Oxford University Press + Harvard is creating a dictionary of African American English UPDATE

[irisblue]

Last edited Tue Jul 26, 2022, 03:03 PM - Edit history (3)

Source-https://public.oed.com/oxford-dictionary-of-african-american-english/

Title-The Oxford Dictionary of African American English

snip-"About the Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE)
An exciting project from the OED and Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research is currently underway. Read more about the project below, or sign up to receive news (at the bottom of this page) as the project progresses."

snip-"Funded in parts by grants from the Mellon and Wagner Foundations, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE) is a landmark scholarly initiative to document the lexicon of African American English (AAE) in a dictionary based on historical principles.

This three-year research project brings together the lexicographical resources of the OED and the Hutchins Center’s network of scholars of African American studies to produce a groundbreaking work of scholarship that will serve as a cornerstone of new research into African American language, history, and culture"

snip-" Every speaker of American English borrows heavily from words invented by African Americans, whether they know it or not. Words with African origins such as ‘ ‘goober’, ‘gumbo’ and ‘okra’ survived the Middle Passage along with our African ancestors. And words that we take for granted today, such as ‘cool’ and ‘crib,’ ‘hokum’ and ‘diss,’ ‘hip’ and ‘hep,’ ‘bad,’ meaning ‘good,’ and ‘dig,’ meaning ‘to understand’—these are just a tiny fraction of the words that have come into American English from African American speakers, neologisms that emerged out of the Black Experience in this country, over the last few hundred years. And while many scholars have compiled dictionaries of African American usage and vocabulary, no one has yet had the resources to undertake a large-scale, systematic study, based on historical principles, of the myriad contributions that African Americans have made to the shape and structure of the English language that Americans speak today. This project, at long last, will address that need.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Editor-in-Chief"


(" Borrows from" well one way of saying stolen by colonizers/slave masters I suppose)


I looked this up because I heard this clip on NPR Morning Edition today, 26 July.

As of 9am my time, no transcript, just audio. Transcripts should be up in a few hours.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113615386/new-oxford-dictionary-will-document-the-lexicon-of-african-american-english

In the audio there is mention of how Black Twitter is changing & amplyfing language, I'm waiting to read the transcript.
3pm eastern US Transcript is up..

snip-"{Sonja}Lanehart is on the advisory board of a new Oxford Dictionary of African American English that is set to create a historical record of these contributions."

snip-"FADEL: Lanehart says what makes this project so special is that it won't just have definitions. It will also provide historical context for each word.

LANEHART: The etymology of a word, the history of the word is extremely important. And so for this, they'll note when a word first came into the language. Who was using it? Where was it being used? And that's really important in understanding how a language sort of has developed and evolved and who's been a part of it.'

snip-"LANEHART: One of the things that's going to be interesting about this is that because of social media and Black Twitter, there are words that are represented in terms of the ways that Black people have used them. And it's going to be really important to look at that and how words are created in that particular space. Social media has allowed an outlet in a way that Black people hadn't really had before.


James D Nicole, Canadian writers' quote has stuck with me for years-"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

James D. Nicoll


Transcript is just a few minutes read

[viva la]

1. That will be fun. I love 1920s-era AA slang

so many words and phrases are coded-- triple layers of meaning.

[Triloon]

2. Lexical Borrowing

This will be a very interesting study to browse through. There are always surprising things to be learned from the origins of words.
I want to address your sentence - (" Borrows from" well one way of saying stolen by colonizers/slave masters I suppose) . It is sensible, but the word "Borrowing" here is a technical term in linguistics. It is awkward in ordinary use because everyone knows such words are never going to be returned after being borrowed. In the confusing world of linguistics Lexical Borrowing is brought from the Old English word for Becoming. I think "Adopted" is a better word for the process in ordinary use.
English, especially American English, is a huge sponge for non-English words. English contains words adopted from over 120 other languages. For instance "very", in my first sentence, is from the French "vrai", meaning "true". "Algebra" is adopted from Arabic, "Ketchup" is from Chinese. Any prolonged exposure to other cultures results in some exchange of words. It's just part of the process of trying to understand each other. All other languages have these "borrowed" words, too. Korean borrows from Chinese, the various languages of India all "borrow" words from each other, as do the many languages of Africa. It seems like the whole world has adopted the American English word "okay".
The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language is king of this sort of work and I'm certain their Lexicon of African American English will be credible and fascinating.

[irisblue]

3. Today I Learned-"the word "Borrowing" here is a technical term in linguistics"

I did not know that. Thank you for teaching me.

[Triloon]

4. and I thank you.

I did not know this project was happening.

[irisblue]

5. I was puttering in the kitchen, heard the NPR article and thought Damn! Good idea.

[tishaLA]

6. There are some great people working on this

Especially John Rickford. I read a lot of his work in grad school when I was working on a paper for my American Philology class. He's probably the most influential figure in how we understand AAVE. Sonja Lanehart has also done some important work about African American Women's language.