1172: Ethnolects Feb 23, 2018

Some dialects are considered ethnolects, meaning that the variety of the language is differentiated by ethnicity rather than by region. Examples of this include African-American English (AAE),  Chicano English, Jewish English, Multicultural London English (MLE) (which is also technically regional) etc. given that the dialect is associated with a people who may not all live in one area, but who all speak the same way. In all of these examples however, there is influence from other regional languages and dialects; Chicano is heavily influenced by Californian English and Mexican Spanish, AAE is influenced by Southern American English and certain West African languages, Jewish English is influenced by Yiddish and Hebrew, and so on. This is often the case with ethnolects, which are sometimes based around migration, or alternatively they act as a sort of creole such as with MLE, but this is not necessarily true; there are certain speech patterns and lexicon often associated with gay men for example, but this is due to the fact that language is also always used as a tool for identification within a group, creating a sense of unity for the in-group, and a sense of distance from an out-group.
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