this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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How do i learn to understand AAVE better (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 years ago by Self_Hating_Moid@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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Im autistic and have a hard time parsing spoken language. Unfortunately the only jobs available to me are customer facing jobs. I have a very very hard time understanding black customers, to the point where i sometimes have to call other employees over to help them instead because i seriously cannot understand them. Having to ask a customer to repeat themselves 3 times and then just giving them a blank stare has made customers very angry with me before.

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[โ€“] macerated_baby_presidents@hexbear.net 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Learning accents sucks. I think you'll get it eventually with exposure but I do not know how autism might affect that. How long have you been exposed to AAVE? Took me about two months to competently understand Indian English when I was over there.

Before radio and cars, there used to be a lot more dialects of American English, some almost mutually unintelligible. There are some existing recordings of like, guys who lived their whole lives within a 50 mile radius in 1800s Appalachia. Impossible to understand. Except for AAVE, most of these regional accents have been flattened by national media. You could listen to historical recordings midway between AAVE and General American, but I think the most practical thing is just to listen to a lot of rap (from your city, because AAVE has regional accents too).

[โ€“] Self_Hating_Moid@hexbear.net 4 points 2 years ago

For the most part every black person ive spoken to had code-switched to midwest english for me. Unironically the first time i had experience with black english for an extended period of time was GTA:San andreas which is, uh, rather old and made for a white audience anyway.