anasithemachine

[anasithemachine]

First Things First:

Here's some background knowledge you may need: This project is in the context of the global Black & African Diaspora, so the conversations I'm referencing here are Afro-centric. Additionally, this is meant to be a digital archive answering the question: How does the digital landscape modify and facilitate linguistic contact in the Black & African Diaspora? I will more formally state my intentions in my reflection paper found here.

Definitions and Abbreviations:

AAE: African-American English

AAVE: (African-American Vernacular English) is an informal register/dialect of AAE used by its speakers as a slang language

Contact me: kano@stanford.edu

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In the clurb, we all Fam!

Language is how we communicate. It can be used to connect with others and tear them down. In the context of the Diaspora, language has been one of the primary ways that strengthen our historical and cultural ties. In the context of storytelling, language is just one of the many threads that Anasi has spindled to bind us his web of the diaspora.

(In the clurb, we all Fam! [We're all family] -> AAVE)

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This tweet is a declaration of what influences the author's English has. For many, if not all, in the diaspora, our English dialects have become a melange of various dialects and languages from our home country's linguistic environment and bits and pieces of dialects from other cultures in the diaspora.

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The Echo:

When talking about the African diaspora, it is commonly believed that cultural "sharing" was a one way ordeal: the culture left with the slave trade and never came back. However, the digital landscape is shifting that dynamic and redefining who the progenitors of general global Black culture is. While Africans may be the originators of historic global Black cultures (in reference to artefacts like braids, music & beats, religion, jewellery, etc), it is those in the Americas (African-Americans particularly) who are the beacons of modern global Black culture. The cultures taken from the continent have echoed back in the form of music, style, and in this study, language. The internet has given us access to dialects and part of the diaspora that we may never physically interact with due to geographical distance. Online, we constantly interact with each others varying languages and dialects, creating a cultural feedback loop. We can see this in the videos that blow up and become viral.

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This video went viral all over the English speaking world. It's of a Ghanaian man in the U.K. telling someone to quite down using colourful Ghanaian influenced English. People in Ghana started to use the phrase "shut it please" (in a British African English accent) due to the influence this Tiktok had.

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Sharing is Caring!

Barring virality, we see a lot of inter-dialectal and linguistic adoption and sharing through the proximity that many Black diasporan communities have, whether that's physical, cultural, or digital proximity. This adoption can sometimes lead to recontextualisation, and modification of terms from all over the diaspora.

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A Ghanaian man attempts to use the Jamaican Patois term "bomboclaat" but instead mis hears and says "bomboclark". He learnt this term from online content of Jamaicans, which is one of the many ways that digital platforms bridge physical gaps. This modification of the term then gains popularity and spreads to the rest of the U.K and parts of the U.S. and even Jamaica itself.

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The Tiktoker in this video is asking french speakers about the term "wesh" which originally comes from Algerian Darija (a.k.a. Dziria, Darja or Derja) and then became adopted by the larger Francophone African community, and through them, the larger Parisian community (both African and non African). The term has spread so far that some Black British English speakers have also adopted the term.

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Sankofa!

During some of this sharing we start to relearn and rediscover some of the linguistic connections we have. Many researchers and historians have written about the many ways that some of these linguistic terms and features have been retained and re-contextualised by those in and brought to the Americas.

(Sankofa [Go back and get it / Remember your roots] -> Ghanaian Akan proverb & cultural symbol)

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A Black Brit comments on hearing a term that many thought was AAE in the U.K. since he was young. This suggest that either both communities happen to develop the term separately or that AAE speakers actually might have historically borrowed the term from Black British English speakers

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In this Tiktok we see a British-Nigerian kind of surprised that a Jamaican-American understood some of the Nigerian Pidgin that he was teaching the pair of actors. The Jamaican-American then points out that Jamaican Patois has the same/similar phrases so Pidgin wasn't hard for him to understand.

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You go hear am for di beat!

The language sharing permeates general speech to music and other spoken art forms. This is most apparent in the sounds and songs that people use on platforms like TikTok.

(You go hear am for di beat! [You'll hear it in the music] -> Nigerian Pidgin)

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Big 7 - Burna Boy (Nigerian)

Mix my drink with a likkle molly (likkle [little] -> Jamaican Patois 0:25 sec )

Don't spill no drink on my clothes when I’m Louis V drippin’  (drippin’ [When I’m well dressed, head to toe in Louis Vuitton] -> AAE 0:12 sec) (starts playing from here)

Don’t like squares in my crew (square [dull, lackluster or boring person], in my crew [in my friend group/ around me] -> AAVE 1:05 mins)

The song is a mixture of AAE, Nigerian Pidgin, Jamaican Patois, and Standard American/British English. It was also a popular song choice on Tiktok for people of 1st generation Africans in Western Anglophone countries.

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Work - Rihanna (Bajan-American)

Nuh badda, text me in a crisis  (nuh badda [You better not] -> Jamaican Patois)

The song has lyrics which are a mix of Bajan creole, Jamaican Patois, and Caribbean English. (The song starts right before she says the phrase 0:37 secs) This song has remained one of the most popular sound choices for people within and outside the Black diaspora.

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Community love strong!

These kinds of language contact often lead to displays of affection and appreciation of each other’s cultures, languages, and in general, also promote more historical awareness of the ties we all share.

(Community love strong! [There's a lot of love in the community] -> Ghanaian Pidgin)

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African-American posters listing out their favourite pieces of Nigerian Pidgin.

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A Nigerian-American poster shows her love of Black British slang while studying in the U.K.