Black accent

Hi!

Do you know a White or Asian girl who speaks with a "Black accent"?

I know I'm generalizing here as there are loads of Blacks who do not talk like that, but unfortunately I couldn't find another word to describe the way many (not all) Black Americans speak.

Yeah... there are plenty of white and Asian people who "talk black", and Latinos too. It's part of the whole hip hop culture.

Depends. At least around here in Milwaukee, even very working class and poor white people do not speak like black people, but rather tend to speak forms of the dialect spoken here by other white people. The main difference that often shows up between their speech and that of other white people here is that it has less General American influence and often retains commonly deprecated features common to English dialects in general such as double negation, the use of "ain't", the use of "them" as a demonstrative, and the use of "don't" instead of "doesn't".

Isn't it referred to as 'whigga'?

It's actually spelled (and pronounced) "wigger," but you don't actually want to use that term, as it's very offensive.

I never knew the word "wigger", but thanks for letting me know!

I bumped into a Hispanic-looking guy(closer to a White man) who has a black accent(African American accent) in Chicago.
He said he'd grown up in the southern part of Chicago where black people were dominant and he'd always hung out with black people.

It was a quite interesting experience.

Very occasionally you get some white people here in the UK who make a determined effort to adopt a sort of "ghetto speak", but they invariably come from similar social backgrounds and live in area with a high density of black people, especially those of Caribbean origin - areas like Brixton and Camberwell, in South London, or perhaps in Tottenham, in North London. In Manchester - the Moss Side district, in particular.

We all know that there is a definite "black accent" and they make every effort to maintain it in the social circles I mentioned, this being most pronounced in the culture of young black males, sadly the group most likely to be involved in gang culture in the UK, and most likely to be engaged in illegal firearms possession. The knife carrying culture seems to be evident right across the racial divide though, and one which is causing immense concern in this country and with a bit of luck and a favourable wind will be adequately addressed by Gordon Brown and his PC dominated cronies. Watch this space....

Only rarely has a black person made it to the top professionally in the UK while still maintaining this sort of "ghetto accent" - one such was a bloke called Bernie Grant, who became the first ever black Member of Parliament, representing the Tottenham constituency. He is dead now but his ghetto speak boomed across the chamber of the House of Commons, in sharp contrast to the posh RP emanating from those MPs representing the Tory shires or the leafy English heartlands.

On Big Brother a couple of years back was this extremely pretty (if spiteful) white girl from the Regents Park area of London (high concentration of Caribbeans) who spoke in "ghetto" much of the time - often deliberately for reasons she never adequately explained - the rest of the time she resorted to standard English English part RP, part Sloane Sqaure London, part Estuary. Probably she was trying to appeal to all sections of the community as she was after votes from the wider public all said and done.

The black accent - it's mostly a conscious cultural thing though, and most black youths from the less privileged areas of the inner cities, especially, make every effort to keep it up as the very last thing they want is to lose "street cred" with their mates. Much of the UK is now extremely diverse culturally, anyway, even if the "immigrant areas" are generally concentrated in more confined areas. For instance the local government area where I live is officially listed as 98.9% white, so black accents are thin on the ground to say the least.

Damien, did your Bernie Grant speak like Tupac Shakur/Snoop Dogg or are you saying you have your own brand of ghetto "black accent" in the UK?

Related to that question, do you have people in the UK who adopt the speech patterns and accent of urban US blacks? If not, is there an effort to promote the adoption of such? Say What??? Sheeeeit.

Bernie Grant died in 2000 (age only 56) so I only know of him from what I've read and seen on TV in connection with British Parliamentary studies. He was a black man, originally from Guyana, and as far as I know he had a Guyanese accent - I'm not sure what that sounds like.

He was the first black Member of Parliament (MP) in Britain and was known for his very left wing views so he rose hackles in many people left right and centre, and he stood up for the rights of ethnic minorities in a country where the indigenous population is white. He represented Tottenham constituency, an area of North London with a large black community. Eventually more non-white MPs were elected to Parliament, black and Asian, including the black Diane Abbot, who also represented an Inner London constituency with a large ethnic population, but unlike Bernie Grant she speaks with a kind of English English RP with just the vaguest hint of "ethnic" about it. She appears on TV every Thursday evening, late at night, alongside the very English English sounding (by voice but not by name as he is of Spanish origin!) Michael Portillo, a former Conservative MP who represented the very cultural city of Bath, in south west England, founded by the Romans who named it Aqua Sulis, and where the "steaming baths and healing waters" are still very much well preserved today.

Bath has very many literary connections as well (notably Jane Austen) and it's architecture is very Georgian and quite unique in character, much of it restored to its original glories as much as possible after some pretty awful and devastating bombing raids on Bath during WW2 when the Nazis made concerted efforts to destroy British cities which had no industrial importance but were of great historical and architecturally aesthetic value such as Bath, Exeter, York, Norwich, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Canterbury and Lincoln. These air raids were known as the Baedecker raids.

Amazingly, Edinburgh escaped pretty much unscathed during WW2 a[prt from stray bombs dropped at random in the suburbs, although the Nazis did attempt to destroy the Forth Bridge. Most of their bombs were aimed at Glasgow, and Clydebank in particular.


Anyway, digression there. Bernie Grant deceased:

http://www.artshub.co.uk/uk/news.asp?sc=&sId=158794&catId=6&sType=feature