The African-American Accent in the USA

I am writing an article about the Dirty Dancing stage musical, which includes a Negro character name Elizabeth. In the stage musical, she speaks and sings. (When I talk about the year 1963, I use the word Negro, because that was the polite word in that time.)

Many of the foreigners who read my blog might not know that a large portion of African-Americans speak with an accent that is distinctly recognizable. When I hear an African-American speaking but cannot see the person, I think I can guess about 50% correctly that the speaker is African-American.

There are some words that only African-Americans say. For example, if a speaker says aks instead of ask -- I want to aks a question -- then that person must be an African-American. Also, African-Americans tend to speak with a distinct, rather musical, sassy intonation.

Even when their vocabulary and grammar are standard English, African-Americans tend to speak with a variation of the USA's southern accent -- no matter where the African-American lives. This accent difference is only slight, but people who grew up in the USA recognize the difference.

In general, people who grew up in -- or migrated from -- the states that fought on the Confederate side in the USA's Civil War speak with an accent that differs from the states that fought on the Union side. Within that Southern accent, the African-American accent differs slightly from the Southern Whites' accents.

As time passes, African-Americans are losing their distinct accent -- just all other Americans are losing their regional accents.

However, in 1963, when the Dirty Dancing story takes place, the overwhelming majority of Negroes spoke with an accent that was distinctly recognizable. In the stage musical, the character Elizabeth should speak with such an accent.

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President Barack Obama normally spoke with a standard accent. After all, he grew up only in a White family -- without his Kenyan father -- in Hawaii. However, he spoke with the African-American accent when he talked to African-American audiences.

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There is a stereotypical Jewish-American accent, but the Houseman family in the movie Dirty Dancing does not speak noticeably with that accent. Rather, they speak with a general New York accent.

Max Kellerman and the Schumachers speak with noticeably Jewish-American accents.