Extra Credit: Linguistics Presentation

I found the entire topic to be very interesting. The topic of the presentation focused on the differing lingo of African-Americans in the United States. Personally, I thought that this was a really cool discussion seeing as though vernaculars change in every region of the country. However, this discussion connected with me personally because I am from the south and my boyfriend is from Philadelphia, PA. As expected, our words (and their meanings) often to don't match all of the time, and if often leads to one saying "What does that mean?:. But moreover, Dr. Blake's discussion focused on the language variations that are just found in New York City. What the discussion really made me think about was a movement in the 1980s (I believe) in which some colleges (and high schools) offered courses in ebonics. Within these courses students of other races could formally learn the meanings of African-American vernaculars. Although the movement didn't really last, I do think that there should be more of a focus on the varying speech patterns of African-Americans. I have traveled a bit in my life, and I sincerely can not remember a single place in which other black people have spoken like me. (Which was one of the points of Dr. Blake's session) No matter where I traveled speech patterns were never the same. In Dr. Blake's presentation, she focused on African-American Hispanics, African immigrants, and Caribbean Americans. However, I believe that there are some many other sub-groups to be studied. For example, the gullah people of the Sea Islands have a very unique speech pattern, as well as the Creole people who are African-American and French (found mostly in Louisiana). Overall though, I found the presentation very interesting and relevant, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.