There is no dialect called “jive” recognized by professional linguists or linguistic scholars. If what you mean by “jive” is the same thing that linguists call African-American Vernacular English then it is a dialect, no matter what your considered opinion as an actor may be. If you are using the term “jive” to mean something other than AAVE then I have no way of knowing what it is you are referring to and it is quite possibly not a dialect at all, but since AAVE is the subject at hand here then that is irrelevant.
Very, very interesting thread. Thanks to everyone who has contributed. I’d like to share a few thoughts.
I went to high school in Chicago, and the racial breakdown of the student body was 40% African American, 25% Hispanic, 25% White, and about 10% Asian. Extremely diverse, to say the least. As was the faculty.
During my four years there, I had many teachers who spoke only AAVE, and some hispanic teachers who taught class in English, though it was obviously their second language. Needless to say, it was very frustrating attempting to listen to a lecture in AAVE, riddled with slang. It was even more frustrating taking a test, and having the questions be almost (to me, at least) unreadable.
Having been in the opposite situation, I appreciate and the fact that students who do speak AAVE as their primary language encounter problems in the classroom, especially in classes taught by SEV speakers.
But, what did I do in my classes? Listened harder. Studied a little harder, to make up for then content that I may have missed during the lecture. How to ESL and EFL students come travel to Britain and the US and sound like native in a few years? By studying their tails off, and through practice.
But these foreign students had a motivation for studying SEV, probably to land a job, or try to become a citizen. I was motivated because I wanted to go to college.
What motivation, though, do AAVE speakers have to learn SEV? There is none, as they more than likely speak AAVE in the household. How do you explain to schoolchildren that they need to learn a second language in order to score a job when they’re older? Especially 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders? It’s difficult enough to get them to study in general. But motivating them to learn “standard American English” would be extremely difficult, as would explaining why they need to learn this “other language” that is so similar to the one they already speak.
Another huge logistical problem would be finding, training, and/or certifying teachers who are “fluent” in both AAVE and SEV. It’s hard enough to find any teachers in the first place, much less teachers with such specific credentials.
Even though spoken English is different, I think that written English remains fairly concrete. Even if AAVE is spoken in a student’s home, that student still has a responsibility to be well-versed in SEV English. I’m thinking about the SATs and the ACTs. The issue of AAVE in the classroom needs to be addressed, but I firmly believe that the student, of their own initiative, also needs to pay attention in English class.
Best,
TGD
Written English is a language unto itself. Anyone who is fully literate in English reads and writes in essentially the same language, no matter what dialect they speak. People with little experience with or formal instruction in written English, or people writing casually, may make use of written equivelants of the quirks of their dialect, but this is usually not the case. That’s why you can’t tell what sort of dialect I speak or accent I have just by reading this post.
Well yes, of course, but the best way to encourage children to pay attention and study hard is certainly not to tell them that their native language, the language they speak at home and that is spoken by all their friends and relatives, is an ignorant, lazy corruption of proper English. This is exactly what has been done to many speakers of AAVE, and questioning such treatment is what leads to debates such as this one. I don’t think there’s any question at all that mastery of SEV is an extremely valuable skill or that children cannot learn it unless they want to and are willing to work at it. The only questions are how SEV instruction should best be carried out and what respect should be granted to other dialects.
Um, what about landing a better job? Or performing better on a job interview? Or just gaining more respect in general?
Oops. Sorry; I jumped the gun. I see now that you acknowledged these points, but were lamenting the fact that young children often wouldn’t understand this fact. My bad.
I doubt that AAVE speakers had a problem understanding SEV. That’s the difference between dialects and languages, the main languages are understandable by all, despite what dialect listeners speak.
Where did this idea that too many blacks are unable to speak SEV come from? Was there some study done or something, or was it that some black teacher in Ohio constructed a new word (ebonics) that the media could make fun of?
And lots of people everywhere run their words together when speaking. Haven’t you ever studied a language but still had trouble understanding its native speakers because they didn’t speak it clearly? Such universal behavior is not suddenly lazy just because black peope do it.
And sure there are black people that refuse to speak standard English when it’s appropriate to. There are white people that do the same (I’ve heard them), so try taking the magnifying glass off of black people for once.
