Linguistically speaking, there really isn’t a meaningful distinction between “dialect” and “language”. A language is a dialect that is called a language, and a dialect is a language that is called a dialect.
Sometimes with the restriction that two dialects that are mutually intelligible can be called two dialects of one language.
In the context of the exchange, at that point, we were considering Kimstu’s point regarding related languages/dialects interfering with other related languages/dialects and you attempted to impose the arbitrary distinction between a language and a dialect. To quote Mr. Fillmore, again, from the same essay to which I linked earler:
This is consistent with your question
But the problem in this case is that we have no evidence that today’s kids are mutually unintelligible with their grandparents or even great-grandparents. We have your sole testimony that you have trouble understanding kids in a very informal situation (where they may even emphasize their slang to further exclude you). I spent most of last summer and fall in a black neighborhood and I did not see a single kid who could not communicate with their grandparents. And with just a bit of effort, the kids and I were also able to communicate pretty well.
Thank you. Liberty3701’s post did shed some light on the subject for me. I must admit I missed it earlier.
Applying his understanding as to how AAVE may be used in helping students learn both AAVE and ASE better makes sense in theory but I’m struggling with this…
Children first learn language listening to commonly heard speech patterns. You don’t explain the rules of language to a child which later enables him to speak. The grammar rules come much much later. We all know this. The attempt to help AAVE speakers to better acquire ASE skills won’t be aided by teaching them grammar and linguistic history of either language. The reluctance by some to effectively use ASE was helpfully outlined by Askia earlier in the thread. It is largely a socio-political and racial issue for many of these kids. What message are we sending them when we help them understand AAVE better but continue to insist that they learn ASE when the majority of non AA students are not even remotely encouraged to learn AAVE? And, according to liberty3701, never will be.
Yeah, but if you’re going by that standard then Moroccans and Iraqis don’t speak the same language, and neither do people from Beijing and Hong Kong.
Eh, I’m a bit slow … what did you mean here? I’m not sure I understand what I’m endorsing…
Um…the same message we’re sending when we teach Dominican, Lithuanian, and Indian children English in the South Bronx while not encouraging students to learn Spanish, Lithuanian, and Hindi. Standard American English is the standard language of the United States. The others aren’t.
Jeez… I have heard the term “lazy speech” before this thread was started. Have you not ever heard it used? And when I went through the links that the moderator provided, the term was used often in the discussion, as it was in other things I searched out through Google. Is your point that there is no such thing as “lazy speech”?
And yes, some juvenile speech patterns are the result of laziness. I remember being told to prounce “ing” with the “g” and there was so such word as “gonna”. Or am I wrong and thatall these articles that mention lazy speech are referring to some other habit?
No, why don’t you tell me? True, it is a lot easier to wave your arm and say “Oh, it’s been covered.” Even if it has, why don’t you tell me your reasons. Maybe the magic words blossomimg from your superior intellect will be able to penetrate my dense melon.
No it wasn’t. And if they were, and my speech pattern was incorrect–or let’s just say, not what society deemed to be appropriate–I pray that my teachers would have pointed that out and rid me of such a harmful and limiting identity of self.
Wars have been fought, over language exclusively? Which ones?
Are you kidding me? Here is the quote to which you referred:
“…when they are, in fact, doing something wrong?”
Now you’re just being silly. Bit for the record: Incorrect, or inaccurate.
No, they are at risk if, IN FACT, that is the only speech pattern they have.
Neither of us has any support as to whether or not this is somehtig that will accomplish what it sets out to or will not do more harm than good. True, some linguists, MOST if the sampling here on SD is any example, hold the speech in question to be a dialect, maybe even its own language. Calling it it’s own language I think is more than a stretch. There are too many similarities. So the question is, even if we assume it is a dialect, is teaching in that dialect the best way to have children acquire the tools they’ll need to take full advantage of society.
Leaving ebonics out of it, there is gereat debate among educators as to which of the three (of which I am aware) methods of teaching students who have a native tongue other than SE" Bilingual Education, ESL, and Immersion. So, since there is no concensus on that very fundamental question, how can you YOU feel so strongly that applying one of them to those who speak ebonics is the right way to go.
It seems to me that there are two different discussion happening simultaneously. One is the question of the best method to teach kids that speak another language (as their primary one). The other is the degree to which ebonics is either slang, sloppy speech, a dialect, or it’s own language.
My main point is that I think that the bilingual approach is not best. And the bilingual approach is what I interpreted the article in the OP to be putting forth. (Admittedly. of this, there is some question.)
The samller issue is the second one. And I think it’s pretty much semantic masturbation. Whatever you call it, it’s not what these kids are going to need for higher education or the best jobs.
This has led me to reveal my advocacy of a tough-love style approach, for which I do not apologize. Not that it matters, but in this I am not alone. Thank God for Bill Cosby. His stance on the issue might do more good for the kids in question than all the well-intentioned school administrators combined. He might even start us on a road to repair the damage done to our schools in the past thirty years.
If you recall, our public schools were once the envy of the world.
My point is that in SAE “ask” is the accepted pronunciation. And it’s just a coincidence that “aks” has a long pedigree. It may have even come first, so what.
I’m talking about here and now. Can a linguist please affirm that “axe” is easier on the oral/dental/facial structure than “ask”?
I don’t know if “lazy speech” exists or not. Why don’t you define it for us and we’ll see if that definition stands up to scrutiny. So far, all the examples you have given do not. Look, there is a big difference between the way I speak and the way I write. I use a lot of slang and incorrect grammar when I speak. Am I being lazy? No, that’s just the way people talk informally.
But there are two different discussions going on here, and I think the two are being mixed together:
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Is AAVE a distinct dialect* or is it “lazy” English?
