OK this one has a story with it. I found this supremely cursed bear while shopping with a friend about a month ago. I didn’t buy it or take a picture at the time but two nights later I had an extremely vivid dream about it, and had to text my friend to confirm that the bear was real and I hadn’t just hallucinated it. The good news is that I’m not crazy. The bad news is that someone actually made this thing and it is real and exists. I finally went back today and got a picture but my housemate wouldn’t let me buy it bc it’s too haunted to have in our house.
It’s called copula deletion, or zero copula. Many languages and dialects, including Ancient Greek and Russian, delete the copula (the verb to be) when the context is obvious.
So an utterance like “you a bitch” in AAVE is not an example of a misused you, but an example of a sentence that deletes the copular verb (are), which is a perfectly valid thing to do in that dialect, just as deleting an /r/ after a vowel is a perfectly valid thing to do in an upper-class British dialect.
What’s more, it’s been shown that copula deletion occurs in AAVE exactly in those contexts where copula contraction occurs in so-called “Standard American English.” That is, the basic sentence “You are great” can become “You’re great” in SAE and “You great” in AAVE, but “I know who you are” cannot become “I know who you’re” in SAE, and according to reports, neither can you get “I know who you” in AAVE.
In other words, AAVE is a set of grammatical rules just as complex and systematic as SAE, and the widespread belief that it is not is nothing more than yet another manifestation of deeply internalized racism.
This is the most intellectual drag I’ve ever read.
i still hate y’all bitches who say oc x canon shit is cringe like bitch you have ANY idea how flattered i would be if someone made an oc for my fantasy world? how utterly PSYCHED my ass would be they loved a character so much they fleshed out one themselves just 2 be with one of mine? fuck y’all haters
