Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
&quot;Hoodlum lingo&quot;... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had:<p>How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was &quot;wrong&quot; and you constantly felt pressured not to use it?<p>Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it&#x27;s indisputably in many ways different from &quot;Standard English&quot;? (whatever that is)<p>Of course not, right? To the contrary, it&#x27;s kind of expected that people who work with Australians make an effort to get used to and understand the Australian variety of English.<p>But for some reason, stigmatizing and not making an effort to understand African American Vernacular English is to this day kind of widely and subtly accepted, even in the US.<p>It shouldn&#x27;t be! And most of us could probably use making an effort to understand it better.<p>Langfocus is one of the most popular language channels on YouTube, they made a really good video on AAVE: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UZpCdI6ZKU4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=UZpCdI6ZKU4</a><p>There&#x27;s also this awesome lecture by linguist Daniel S Ferguson: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=btSxzfB_98M" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=btSxzfB_98M</a><p>Obviously, I myself am not African American. But I couldn&#x27;t help but share these and encourage everyone to take a moment to learn a bit about it!