guyanese Creole

Creole Expert,Dr. John Rickford

Spoken Soul John Rickford, Rullell Rickford

RINGLEADER DR. JOHN RICKFORD

BOOKS BY JOHN RICKFORD

Writings On The "Ebonics" Issue

Dialect Speakers & Reading Dialect Readers Curriculum

Written Creole: Genuine or Hoax?

Dr. Rickford Speaking on this Video Dr. John Rickford Video

Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English by John R. Rickford, Russell J. Rickford (Contributor)
American Book Award for 2000 from the Before Columbus Foundation.

"That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable . . . but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music."
~ John R. Rickford and Russell J. Rickford ( 2000)

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LINGUISTICS | EXPERTS

AMERICAN VIRGIN ISLANDS

Dr. Sabino's Website

Dr. Gilbert A. Sprauve E-mail: gsprauv@uvi.edu
(Off.) 340-693-1342 U.S.V.I.

Dr. Gene Emanuel E-mail: gemanue@uvi.edu
(Off.) 340-693-1348 U.S.V.I.

Language and Literature : Virgin Islands (U.S.) picked by Library of congress subject experts.
A listing of web sites that provide links to resources relating to the U.S. Virgin Islands. The most important source for bibliography of books and articles concerning the U.S. Virgin Islands.

There is more information available about early language in the Cul De Sac under the American Virgin Islands Curriculum

Professors

  • PROF. JOHN BAUGH POLICY EXPERT
    (Stanford U.) (Baugh is a leading educational and sociolinguist with a lifetime's experience of AAVE)
  • PROF. Salikoko S. Mufwene
    My research of the past twenty years has been primarily on morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of Gullah, African-American Vernacular English, Jamaican Creole, and English. However, in recent years I have focused more on the development of "Atlantic creoles" (lexified by European languages), Kikongo-Kituba, Lingala, and on questions of language evolution.
  • Professor David Sutcliff
    "Situating United States African American Vernacular English in Linguistic Space" see Fabula Software and The Voices of Living History
  • Fabula can be used to create stories in any pair of languages
  • Professor Jeff Siegel
    Stigmatized and Standardized Varieties in the Classroom: Interference or Separation? ARTICLE
  • PROF. JIM WILCE
    linguistic anthropologist at Northern Arizona University collects references to AAVE literature with comments
  • PROF. WILLIAM LOBOV
    Professor of Linguistics and Psychology [p] 215.898.4912
    Director of the Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. Labov, more than any linguist, started the scientific study of African American urban speech in a sociolinguistic manner:
    Coexistent systems in African-American English
  • PROF KENN HARPER
    Lived in the Arctic for over thirty years in Inuit communities in the Baffin Region and in Qaanaaq, Greenland. He has worked as a teacher, development officer, historian, linguist, and businessman. He speaks Inuktitut, the Eskimo language of the eastern Canadia Arctic and has written extensively on northern history and the Inuktitut language. He presently lives in Iqaluit, capital of the new Arctic territory of Nunavut, and was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Listen to an exclusive excerpt of Harper reading from "Give Me My Father's Body."
  • PROFESSOR CECILE MCHARDY Independent Scholar Gullah Culture
  • PROF. ANNA CELIA ZANTELLA
    Spanish and English = Spanglish
  • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER DEREK WALCOTT
  • MICHEL DEGRAFF
    Associate Professor of Linguistics
    Linguistic theory; syntax; morphology; language change/creation; "Creole" studies; linguistics-ideology interface.
    Morphology in Creole Genesis A prolegomenon PDF To appear in: Michael Kenstowicz, ed.,_Ken Hale: A Life in Language_ Cambridge MASS.: MIT Press
    The paper evaluates widely believed received notions about Creole morphology. These notions span the entire course of Creole studies and a variety of theoretical approaches. The paper also revisits some of the historical foundations of Creole studies and their relationships to contemporary sociological concerns in, and about, Creole communities.
  • Dr. Roger Abrahams - Roots of Rap
    Abrahams, Roger D. "Black Talking on the Streets." Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Eds. Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer. London: Cambridge UP, 1974. 240-62.
    1. Abrahams, Roger D. "The Training of the Man of Words in Talking Sweet." Language in Society 1 (1972): 15-29.
    2. Abrahams, Roger D. Rapping and Capping: Black Talk as an Art. New York: Basic Books, 1970.
    3. Abrahams, Roger D. Talking Black. Rowley MA: Newbury, 1976.
    4. Abrahams, Roger. "Negotiating Respect: Patterns of Presentation among Black Women." Women and Folklore. Ed. Claire Farrer. U of Texas P, 1975.

The Interagency Language Roundtable is an unfunded Federal interagency organization established for the coordination and sharing of information about foreign language-related activities at the Federal level. Dr. Frederick H. Jackson, I.L.R. Coordinator, Foreign Service Institute, Tel: 703-302-7064; Email: jacksonfh@state.gov.

PROF. JOHN FIGUEROA (Deceased)
A poet, teacher and champion of Caribbean culture

EXPERT MIKE CASSERLY - DEPT OF EDUCATION

LINGUISTICS European Creole Expert

Dutch Antilles in the Dutch Caribbean has the Papiamentu SpellChecker

Trini Talk by Miguel Brown