SEV is not a “main language”, it is a dialect. It is not easier to understand than any other English dialect. You are correct in that most AAVE speakers understand SEV perfectly well, but this is because it is the dominant dialect in the US and the dialect of mass media so it’s difficult to grow up in the US without being exposed to it.
It came from people (some of whom have made appearances in this very thread!) who heard African-Americans speaking AAVE and became irrationally irritated by it. Many, perhaps most, AAVE speakers can speak at least one other dialect perfectly well when they want to, although there are also many (especially children) who cannot. But it has been my experience that critics of AAVE and its speakers rarely care whether AAVE speakers can speak other dialects or not, because they consider the very existence of the AAVE dialect some sort of disgrace. They want AAVE dead, they want it dead now, and they want it dead without anyone having to put any time, money, or effort into instructing native AAVE speakers in any other dialect.
Just to drive another nail into the “AAVE is not lazy English”, I have a coworker–a white person from rural Pennsylvania–who speaks with a dialect, full of “aints” and “gonnas” and clipped “-ing” words. I’m sure she’s aware that she speaks non-SEV, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. And nor does anyone say anything about it, which may keep her from “switching” in different situations.
Writers have always picked up on the differences between SEV and AAVE, usually in a mockery of the latter. In Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind”, white characters speak impecable standard English; the English that black characters speak is so distorted that “gone” is spelled like “gwine”, “master” becomes “massa”, and “Scarlett” becomes “Scawlett”. Why did Margaret Mitchell see fit to capture the accent of the slaves, but left her white characters to speak the King’s English? My hypothesis is that it’s easier to see “others” as deviant. They become more humorous, more like caricatures that way.
This post is slightly off-topic I know but I thought a little bit of perspective might help.
By the standards of many of the critics of AAVE who have posted on this thread and other similar threads the dialects I speak, Hiberno-English and more specifically Dublinese are “lazy” English. Several times when I have encountered Americans I have been chastised for using “dat”, “dese”, and “dose” instead of “proper” English. I have also encountered this with people who have mastered English as a second language from Germany and Sweden etc.
In America (I am discerning this from the threads), the correct/standard/proper English bias seems to be racially tinted whereas in Ireland it is more geographically and class based.
I hope this post is of some use.
Mogiaw
originaly by: Lamia
I realy didnt see any racism in Virgowitches post. I share some of her sentiments. I hear music on the radio and I cant tell what the hell they are saying. It all sounds like gibberish to me. I will give you an example. There was a song that was extremely popular around here called “H.O.V.A.” The chorus went something like this, “H to the izzo,V to the izza,shizzle my nizzle while I drizzle down in V A…” WTF does any of that mean?!?!? It all sounds like incoherent babbleing to me.
Now , my opinion on ESL education is that there needs to be more of it but within reason. Most people who move to the U.S. are doing it for a better life for their children. If they are going to jump through all of the hoops for citizenship then we should give their childen a hand in getting a good education. The only thing I dissagree with is when people expect to be catered to because they dont speak english. The people who say that everything should be printed in both english and spanish need to get with the program. If you want things printed in spanish then move to a spanish speaking countrie. I think U.S. highway sighns should be in 5 languages, like they are in europe. That is just common courtesey.
Well, I’m sorry to say that if you believe that AAVE is not a real dialect at all but rather an ignorant and lazy mutilation of the English language then it seems very likely to me that you, like Virgowitch, are suffering from unfortunate racist prejudices.
There used to be a Russian choir at my school that occasionally performed at campus functions. Whenever they would sing, I couldn’t tell what the hell they were saying! It all sounded like gibberish to me. I couldn’t make any sense of it at all, I couldn’t even tell you now what any of the lyrics were. It all sounded like incoherent babbling to me.
Of course, I realize that all this is solely because I am not Russian, have never studied Russian, and do not speak Russian at all. If I did, I would have understood the words to the Russian Christmas carols and whatnot perfectly well. The Russian-language students I knew certainly could. If the choir had been singing Russian pop songs full of slang things would have been more difficult for a non-native speaker to follow, but even those kinds of songs would have been perfectly understandable to those with the proper background in Russian youthspeak.
WTF does that song have to do with anything?!
I heard a song on the radio and it sounded like gibberish to me too! The words went something like: Anna Banana fee fi Manana, Anna! WTF does any of that mean?!?!? It all sounds like gibberish to me.
