Geneva Smitherman ended up in speech therapy in her freshman year at Wayne State University in the 1950s, when she failed a test to screen incoming teaching students for possible speech problems. The ...

Only 7% of LAist readers currently donate to fund our journalism. Help raise that number, so our nonprofit newsroom stays strong in the face of federal cuts. Donate now. Black people have long ...

Walter Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

As far back as 2016, work on AI-based chatbots revealed that they have a disturbing tendency to reflect some of the worst biases of the society that trained them. But as large language models have ...

For as long as she can remember, Sonja Lanehart has been fascinated by how people speak. In particular, she was interested in the differences she noticed between how white people spoke, when compared ...

OPINION: The Oxford Dictionary of African American English, which will be edited by noted historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., will tell the story of Black people in a new way. Editor’s note: The ...

In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their various ...

“Dr. Holt, I need you to come listen to one of my second graders. This is one of my best students, but I’m worried I might be overlooking a speech or language disorder—I’m just not sure,” the teacher ...

A first-of-its-kind dictionary is coming to the world that’s comprised of words created, defined, and used in the African-American lingo. Oxford University Press will issue the “Oxford Dictionary of ...