Thanks for the slack, Azizi. I was no way hinting that your written English was not quite standard. I was wondering just the opposite. I wondered if your oral language and your written language were the same. I know that my oral language is quite different. When writing, however, I can usually edit and clean it up so that its easier for most folks to read.

Most of the novels I was referring to were written long ago and set in a period even older. Although it was hard to understand at first, I truly enjoyed the dialect and the sensibility of authors who wrote in the words of their people. I hope that African Americans continue to use their own spicy language. It is one of the things I miss most about the U.S.

Yes, you are right - it is now African American but when I lived in the States it was Afro-American. In Canada we don't use that term because so many people here are from the Caribbean, Haiti and elsewhere. We mostly just call them neighbors.