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Unit Three: Language and Ethnic Group

An ethnic group refers to a speech community (a group of people speaking

a particular language) that follows a common cultural background. A
language or dialect spoken by a group usually provides information on its

 Social class
 Race and culture

The Experiment in USA:

Once, an experiment was conducted in the US to find the race of the

speakers (whether they were black Americans or white Americans) based
on tape recordings. The results revealed that it was difficult to find out
because some black Americans spoke like the white Americans and vice
versa. This was due to the following reasons:

The black Americans who lived among white Americans spoke like the
Whites. Similarly, the white Americans who lived among the black
Americans spoke like the Blacks. So, language is not a defining feature of
a person’s ethnic group (race, culture).

The way a person speaks is not because of race but because of learned
behaviour (his or her surroundings).

Views about 'Pure Language' and Race

The Indo-European Parent Language

At first, people believed that only people who belonged to the pure Aryan
race spoke the original Indo-European language. But now, this view is
considered wrong. Any human being can learn any language depending on
the environment.

The Nazis' View towards German

Dr. Sujatha Menon

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Hitler and his Nazis believed that they were a superior Aryan race. So,
they wanted to have a pure German language. Hitler felt that this 'pure
language' should have no loan words from other languages.

The Case of Serbo-Croat

Yugoslavia consists of six republics. Originally, it was a multilingual

republic. In four republics, Serbo-Croat was the official language. It
came in two different forms – Serbian and Croatian. Serbian is based on
the Cyrillic alphabet and is based on eastern dialects of Yugoslavia.
Croatian, on the other hand, is based on the Latin alphabet and is related
to western dialects of Yugoslavia. Serbians, Croatians, and the muslims in
Bosnia spoke this language.

But in the 1990s, Yugoslavia faced a break-up (Each republic wanted to be

an independent country). After that, the governments of Serbia and
Croatia wanted their people to speak/learn pure Serbian and Croatian
respectively. As a result, all mixed words were removed from the
vocabulary of these languages. In other words, a Serbian or Croatian is
identified by the language he/she speaks.

This case of a 'pure language' affected the muslims of Bosnia. They could
not choose between Serbian and Croatian. So, they changed the name of
their language to Bosnian or Bosniak or Bosanski.

AAVE

AAVE is the abbreviation of African American Vernacular English. As the

name suggests, it is the English spoken by the lower-class African
Americans. It is different from the English spoken by the native
Americans.

Characteristics of AAVE

1. Many AAVE speakers do not have –s in present tense third person

singular. Eg: He go.
2. AAVE does not have the verb is or are in the present tense. Eg: She
not American.
3. AAVE uses the word be instead of the verb is or are. Eg: He be nice.

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4. AAVE syntax does not follow the subject-verb agreement. It also

omits the auxiliary verb. For example: We was eatin' – and we
drinkin' too.
5. AAVE does not invert questions. For example: I asked Mary where
did she go.
6. AAVE uses it instead of the word there. For example: Doesn't
nobody know that it's a God?
7. AAVE uses double negatives. Eg: Can't nobody do nothing about it?

Dr. Sujatha Menon