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  • Like other posters said I think it's fine if it sounds organic and it's not for the purposes of mockery or trying to act black. A lot of it is part of general speech already, especially with younger people.

    I think people that get too hung up or weird about it neglect to realise that language evolves with time and trying to gatekeep it along racial lines is probably a form of racism itself?

    Kind of similar to the discourse around cultural appropriation with other cultures wearing traditional dress of other cultures (in a non-mocking way). Also the people that get most hot and bothered about this stuff are other white people honestly.

  • Depends on who you are and how you’re using it.

    Plenty of white people grow up in diverse environments or even all black environments so they pick up the dialect. That’s unavoidable

    Other people get influenced by their friends or spouses who say things or from the media they consumed, they look it up, and think “that’s a cool word I’ll say it next time when it fits my situation”

    Then there are the rich libs in their bougie neighborhoods or gated communities that try to be hip or rebel against their white bread upbringing. Even if they don’t mean to be racist, they become caricatures of black people because they want to fit into an environment they’ve never been exposed to get some kind of cred. Because they’ve never been exposed to it, all they have to go off is the most mainstream depictions.

    • This. I know a lot of white people who have either grown up speaking that way, or who picked it up naturally and have earned the right to use it. I’m homeless, in a very white city—the homeless community here though is at least 1/3rd Black, if I had to guess.

    • i'm mixed race, but it's been a couple of generations, so i pass as white, and i grew up around black people, and i was taught to speak in "white" coded ways in order to "sound educated," get a job more easily, avoid discrimination, etc. etc. so in a way i'm the yang to the yin of people like this. even when I'm around black people i don't code switch back to AAVE because it doesn't feel natural to me even though i've been exposed to it my whole life. to do so would make me feel like the one lightskinned mix person trying to play up how black they are, and it comes off as cringe. I mostly try to listen more than I speak, in person, even though in text i ramble.

  • tbh I feel like there aren't really a lot of white people that talk in AAVE. For the most part white people, especially younger ones, have just adopted a couple words and phrasings that slightly differentiates their speech from the stereotypical transatlantic accent, but to call that AAVE is really selling AAVE short.

    Whether or not that's racist, I'm torn. I mean there is a discussion to be had about the gentrification and co-optation of language, but a lot of those terms have also at this point entered the general American lexicon. I can't really fault some random middle-schooler for not knowing the history of "based" or something. I think even "cool" comes from AAVE. But there are a lot of people calling stuff gen Z slang or Internet slang, when really it's AAVE (which further problematizes the use of "slang" to refer to these things, since AAVE is not "slang.")

    I also feel like the Internet's embrace of these words has just made them corny as hell. They've become meme words, and I feel like they subsequently become marked as unserious, almost joke words. I can't use the word "bet" anymore thanks to a bunch of white tiktokers wanting to talk like Black people. Every time I hear "sus" I think of amogus. "Woke" - I mean we all know the story of the fall of "woke," need I say more? Anything white people touch immediately becomes uncool. I will never take anyone who uses the word "cap" unironically serious again.

  • I used to say "(...) be like" regularly, but eventually I figured that it probably wasn't quite right to use the habitual be exclusively as a snowclone for memes and jokes and shitposts, as if that grammatical feature is inherently humorous, rather than just the way that some people talk. When I started thinking about that, saying "(...) be like" started to feel as phony to me as pulling a Huey Freeman impression and saying "that's some ol' bo'-shit", or rapping along to Black artists and replacing every instance of the slovo na bukve N with the word "brotha" or even just a second of awkward silence, instead of just choosing something else for karaoke night.

    That aside, I might use some words or phrases originating in AAVE here and there. Sometimes these terms have just passed into general usage and I grew up with them, sometimes these terms are ""Gen Z slang"" that I'm using in tandem with my own terms, and sometimes terms originating in AAVE just fill a semantic gap.

    All in all, the number one rule is that if you're specifically trying to sound Black, then you're probably being a bit cringe; and if you're trying to sound "hip with the youths", then you should be acutely aware of the ways in which Black culture including language are commodified and alienated from its creators in a perpetual cycle for white chelly-vecks to fill in the gaping emptiness in their souls created by their alienation from their own cultures with the culture of a marginalized group... But I also wouldn't necessarily hold it against you to say things like "lit fam" or "based", just, be aware of and acknowledge the history and origins.

    Though there are always going to be edge cases for these sorts of things.

  • Usually yeah?

    I'm from Hawai'i where we have Hawaiian Pidgin, as well as Pidgin English, essentially Pidgin-light, which is generally more common. Both are usually just called Pidgin.

    Anyway, Pidgin is generally spoken by people whose ancestry goes back to the 19th century or earlier. Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Okinawan, Korean and Portuguese people generally know how to speak Pidgin English or full Pidgin depending on where they live.

    Most white people do not speak Pidgin and it comes off real fuckin weird if they try.

    There are two caveats.

    Haoles are only like 20-25% of the population so way more of them are aware of these subtleties than mainland haoles are with AAVE.

    Caveat one: There are some haoles, usually 3rd 4th 5th 6th generation, that speak full on Pidgin, and speak English with a local accent. You can always tell when it's natural.

    Caveat two: Everyone, and even most haoles, use certain Pidgin words and phrases, sometimes without knowing it. This is totally normal and not weird, and can signify someone as not-a-tourist.

    I fucking thought these two were normal American slang or shorthand until people looked at me weird on the mainland:

    • You like? (Do you want this/want some)
    • I like? (Can I have that/have some)

    Also very common:

    • I'm going school (I'm attending school)
    • go beach? (Let's go to the beach)
    • shoots (bye)
    • howzit/hazit (how's it)
    • talk story (chatting)
    • no can (I can't, they can't, it can't)
    • if can can if no can no can (poetic, also a bit more local coded)
    • stink eye (a glare)
    • B-52/747 (big motherfucker flying cockroach)
    • [verb] 'em
    • removing "ly" from adverbs
    • da kine (overuse of this one is not for haoles)
    • shishi (pee)
    • side (as in let's go Hilo side, let's go Kona side)
    • uncle/auntie (sign of respect for anyone a generation or more older, but especially older Hawaiian or local people)

    And haoles say a lot of Hawaiian words like:

    • hapa (mixed race person, not only mixed Asian like people think on the mainland)
    • pau, all pau, pau hana (done, all done, done with work)
    • puka, (hole) especially puka shell
    • kapu (more when used to refer to a trespass area)
    • 'ohana (more when used to refer to a studio apartment style room within/attached to a house)
    • okole (butt)
    • akamai (smart)
    • pakalolo (weed)
    • pu'u (hill especially cinder cone)
    • mauka/makai (mountain direction, ocean direction) you literally have to say these, not optional
    • keiki (1 year old, baby, or small child)

    That's all normal stuff to say, some are easier to sound off-key than others.

    And the key is not to use some weird fucking accent! Just say em normal.

    But you really have to be born into a heavily Pidgin speaking area to be a white person like "breh yo girl say you bettah go home bumbai she goeen lick you, we stay goeen eensai da kine foa wan beer, but! Shootz den." also helps a bit if you can pass for Portuguese

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