I got it. And loved it.
Yah, slang. Look at Monty’s link to it.
glom ( P ) Pronunciation Key (glm) Slang
v. glommed, glom·ming, gloms
v. tr.
To steal.
To seize; grab.
To look or stare at.
v. intr.
To seize upon or latch onto something: “The country has glommed onto the spectacle of a wizard showman turning the tables on his inquisitors” (Mary McGrory).
n.
A glimpse; a look.
[Probably from Scots glam, to snatch at
It’s also not in my dictionary (1984) which may be getting the boot soon. Maybe the speed with which language changes is taking on an anti-Orwellian twist. I’m just going to limit cultural references to the last 10 years. Starting… now.
Thanks, I feel a little less old.
Sure looks like an insult to me:
Ah, so you’re admitting that your erroneous assertions about language in this thread are merely WAGs and you’re just arguing against another poster for the sheer joy of arguing?
I don’t know, maybe it’s a language barrier.
I’m also not sure what you wish to convey with your cites other than all forms of language should be treated equally (in a scholastic setting). I don’t know how this could be applied in the United States given the number of possible dialects it would allow for.
Fair enough and I walked righ into that one.
Whyever would it be? I don’t understand this part at all. There are drawls and tangs and melodic speech patterns all over this county–all dialects (and fading now, sadly)–but while I’ll agree with you forever that to put down one dialect while elevating another is somewhat silly and could even be racist, there has to be one dialect that is chosen as the central/main one–no? That is my point.
It is not that SAE is inherently superior because it is the speech of the White Man–it is the main dialect because historically it was the speech of the ruling class. It still is. I refuse, liberal, yellow dog Democrat that I am, to apologize for that. (not that you’re asking). Someone had to “win” and the fight was over before we ever existed. Does that mean that Ebonics, Cajun, Boston Brahmin (whatever)should be punished and weeded out? No. It means that, like it or not, all kids who want to succeed in America will have to do so in SAE. I think you agree with me here.
I’ll go you one better. In HS, I think that all kids should be taught a unit on language awareness. I think it would help white kids be more respectful and aware, and it would help black kids by showing them that their speech is valid.
The part I don’t like is the exposing it to just the black kids. If anyone needs a lesson in Ebonics, it’s white suburban kids. It would dispell many a myth and prejudice. But to just teach blacks --I think that’s wrong. I realize the point is to get disadvantaged kids interested etc–but it should be required for all. I think that would go a whole lot farther in showing the validity of it to all kids than to shunt it off as a special class for blacks. I think that’s racist.
I think this is true for language developement in small children and infants. I do think that we DO learn language from TV and teachers–otherwise , what would be the point of foreign language classes in schools? I watched many a movie auf Deutsch in German class–it aided my pronunciation as well as my grammar etc.
It makes sense to me! I am also beat from a day’s work today. I actually found this fascinating and would love to pick your brain about other not so contentious topics regarding linguistics, someday.
Nope. It’s a comment directed at what you said and did, not at you as a person.
That’s what I wished to convey. All forms of language are equally valid, in the opinion of many, if not most, linguists.
Local educators can educate non-local educators about the local lingo. Those educators can then use the information learned to teach the prestige dialect to their students. And, finally, teachers can cease & desist from telling their students that the form of language the students and their families use at home is “gutter” or bad or wrong or stupid or broken or whatever the currently popular negative term is.
However, note what you have done, here. In your second post you first note that we might call the “bush” English, a point with which John Mace might agree in the sense that “English” can be used as an corresponding term to “Germanic.” (Since he has not responded, yet, I do not know that he would agree, but for my point let us assume he would.) However, in your very next paragraph, you move from a position of accepting a concept of English as a family of related speech to a lament that we keep avoiding a hierarchical structure.
We avoid a hierarchical representation because it provides a false picture of reality. Latin is not some pure language that the Romance languages aspire to emulate. It was a language with a wide variety of dialects from which several of the dialects eventually became mutually unintelligible and a couple of them acquired armies and “became” languages.
