How black is your English?

black Eng·lish
  1. any of various nonstandard forms of English spoken by black people, especially as an urban dialect in the US.
  2. Also known as African American English , African American Vernacular English, Black English Vernacular, Afro-American English and Black Vernacular English. In fact it is a dialect of American English branded by pronunciations, syntactic structures, and vocabulary associated with and used by some North American black people and exhibiting a wide variety and range of forms varying in the extent to which they differ from standard English. It is usually associated with black people. (from dictionary.com)

Have you ever tried to understand American hip-hop? How much can you get from those lyrics?

And what about those movies set in the South part of the American territory? Are you able to understand what Southern accents bring?

As a teacher how do you deal with accents and dialects when your students bring them up to your classes?

There is a Brazilian teacher who has been doing an awesome job on studying and teaching this variety of American English in the last 15 years! He is Rodrigo Honorato and he is an English teacher at Achieve Languages Pampulha in BH-town. Besides being a teacher, Rodrigo, aka Dawg, is a rapper, poet, presenter, dancer, youtuber, podcaster and a founding father of the T4T-BHz. Know more about his great work at English Black Friday, on his youtube channel, listen to his podcasts on soundcloud and like his page on Facebook!