TALKING BACK, TALKING BLACK: TRUTHS ABOUT AMERICA'S LINGUA FRANCA (audiobook) by John McWhorter

 


John McWhorter is, perhaps, the best known linguist in America (after Noam Chomsky). He has written about general rules of how languages over long periods of time, the evolution of English, the history behind English's biggest and baddest curse words, and more. Although he speaks in a formal tone, he has a knack for explaining fairly complicated things with everyday English and with lots of easy to follow examples.

The author and reader, John McWhorter
In this book, the topic is what is commonly known as Black English. 

Many people think of Black English as simply "bad" or "slang" English - English with less verb conjugations, double negatives and the endings left off of lots of words.

McWhorter demonstrates that Black English isn't just random mispronunciations and made up words. Instead, it is a coherent system that has its own distinct grammar and vocabulary. Some of it is based on the Southern dialect (most obviously is "y'all") but it would be a mistake to think it is a Southern dialect variation. 

He also shows that phenomena like Black English is a normal thing with several examples from around the world.

McWhorter reads the audiobook version of his book himself. This is appropriate since he is a rather gifted lecturer and has done several of his own audiobooks in the past (see ones that I have reviewed here.) 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TALKING BACK, TALKING BLACK: TRUTHS ABOUT AMERICA'S LINGUA FRANCA by John McWhorter.

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