To repost my quotation from Mr. Fillmore of the Center for Applied Linguistics, first cited in post #203,
Now, is this messy? Untidy? Confusing to anyone who wants nice clearcut characterizations? Absolutely. However, just as lumpers and splitters can argue endlessly about the continuum on which living species exist, creating mayhem and havoc in the lives of taxonomists, so lumpers and splitters can argue endlessly over the boundaries for languages and dialects and the best that we can hope to establish is the realization that no person grows up speaking an “inferior” language/dialect. Social pressures dictate that a person will be more successful by employing the dialect that has the highest “status,” but nothing in the study of language demonstrates how one dialect rises to the highest social status. It is not based on ease or difficulty of pronunciation, internal logic, or any other objective criterion. Thus, people studying language do resist organizing languages into hierarchies, because those hierarchies would be based on social, not linguistic, considerations. (And a change in society can change the “social” rank of a dialect without any changes in the linguistic aspect of the dialect. Medieval French was divided between two major dialects, langue d’oc and langue d’oïl, with oc and oil each being the respective word for “yes.” Had Avignon or Arles or Aix-en-Provence become the capital of France as the result of the various English and Burgundian power grabs, the dominant dialect would have been Langue d’oc. Instead, Paris became the capital and French derived from langue d’oil. (Oil later morphed into oui.)
If we were to assert that there was a single “best” dialect in English, then we should be teaching children the Received English of Great Britain, not the bastard child that evolved into SAE.
Huh. I guess Merriam-Webster doesn’t indicate slang… probably for a good reason.
FWIW, the OED’s earliest citation for “glom” is 1907, and lists it as “US slang.”
Yes. It think he’s got it. By God,I think he’s got it!!
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain… 
Because there isn’t a hierarchy. The Romance Languages don’t fall “under” Latin in a heirarchical way, only in a temporal way. What we call Latin only ceased to exist because its dialects ended up in different countries. Note that we still call the language in Greece “Greek”. We differentiate between Classical and Modern Greek, but it’s still “Greek”. Why? One might just as well call Italian " Modern Latin", or call Latin “Old Italian”, just as we call Anglo-Saxon “Old English”. It’s just a naming convention, and it’s entirely arbitrary.
Yes, English is part of the Germanic language group, but note that we still call the language spoken in Germany “German”. We could invent a new term for that language and only use the term “German” for the root language as we do for Latin. But we don’t, because there is still a country called Germany (I guess).
I don’t think that, in the absolute sense, it makes any sense to talk about any language being inferior. A language is merely a tool people use to share their thoughts. If it accomplishes this it is as good as any other. A remote tribe may not have a word for car, but it has all the words they need. I read somewhere the Eskimos have something like 47 words for snow. We don’t. Each language is as complete as it needs to be.
But in a society in which more than one language will be spoken, I think it is incorrect to say that they are all equally valuable tools. The tool of English would be worthless if I was using it to convey my wishes to a farmer in a remote area of China. It would be more valuable if I used it in Beijing, where that chance of being understood some would increase. It would rise dramatically if I walked in the American Embassy and tried to communicate my wishes there.
So, in a very practical sense, any given language may very well be “inferior”. A quick analogy: if I asked you, what is better a wrench or a scewdriver, the question wouldn’t make any sense. They both have equal potential value. But if I told you to build me a house using only wood and screws, one of those tools is clearly better.
So, while SAE, AAVE, French, Tagalog, German, Greek, Latin, piglatin, or whale songs are all equally valid as languages (in the utile sense), if you attemp to use one at the wrong time, one is definitely more valuable than the others.
Applying that thinking to our discussion, AAVE spoken in the home or on the playground is every bit as good a tool as SAE or any other language spoken in other homes, and on other playgrounds. But if you live in the US and need to venture into a job interview, or want to become an effective litigator, or newsman, or CEO, when tool is clearly better then the other. Fact is, we live in a society that SAE is a better tool. It gives you more access, particularly to the richer fruits of our society.
The point is that I think you and others in this thread have taken my qualitative hierarchy to be morals. as well. I could go on, but I think it’s all been said.
Mace, maybe you spoke too soon.
OK, I’m truly puzzled by this remark. I’m a teacher in an elementary school in NYC, and I do correct my children when they say “I gots”, or “it mines”. Does the fact that I even use the word “correct” automatically make me a racist?
Yes, I understand that different dialects abound (especially in NYC). However…like it or not, my children are tested and judged by the words they use (lord, I sound like a local commercial for Word Advantage!
My little ones are tested for reading skills, and when they misread, “I wants the toy” for “I want the toy”, I must mark it down as an error. These tests are used to place my children in their classes for the following year. So, at least in the NYC school system, using “standard English” is necessary.
Please don’t tar all teachers with the same brush. For the most part we love our children, and only want the best for them. If that means asking them to conform to the generally accepted standard of speech, then so be it (and yes, I do mean the generally accepted standard, w/o dancing around the issue).
That doesn’t make it a “better tool”. A Swiss army knife is useful in many more situations than a soldering iron, but there are still times when only a soldering iron will do the job. If you were only allowed to own one tool, then a Swiss army knife would be a better choice for most people, but probably not for electricians.
