[A Black adult shows Black kids a photo of Elmo and Cookie monster. Elmo is happily eating a cookie, as Cookie monster looks on helpless and in despair]

Black adult: On Sesame Street, Who be eating cookies?

Black kids: Cookie Monster!

Black adult: And who is eating cookies?

Black kids: Elmo!

If you think Black people are smart, and you're not racist, and you see this convo, you understand that there are *grammar rules* governing what Black kids say and understand.

slate.com/human-interest/2015/…

Why We Be Loving the “Habitual Be”

Who be eating cookies? That’s the question that the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Janice Jackson asked children in a now-famous study on “the...

^{Katy Waldman (Slate)}

@D_J_Nathanson

This is so blatantly unfair and outrageous.

I didn't know she had died. What a loss. I used to follow her on Twitter, and I certainly learned a lot from her.

Black women online have done so much to educate people like me, & I am so grateful. I would not be the person I am & would not be nearly so able to stand in solidarity with other oppressed folks without the work they have done. Rest in Power, Shafiqah.

Code switching always came naturally because it's something I've done my whole life. I was born in New York but grew up in Virginia and so I have a New York accent that mimics my larger family, a neutral accent that mimics my close family, and a southern drawl that mimics my adopted family. Each comes out depending on who I'm with and what we're talking about.

As a kid I never questioned it with my Black friends because in my head they were doing the same thing I was doing, it was just about adopting the same accent of the person to which you're speaking.

It made me so sad and angry the first time one of my friends explained to me that they weren't doing it for the same reasons I did, that it was about white people getting angry at them or accusing them of being unable to "speak right."

And if anyone reading this thread needs to hear a white dude saying it to believe it, this video is for you: youtube.com/watch?v=JDAj9OVooy…

(It's also for anyone who would find it amusing to hear a white academic linguist using AAVE forms correctly)

@tortipede Precisely :)
"Bím ag déanamh taighde" - I do be researching

In modern Hiberno English it's usually contracted to "I'd be researching" which is indistinguishable from the similar contraction of "I would be researching" - slightly different tense but the difference is unnoticeable in real usage.

@seachaint @tortipede

The Hiberno English version of habitual be with the "do" construction does still exist in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as well, but only to add extra emphasis.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=cYagtPJp…

@tortipede Kinda mad that it is somehow an insular trait. Have we enough data on the Gaulish language to rule out something over there?

I take a strong interest in Comparative Celtic Mythology, and it does look subjectively like the Gaulish monumental theonyms are closer to the Brythonic deity names than the Gaelic ones, which tentatively suggests a closer linguistic relationship too. But I am no linguist!