What is Black English, then?

A. Yet the fact remains that there is an obvious difference between Black English and the English of the rural Brit. For example, there is no British dialect where She my sister is typical. There are also other features where Black English simplifies the standard, such as in not switching the order of subject and auxiliary in questions: Why you didn’t call me? instead of Why didn’t you call me?

B. Although Black English hardly “undoes” English enough to qualify as a creole or even semi-creole, there are enough traits like the above to show that the people who created Black English streamlined it slightly. We would expect this of African slaves learning the language quickly outside of a school setting. We would also expect in this situation that Africans would have left a slight impact from their accent—the hardest thing to shed when speaking a second language—on their rendition of English. Hence, certain aspects of the black “sound,” as distinct from the British accent.

C. Thus, Black English can be described as a semi-semi-semi-creole of regional English dialects of the United Kingdom, standing in a relationship to Standard English rather like English does to Old English.