An AAVE speaker who switches overnight to speaking nothing but SAE may find himself better suited to being a newsman or a CEO, but he’ll also be distancing himself from his friends, family, and community where AAVE is the common language. He can have both tools and use each one when it’s appropriate.
Oh, c’mon…I was posing a hypothetical, defiing it narrowly, building a house with screws and wood. In the narrow example given, it does make it a better tool.
Yes. But the question is what to teach him (and how). He is already fluent in AAVE, so there is no need to hone that skill. And given the limited number of hours in the day, wouldn’t you agree that we should concentrate on getting him to learn what he doesn’t know?
Without seeing you teach or knowing your style, I would never presume to say that you were racist or even that you were not doing a good job.
However, when you insist (properly) on SAE rules, do you simply say that the speech the children use is wrong? Or do you explain that the speech you are seeking from them is the language they will be expected to speak outside the 'hood? Would it make a difference to your lesson plan or your daily interaction with the kids if you understood the dialect they speak well enough to demonstrate the differences rather than just telling them to use your way in order to get through school?
I think kids are pretty resilient and I doubt that many are psychologically scarred by corrections from teachers if not done with stupid harshness. I also think kids will typically study to the test and ignore things that make no sense to them, so that some number of them will simply give back what you want to hear for the duration of the class, then forget it upon leaving the classroom. (And I doubt that the typical six-year-old is very interested in a disquisition of the relative affects of AAVE and SAE, in any event.) If the intent is to provide enough education that they can effectively code-switch between dialects when necessary, I would hope that there is some part of your lesson that distinguishes between the dialects so that they are not simply confused why you are going on about rules that make no sense.
Sure. But if you want to use that as an analogy to language in America, you’ll have to define the latter situation a little more narrowly too. SAE is not a “better tool” for an living in America in general, because some people will in fact be served better by speaking AAVE most of the time; it is a better tool in specific situations, like interviewing for a job with a person who speaks SAE, or reading the news on CNN.
Certainly. No one is proposing teaching AAVE to kids who already speak it, only pointing out differences between AAVE and SAE. When I studied German in high school, my teacher sometimes brought up English rules to illustrate how the equivalent German rules are different, but the focus was still on learning German.
And? We still have no evidence that anyone actually wants to teach children AAVE. Even Ms. Texeira’s quote is only suggestive of the possibility–and the news report was so badly written we may never find out what she really wanted.
The crux is your parenthetical “how.” Does it help to present SAE as the new variant language that we wish the child to learn? Or do we want to present SAE as “correct” without demonstrating how (i.e., the exact changes in forms) to switch codes from AAVE to SAE?
When the local dialect is a close variant of SAE, it is not difficult to simply say “We say ‘am not’ rather than ‘ain’t’.” When the child uses an entirely different set of forms for the “to be” construction, it is quite possibly confusing to simply say “That is not how we say it.” Depending on the familiarity of the child with SAE (from TV, radio, nearby neighborhoods where AAVE is not spoken, etc.), we might get away with a simple “do it this way” or we may not. I don’t think that we should be laying down absolute rules for educators from the ivory tower of a message board.
And even then, I thought magellan01’s interpretation of her quote was “they’re going to make English teachers speak AAVE”, not “they’re going to teach AAVE”.
For the record–whether my interpretation of the article was correct or not–I took Ms. Texeira’s statement to mean that the kids were going to be following a Bilingual Education model. If that interpretation was correct it would mean that all courses were going to be taught in both SAE and AAVE, with the course’s subject content taught in AAVE, which would be the native language. That’s what Bilingual Ed is.
The debate then segued into whether teachers should use AAVE at all; whether they should reinforce the idea that it’s a one-to-one option with SAE, or they should “correct” them when they use non-SAE language, the same way many first and second generation immigrant children, like I, were corrected when our speech exhibited the “flavor” of what was spoken at home.
I just put that down to clarify for Mr2001. I think all the points have been debated ad nauseum. For me, anyway.
Okay. But I would say that–from a purely practical standpoint–assuming a kid can get by in his neighborhood, that it would be better for a kid to know SAE. I say that not because I think SAE is a better language (see post 411), but because it can get him more of what society has to offer. I think we do understand each other on this. I also understand that many people will continue to confuse my practical meaning of the word “better” with one that implies some type of ethnic superiority, which is NOT what I mean.
I think we may be able to eventually figure out what she wanted, as I think she is a proponent of Bilibgual Ed. But even so, you’re right in that we may never know what the author of the article was trying to say.
That is 100% correct. I think you summarize the debate very well.