Read on Twitter
A thread for other white English users on HABITUAL BE & why you should probably quit trying to use it
NB: I’m a white European non-native speaker of English.
NB: I’m a white European non-native speaker of English.
Okay: I’ve been increasingly noticing the use of ”habitual be”, a grammatical structure in AAVE/BVE esp. on kpop stan twitter. It’s not great for a couple of reasons: 1) it’s considered appropriative by many 2) non-AAVE speakers use it ”incorrectly” & thus sound a bit silly.
Now, usually when it’s suggested non-black ppl should eradicate all AAVE from their English I’m skeptical, because purely from a linguistic POV it’s very tricky to say ”don’t use loan words from source x” & expect ppl to stop saying ”bae” & ”yeet”, that’s not how language works.
Lexical words are the most easily transferred element between languages/dialects, which is why the use of ”homie” & ”woke” is so widespread. But it seems to me like the use of ”habitual be” by white people (& non-black POC) is esp. problematic in that it looks like a deliberate
attempt to co-opt a grammatical structure that doesn’t come naturally to non-AAVE speakers in order to sound cool. You can read about the original grammatical purpose & use of habitual be here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitual_be
In this article on AAVE & the question of appropriation, Eleanor Tremeer mentions ”verbal blackface” which seems like an apt phrase in this context. https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/cultural-appropriation-drag-slang-aave/
This is another good article https://www.google.fi/amp/s/www.feminuity.org/blog/using-bve-as-a-non-black-person-is-appropriation%3fformat=amp
Also, I keep seeing e.g. white British people using habitual be on Twitter in a way they presumably don’t in speech!
In conclusion: if you’re a white person using a lot of AAVE/BVE on social media, maybe consider why you’re doing it & whether it’s okay.
bumping this thread
