How 'Gen Z Slang' Connects To Black Culture Appropriation▼

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Published 129d ago

In text threads,  social media  comments, Instagram stories, Tik Toks and elsewhere, more people are using words like "slay," "woke," "period," "tea" and "sis" just to name a few. While some people call it Gen Z slang or Gen Z lingo, these words actually come from Black culture, and their adoption among a wider group of people show how words and phrases from  Black communities  seep into more mainstream communication. It's so important that the Oxford Dictionary, the so-called "definitive record of the English language," started a new research project compiling words and phrases from the style of speaking commonly known as African American English, or AAE, into a dictionary for the first time. Deandre Miles-Hercules, a PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara, says this style of language came from a type of English spoken by enslaved people. Since enslaved folks were taken from various communities with different languages in Africa, they couldn't communicate with each other, so they came up with their own English. Source