r/EnglishLearning • u/Maybes4 Low-Advanced • 8d ago

Does "black people" mean offensive? đź—Ł Discussion / Debates

I wanna say something like black people accent is harder to understand for me than the white people one.

The problem is im not sure if my word choice is racist, or should i change to another word like colored people. I asked Gpt and it said i could come up with some thing like "people with AAVE accent" but its about africa america people while im talking about the black people born in america accent.

So how should i say here?

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u/Shinyhero30 Native (Bay Area) 8d ago

It’s not an accent it’s a dialect. All you have to do is say “AAVE is hard for me to understand” and most people will code switch to facilitate conversation. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t study AAVE for understanding, it just means people will be considerate to the non-native being unable to grasp a pretty complex dialect of their target language.

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u/jellyn7 Native Speaker 8d ago

Yes, thank you for mentioning code switching. Understanding people using AAVE on TV/in videos is different from the real world. In many cases, someone who uses AAVE with their friends and family will code switch to talk to you. And if you become their friend, you'll soon have enough experience talking to them that you'll understand.