ABSTRACT
Black English is a nonstandard variety spoken by the majority of the USA’s 26.5 million Blacks. It is regarded by many linguists as having evolved from a creole once widely spoken in the USA and related to West Indian creoles and West African pidgins. The language of Blacks in South Carolina and the Sea Islands, locally called ‘Gullah’, is the most creole-like of all varieties of Black English and differs sharply from the speech of the upwardly mobile Blacks, especially in the North and on the West Coast. Yet, in spite of better education and conditions for US Blacks since the 1960s, most still speak a variety of English which differs from other varieties of US English.
