When your guy has got his hat and made himself hard to find It doesn't mean you should go crazy It could be that way sometime Find yourself another love Who will treat you good and kind Return that love he gives to you It also bees that way sometime Baby, yes it does... When you think you've found a love And you have peace of mind Somebody else steals his heart Yes, it also bees that way sometime Baby, yes it does... Don't let the problems of this world Drive you slowly out of your mind Just smile, look at the problem And say it bees that way, bees that way sometime Baby, yes it does... I will be, also be that way sometime Can also be that way, it also bees that way Bees that way sometime
This week, we are teaching ourselves the rules/prescriptions/grammars of African American Language (AAL) using Lisa Green’s African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. So what do these lyrics and song from Nina Simone have to do with that? Seemingly, everything.
I want to remind us here of Smitherman’s 1977 book, Talkin and Testifyin, and her chapter named after this very same Nina Simone song (chapter two). Issues such as signifying, semantic inversions, and the blues notes in Simone’s “It bees dat way sometime” made Smitherman move away from coinages like “dialect” and “Black English” to calling this system of speaking/thought a “language.” For this reason, in this class, you will also hear me say AAL/African American Language.
Here is what Smitherman (1977) argues:
Here the language aspect is the use of the verb be to indicate a recurring event or habitual condition, rather than a one-time-only occurrence. But the total expression— ‘it bees dat way sometime’—also reflects Black [Language] style, for the statement suggests a point of view, a way of looking at life, and a method of adapting to life’s realities. To live by the philosophy of ‘it bees dat way sometime’ is to come to grips with the changes that life bees putting us through, and to accept the changes and bad times as a constant, ever-present reality. (p. 3)
So while tonight’s class is certainly more about learning rules, let’s not forget what these AAL grammars mean and do in the world as a languaging/living/breathing belief system. Let’s remember Nina Simone and how/why saying and knowing that “it bees that way sometime” is part of an ideological system that, sometimes, is the only thing that can get you through the day.
