What Does "White" Sound Like?

I had just gotten home and my mom's friends were over our house (for some reason). “Aww there she is! She's grown up so much, like a parking lot weed. How have you been sweetheart?” “I've been fine, thank you. How are you?”  “Oh my goodness! You sound like a white girl, so proper.”   “Thank you!” I automatically knew what it meant when adults told me that; It was a compliment. I had always spoken that way, but when I was around my friends, I would use more slang. My friends never told me that I spoke “white”.

Just like James Baldwin wrote “ A Frenchman living in Paris speaks [a] different language from that of a man living in Marseille; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would [struggle to understand] what the man from Guadeloupe,or Martinique, is saying... although the common language of all these areas is French...each has paid, and is paying, a different price for this common language…” We are all speaking English, but sometimes I will speak “Black English” to get across better with some people in my family. Just so things come off smoother and there don't have to be any break in conversation about how different I sound.

“Did you have fun at the party?” My grandma would ask. “ Yeah! The food was great and there was a lot of dancing. I heard she was having another party soon.” I would say. But if my brother asked me, I would say, “It was lit. There's another one in two weeks and squads gonna be there. But before we go I need to get a jawn, ok?”. Jawn could mean anything, but he’d know exactly what I was walking about.

Language differs from where you are. If you are in Philadelphia, people will know what you're saying if you say hoagie, but in other places you need to say grinder or sub. The right lingo or translation for different words and meanings can be an entirely different things in the areas you are in. When people come to Philadelphia with a different accent, they seem funny to us but really we’re the ones who sound weird to them.

When I'm with my family, I hear different parts of the city in their accents because my family is so spread out. They are not from different states or countries, but they do speak more “proper” than my parents and I do. Since I'm around them a lot I actually know when to switch my accent and or slang. I sometimes don't know how, but I just do it automatically now when speaking.

From an accent, you can identity where they are from, who you live with, your neighborhood, and your community. White Americans and Black Americans in the same neighborhood can have different words because of where their family came from. My family came from Georgia mostly, but an Irish-American family next door could speak and entirely different variation of English. Their traditions at home can also be totally different from mine. Language relates with culture so it's different for everyone.

Words and phrases can be  stolen or switched around to mean something different to a dissimilar person or group of people. The word “jawn” could mean any noun. “Jawn” is a versatile word. For example: It's used to replace words like “store”, “girl”, or even “food” (“I went to the jawn to meet that jawn because she said she'd buy that jawn for me”.) And in different areas, our “jawn” is an entirely different word. It can be longer or shorter and that's just how communities work and how things are brought down by word of mouth or in text. They can also be interpreted differently depending on the person or people.

Words can be related to power as well. In some places in Africa the last letter “z” is “zed” because when the British came over, colonized, and took slaves, that's how they said the alphabet. Their oppressors made the language but they had to keep it to communicate and, therefore, survive (not in all places in Africa, but in some). I speak English and I speak different slang of the same language to thoroughly communicate with people of different groups, areas, and backgrounds. It makes it easier even though we could all speak the same language, it would take time and a lot of effort from here since everything we have is so developed now.

When messaging virtually, things are even shorter like “ttyl”, “brb”, and “omg”. When typing them, I read the full phrase. An entire phrase can be shortened to just a few words even though the meaning is still fully there. New slangs and new words show up every day and they are used by a certain group. But no one group is solid because people interchange and go from side to side to communicate with others as well so it spreads very quickly.

Language is not a conflict in my home because my mother and father taught me English (apart from school). We use standard English, nothing different because we (our families) are from America. Even though different accents can be used for different words, we don't know where they came from. Simply speaking annunciating words better is a sign of respect. Cutting words off in a very laid back way of speaking would be used formally with peers or younger people.

When I talk to my grandmother sometimes, she says things that I don't know of because they're not from my time. Simple words that she used to communicate with her friends and family aren't really in style now and I wouldn't use. But then again, there are things that I would say that she hasn't heard of and she wouldn't think is relevant (or that they don't make sense). Time really does change things along the way because things are altered by word of mouth most of the time.  When I grow up, the children of this generation now will have their own language, but things are already pretty simple as they are. We'll have to wait and see what's next.