Re:Why isn't 'American' a Language?
by allendoerfer on Thursday July 16, 2015 @05:22AM
(#9896155)
As someone from central Germany, who moved around in Southern Germany quite a bit I have to correct you: When you ignore English, French etc., most Germans are not bilingual, they are hardly monolingual.
Most people who do speak somewhat High German are unable to understand a heavy dialect. Somebody who speaks dialect is almost never able to speak acceptable let alone perfect High German. Even people who manage to suppress the accent are easily recognized, because they often build incorrect grammatical constructs (use of different pronouns, use of dative instead of genitive and so on).
If that constitutes bilingual to you, surely speakers of African American Vernacular English are bilingual too?
The ones who also speak High English (British English? Newscaster English? Academic English? Something along these lines...) are, yes. From what I understand, most^ just use AAVE all the time and don't learn to speak High English.
^Disclaimer: I live in Eastern Europe, I've never met a Black person (I know many dark-skinned people, but they aren't negroes, ergo not Black), I've never even met an American, I may be wrong about the "most"
African French is very close to metropolitan French because the language is less than 200 years old in Africa. You see the same effect anywhere a language has spread recently, there's much less divergence and variation.
Most Germans are bilingual in Hochdeutsch (Standard German) and a local "dialect". The question of whether a given speech is a dialect or a language is a political one, not a linguistic one.