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If it is a dialect, what implications does that have for teaching kids who speak it?
You seem to want to invalidate the #2 question by claiming the answer to #1 is that it’s “lazy” English. Frankly, that’s just silly. There are plenty of reasons to answer #2 differently (ie, “no, we just teach them the same as all the other kids”) without denying that such a thing as AAVE exists as a dialect (or varient) of Standard English.
*using that term losely-- ie, meaning a varient of some sort.
The distiction of “how” they are different didn’t become important to me until much later into my adulthood, and even then, only marginally so. Language is a communications tool to me. I appreciate expressive and well crafted literature but I don’t have a linguistic interest in it. Neither do most people, I suspect. Neither do most of these kids.
I grew up learning two languages from infancy and through early elementary school. At 10 I moved to an entirely new continent and as immediately was forced to learn two entirely different languages. The latter experience taught me that once you begin recognizing individual words in common speach, the speach patterns begin to embed themselves. Even if you are learning two very different languages at the same time. “How” they differ is not at all important in comparisson to one another or to the language(s) you’ve already acquired. There are some tricky and interesting patterns of relating new to old that goes on but that’s minor. It’s the new patterns that you learn. Grammar is secondary, for refinement purposes much later on.
Others have noted that ESL teachers don’t really need to know the mother tongue of their student to effectively teach SAE. So other than for outreach purposes to the disenfranchises AAVE speakers, I’m stuggling to understand the logic behind this approach. Furthermore, if disenfranchisement is what’s at the heart of this issue, AAVE in the curriculum is unlikely to be effective when there is a general mistrust at the heart of the reason for some AA’s not acquiring sufficient proficiency of SAE.
That’s an impossible question to answer, as it depends on the phonemes you are used to hearing. Why is it so hard for a Japanese person to pronounce “r” and “l” differently? Is one harder to pronounce than the other? Not for us it isn’t. But Japanese doesn’t have both of those phonemes as standard building blocks.
Why do most of us pronounce “larynx” as if it were spelled “larnyx” or “Wednesday” as if it were spelled “Wendsday” or “Wensday”. Wed-nes-day isn’t all that hard to say, but you don’t find “dn” very often in English. I’m sure there is some language out there where it’s common (Russian, maybe?), and pronouncing that word as it’s spelled would be no problem at all.
We must have our wires crossed.
1)Who has the filter?
2) Are you saying that I don’t know how my friends spoke in high school?
Here you seem to be implying that you know the difference.
John Mace
Not?
Correct me if I’ve misunderstood your first post… You’re saying that a teacher with AAVE skills can help a student better transition to ASE, correct?
My argument is that we’re not dealing with the student’s inability to learn ASE. We’re dealing with a cultural reluctance of some students to learn it. Bridging that gap may not be accomplished simply by agreeing that AAVE has legitimate roots in their culture. Some of them already know that. Those that don’t, perhaps don’t care because it’s how they identify themselves with their own peers, whether or not linguists happen to agree with them.
Does that help clarify my point?
Just because other people have used the term lazy speech doesn’t make it right.
Why is it lazy to exchange one consonant for another? “Some other habit?” you mean speaking?
Wars are never fought over one thing exclusively (at least, almost never), but think of Sri Lanka, Belgium, Quebec …
For the love of God, no one is teaching AAE to kids!! And it is a dialect! Any linguist that says otherwise is a crackpot.
It’s a dialect. Not slang. Not sloppy. Depending on your definition, maybe a language. It is a dialect.
And you’re basing this opinion on a false assumption, that AAE is merely sloppy, lazy, ignorant speech. And it ain’t.
You’re right. The way things stand now, AAE ain’t gonna do them a lick of good when it comes time to get a job. That’s why no one is advocating teaching them AAE. They are advocating using it as a tool for them to better learn standard English. Because, face it, honey, tough love isn’t working.
Of course, in my paradise, a kid could get a good job speaking AAE because we all would have been schooled from an early age that we all speak dialects, and all dialects are equally valid and logical and rigorous. We would all learn about other dialects and better understand our own. That’s why I’m a linguist. I want to teach people these things and hopefully some tolerance and self-esteem along with it. You cannot imagine how happy I am to see people on here defending AAE with intelligence.
Keep on fighting the good fight.
Wed-nes-day is harder to say and Wens-day is a prime example of lazy speech and I include myself among the guilty. And it didn’t kill me to say that.
Do you, or do you think anyone else thinks, there is ANY fear of these kids not being able to communicate with their family and friends? And if one is “more appropriate” for a particular situation than another, culdn’t you say it is “better” in that particular situation. What is this great fear of “wrong”, “better”? We make judgements, we’re supposed to amke judgements about things. Do you think the country was started because we wanted one just as good as others? Remember "…in order to form a more perfect union…? Thank Godd they didn’t use “better”.
No. That’s why it’s in quotes. I don’t know what it is, although magellan seems to think he does. We need him to define it.
Yes…
What are you basing this argument on? I think it’s way more complex than what you’re putting forth. People speak like the people they want to be like, they speak like their friends, their peers. Most kids don’t want to speak like their teachers. I also think a lot of kids don’t understand why they should learn it; getting a job is somewhere in the unthinkable future. I think it does help to legitimize their way of speaking rather than telling them they’re wrong … By a “cultural reluctance,” I assume you mean not wanting to sound “white” or “uppity” or untrue to their roots, and I think those are all totally legitimate fears. What I’m trying to say but failing is that there is a combination of factors going on, from simple incomprehension (not that AAE speakers are stupid, just that when the codes are so similar, misunderstanding occur regularly) to a need to fit in with peers.
Not in the slightest, sorry. I don’t know what this has to do with what you said before.