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Please revert this recent edit, which makes the sentence nonsensical: previously it contrasted Southern (which Truth wasn't) with northern, Dutch (which she was); now it incoherently contrasts black (which she was) with northern, Dutch (which she also was). 50.232.6.4 (talk) 13:22, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

She was not Dutch, she was Black. Additionally, AAVE was (and still is) primarily spoken in the Southern United States. Wikeezy (talk) 21:04, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

She was Dutch-speaking! It literally makes no sense to contrast "stereotypical Black dialect" with ""from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language". Unsurprisingly, your change also makes the sentence a poor summary of the relevant part of the body (which, unlike your version, does not suffer from any confusion), whereas the previous version correctly encapsulated the body discussion of this point. (NB: the previous sentence shows the correct structure of a sentence using "whereas": the two halves have to be in direct contrast or contradiction with each other.) --172.56.33.77 (talk) 02:39, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I do not want to assume, but I believe you don't really have a firm grasp on the history of race in the United States (at least with Black people). In the context of the antebellum south, "stereotypical Black dialect" absolutely contrasts with "from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language." The majority of all Black people have always been in the South, especially in those times. Even in modernity, a standard New York accent would never be considered AAVE, let alone a person speaking Dutch in New York. I apologize for the grammatical error, as that is entirely my fault, but my correction makes sense considering her background and the racial context of the United States. Wikeezy (talk) 03:02, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

@Wikeezy: Your personal comments are both inappropriate and mistaken, but more importantly they're irrelevant: the problem with your edit has nothing to do with substance, it has to do with basic principles of good writing in English. Consider the sentence "Before the merger, main production took place in Michigan, whereas afterwards, the work was done by hand." This sentence is totally broken because it contrasts (using "whereas") two things that are not in conflict (and indeed not related to each other). You've done the same thing to the sentence in question: before it contrasted typically Southern dialect with from New York, Dutch-speaking -- two things that are in opposition. After your edit, it contrasts typically Black with from New York, Dutch speaking -- but these are not in conflict, indeed Truth was Black and from New York and spoke Dutch as her first language.

The edit by Pinchme123 maybe sort of fixes the problem you created, but at an even higher cost: now we have a long digression in the lead of a biography of an important person about the question of the relationship between Southern and Black dialects of English, something that is utterly irrelevant to her biography, complete with a citation that is not used in the body and has nothing to do with Truth at all! The original status quo was better than either of the two subsequent versions; another good option would be to trim the sentence back so something like "The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?"", optionally with a (brief!) mention that the most widely circulated version of the speech differed considerably from contemporaneous accounts (but without the additional digression into the details of how it differed).

Someone who knows how to craft a decent sentence (EEng?) would be helpful here. 64.26.99.248 (talk) 15:48, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

A typically Black dialect contrasts with Dutch speaking in New York when 90% of people with a Black dialect(AAVE speakers) live in the southern United States, which was the case when Truth was alive. If 90% of the speakers of a dialect live in the south, you can contrast it with people who speak a different dialect in the north (also Truth was Black but didn't speak AAVE, which is common among Black people who are not from areas with high Black populations, i.e the South.) Again, it seems my comments are not mistaken. Wikeezy (talk) 19:14, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

This isn't an article about typical language patterns, it's an article about Sojourner Truth. She was Black and northern and Dutch-speaking, so in her case (which is what the article is about) the contrast makes no sense. Your defense of this bad edit is a sequence of non-sequiturs (just as the edit itself creates an egregious non-sequitur). That they are true non-sequiturs is better than the alternative, for sure -- but they don't address the problems with the edit. This is again not surprising given your editing history, but it is a shame you don't think Sojourner Truth matters enough for it to be worthwhile to write her biography here well. 64.26.99.248 (talk) 16:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The portions of the article I edited detail someone rewriting her speech pattern. Again, she was Black but she did not speak AAVE. There is a difference. Wikeezy (talk) 00:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

 Note: To alleviate this tension, I've tried adding an explanatory clause to the sentence along with a citation, to address some of the concerns raised in this section. I'm marking this as responded-to. -- Pinchme123 (talk) 05:34, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I realize I'm coming in late here, but I feel like neither side of the argument made their points very well. Adding some food for thought: (1) "Dasn't thou rememberest that ye Englishe" spoken by white people in the early 19th century was quite a bit different than is spoken today? and there were more regional differences due to immigration that are stil weakly seen today: Massachusetts and Virginia were "close" to England, Maryland was settled by Scottish, Delaware had been by Scandinavians, New York by Dutch, Pennsylvania by Germans, so the supposed "baseline American English" you'd have to compare AAVE to was not in fact a baseline at that time. (2) AAVE was also not a thing yet, it's a modern concept; and early 19th century, enslaved people were also still "immigrating" at the time and also did not have a uniform dialect among themselves. (3) AAVE, which was previously called Black English, can really only be properly studied in contrast to southern white dialects of English; if you compare AAVE to how Yankees talk it seems a striking contrast, but poor, sharecropping white laborers speak a southern dialect was quite close to Black English; when I studied linguistics long long ago we were taught simply that Black English was also spoken by poor whites. So, I haven't researched this quote under debate directly, but what I think it's trying to say is that some white person transcribed her speech and put it into a "black" and or "southern" dialect because of her race and ignored (maybe because they didn't know) the fact that she spoke English with a Dutch accent. I think there's a way to write that clearly without freighting the sentence with a lot of modern misconceptions about the past. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.7.214.46 (talk) 04:44, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

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