Sounds like an old childhood word game we used to play called “DoubleDutch.”
I can’t remember exactly how it worked though.
“Who put the Bop in the Bop Sheebop Sweewap?” Would be incomprehensible to an ESL student until they caught on to slang and Americam pop music styles.
The gist of what I wanted out of this thread was learning something. AAVE studies look to me like an attempt to understand a dialect as it is evolving.
Whatever I or any of the other posters personally feel about AAVE (or “Jive talk”, as some have termed it) won’t change this one fact: AAVE is getting serious attention from the science of Linguistics. I’ve checked out some of the books and web sites cited. It’s a very interesting study.
It really is, isn’t it? I’m glad to hear that you have looked into some of the literature on the subject. I find it fascinating myself, and I think it’s a subject that could help promote greater harmony and tolerance in our society if more people looked into it. Maybe that’s a bit of starry-eyed idealism on my part, but I think it’s true.
originaly by: Lamia
The main diffrence is that they were speaking russian and NOT english. Way to change the subject instead of answer the question. I guess you cant tell what it means either.
originaly by**Big Girl[b/]
Me too! It is good to see that people still recognize it as gibberish.
I did answer the question, although I suppose my illustrative example was less helpful to you than it might have been. I’ll try a simpler, more direct explanation. Different people speak different languages, and different dialects of a particular language. It is impossible to understand a language or dialect that you have never learned. If you cannot understand AAVE it is not because there is anything wrong with the dialect or its speakers, any more than my inability to understand Russian means that there is something wrong with Russian or Russian-speakers. It just means you don’t know AAVE, just like I don’t know Russian.
So what was your point anyway? We’re talking about dialects and you bring up songs where people utter gibberish for entertainment value. I can do it too: Ooh-ee, ooh-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla bing-bang. Now back to the show.
Huzzah, Huzzah Lamia for your valiant efforts to educate. I was not going to post to this thread anymore as I thought that the subject had been quite thoroughly covered. However, here are a few thoughts on things that some may be confused about.
First, accent and dialect are not interchangable. A dialect posesses all of the components of a language (syntax, semantics, phonology, etc.). An accent (very loosely defined) is based on the phonetic production of a particular word, phrase, sentence. Therefore, a native speaker of German who also speaks English is not speaking the German English Dialect but, rather, is speaking English with a German accent.
Second, I find the continued characterization of AAVE as lazy to be reprehensible and ignorant. For those who wish to do so, I would like some further evidence other than the tenuous evidence of “well my best friend is black” and “I went to a mixed high school.” It is completely incredulous for someone to say that 30+ years of linguistic research is total bunk because of some anecdotal story. Sorry, but you need to provide a little more substance than that.
Third. None of the posters in this thread who have patiently explained that AAVE is a legitimate dialect of Standard English have denied THE FACT that there are many situations where AAVE is not (for a myriad of reasons, some good and some terribly demeaning) appropriate. The arguement, then, is if we recognize AAVE as a dialect (as all of the literature suggests) then what do we do about it. The members of the Oakland School Board were not interested in having “Ebonics” replace Standard English or even be accepted as such, but rather figuring out the best way for their AAVE speakers to become fluent in Standard English.
Finally, a brief lesson in AAVE. The proponents of “lazy English” often point to the dropping of the copular verb “is” (She crying)and its use as “be” (She be crying) as examples of how lazy the language is. Each is a perfectly formed grammatical sentence in AAVE. However, each example has a distinct and unique meaning (an action occuring now, vs. one that occurs habitually) and its use is controlled by a strict set of rules.
You know what usage of a particular form governed by a set of rules equals?
Language.
The point is that if you take some one from Mexico and drop them into Spain the people in Spain will be able to understand what the Mexican is saying. If you take someone who says stuff like “Bling-bling” and “Shizzle mah nizzle” NO ONE know what they are saying. It isnt english, it isnt a variation of english, it isnt a dialect!! It is either a seperate and distinct language or it is gibberish. A dialect is the diffrence between “The Queens English” and “American English” . People from other parts of the world who speak the same root language can still make some sense out of it. I also notice that for all of the cries of my ignorance and racism no one has been able to translate the song lyrics into anything understandable.