The only people who I’ve heard say old school are old white guys so I’m good with that. It’s phrases like “my bad” “haven’t seen you in a minute” the fuck does that even mean? How can any self respecting man say that shit.
GET THAT PAPER!
MAKE BANK!
FINESSIN'!
HE JUS BUILT DIFFRENT!
IMA DO IT FOR YOU
Y'ALLS TIME IS OVER
HUSTLIN'
HE DO
DIN DO NUFFIN
TRYNA
Among the most commonly discussed features of Ebonics are:
(1) omission of the copula be in such sentences as
“Larry sick,”
“Sharon gon come,” and
“Glenn playin,” (2) consonant cluster simplification, so that, for example, the pronunciation of passed or past is often indistinguishable from that of pass,
(3) double negatives, as in
“She don wan nothin,” (4) lack of subject-verb agreement, as in
“He do,” (5) absence of subject-auxiliary inversion in direct questions, such as “Why you don’t like me?” and
“Where he is?,” (6) subject-auxiliary inversion in subordinate clauses, such as “
He aks me did I do it?,” (7) omission of the auxiliary do in questions such as “What you want?” (a feature germane to the absence of subject-auxiliary inversion and typologically related to the absence of the copula as a semantically empty verb),
( 8 ) consuetudinal or invariant be, such as “Billy don’t be telling lies” (different in meaning from “Billy don’t tell lies,” because it refers to repeated processes rather than to a repeated activity), and
(9) the use of steady to indicate persistence, in constructions such as “She steady talking” to mean “She persists in talking.”
They are said to be variable because they do not occur categorically; they alternate with their standard counterparts (when applicable), and they occur in frequencies that vary from one speaker to another—and sometimes within the same speaker, from one setting to another.
Aside from the ethnic identity of its speakers, Ebonics is perhaps most distinctive in its intonation and some stress patterns, which it still shares with white American Southern English in such instances as the stress in the word police falling on the first rather than the second syllable.
