Well, Paul. I do like the way that when Ebonics is brought up as a dialect, it is accepted by the ‘better educated’ set, studied and dissected. Yet, if I tried to convince you that the poorly educated, aging farm folk around here that speak a very poor version of English were in fact speaking a regional dialect, Missuronics, I’ll call it, you would laugh in my face. I never fail to be horrified that the same persons who demand equality and freedom on all parts do so by taking away from the stature, nature, and standing of the white male.
You’re no less racist than he.
–Tim
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
Ebonics and lack of education do not correlate statistically. I don’t know how many times I have to say it.
Actually, it’s called “Midlands.” Strike two. Read [urlhttp://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html#Heading2 before you say anything else wrong, OK?
And just what nature, stature and standing is that? Supremacy?
Oh, man Satan! That’s too cool :D. I especially liked the URLs: http, dig dis://www, so cut me some slack, Jack.cal.o’g/ebonics/wolfram
Should we start a pool on how long before that’s zipping around the net, probably labeled as the minutes of some school board meeting?
I’d like to take a brief moment to point out that on Opal’s collage on the teeming million homepage, I only found one person who was black, and didn’t notice any Asians. Everyone else is apparently of white, European origin. Take whatever meaning frothat you’d like.
All dialects are fascinating; some are quite beautiful. Creole, for instance, is as delectable to hear as it is to eat.
There are many variations of English. What is “proper” English? King’s English? Cambridge Professor’s English? Newscaster’s English? Midwestern Schoolteacher’s English?.
My understanding was that Ebonics(the subject) was to be treated as a foreign language. It is not. It is a simplistic term for a complicated group of dialects(varying with class and region) used by certain African Americans in the U.S. It should be taken no more or less seriously than any other accent.
Furthermore, if I were to teach English in a rural school here in East Tennessee, would it help if I were to begin by labeling the children’s speech Hillbillinguistics?
Black American Vernacular is a real dialect that’s been analyzed and described by linguists. And my guess is that Jesse Jackson speaks it with the best of em when he wants to. Jamaican patois (creole) is a dialect, too, and most Jamaicans - even the most educated ones - are bilingual in standard English and patois.
I was born in GA, my dad was born in SC, my mom in NC, and I spent most of my formative years in the southwest corner of VA, where everybody spoke with an Appalachian accent, not a southern one. Mind you, in my neck of the woods, the third syllable has a short “a” sound. Then I married a nice Jewish gal from Queens.
So I know from dialects - my wife and I get into language arguments all the time. When I give directions, my roads “dump out” into other roads, something that just makes her giggle. But then she says it’s OK that one of my tools wears out, since I’ve lots of use out of it, and “it doesn’t owe us any money”.
Come on, the reaction that Ebonics gets is rooted in racism, it’s just that simple. Unless of course one has an EQUALLY visceral reaction to the Pennsylvanian “you-uns” and the New England “h’yuh”, or the Canadian “eh”, or Southerners (like my uncle) who sound like they’re OD’ing on Quaaludes.
The last time I checked, Ebonics was nothing more than ‘gutter’ lingo or inner city slang speak. To promote it as a separate language would be to be able to say that the jumble spoken in the deep south should be considered ‘Redneckian’ and also promoted to separate status.
We should also consider the curious speech dialect the white/hispanic kids are using where words like ‘dog’ emerge as ‘dauwg,’ ‘punch’ comes out as ‘pawunch,’ ‘fucker’ is ‘fawker’ and ‘aw’ seems to somehow get stuck in most of the words. Should this then be elevated to ‘Hisponics’?
Was it not, also, years ago that people swore that those who lived in Brooklyn and the Bronx spoke a form of English that had never been heard before? Was that elevated to ‘Bronxonian’ or ‘Brooklynonics’? I don’t know if any of you have ever heard a DEEEEP South lady speak with ‘Southern Honey’ dripping off of every word but it is almost nauseating and can strain the ears if listened to for more than 4 minutes at a time. If you have to listen to it for 10 minutes, your eyes begin to bleed.
Mawwwkkk, Ah’m so sorry that you hahvehen’t been able to undehstahnd the pahticuhlah delectahsies thaht owah rehgahnawl toungue has to owffa. Espeshully in lahht of how lusshhioussly owah wimmenfolk treat owah men…
Unless you have some background in linguistics, why would anyone be even remotely interested in this opinion? I can’t think of a single professional in the field who would describe the way you do, so, really, why would your thoughts here matter?
Dialect.
Er . . . it is considered a dialect. Are you people even reading the fucking links, or are you just simply uninterested in any answer that contains actual facts instead of reinforcing your prejudices. Do you even know what a dialect is?
Actually, vowel shifts and variations are a major characteristic of regional and cultural dialects.
Well, I think the labels you made up are perjorative. As a southerner, I take great umbrage at the term “Redneckian”. But “Southern” and “New Yorker” are probably not true dialects, since they use American English constructions, just some terms, expressions and accents are different. Hispanic-flavored English I don’t know about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they indeed didn’t have a syntactically consistent creole. The thing about African American English is that it is legitimately a dialect.
Phil, thanks for your elucidation. I’d like to add; Why should any means of communication kowtow (a Chinese term) to the dominant language? If it’s meant as a means to communicate, whatever works is fine. Perhaps the linguistic agenda is not meant to translate to the dominant culture, usually with good reason. Codified language serves good purpose when you’re the underdog.
I’ll reiterate what I’ve posted in other threads. Don’t assume that because someone is not speaking your mothertongue that they don’t have the means to grasp all the glories thereof. Maybe they’d rather keep a means of communication that can go under your radar. In other spelled-out words: one for THEM, one for US. The ability to switch back and forth, which I have witnessed many times here in Mississippi, continually amazes me. And the best part is, if you’re a jerk, the “Wall” goes up and you never get to see what people really think of you (what I’ve been lucky to see is hilarious).
I see adapting to a forced tongue, while keeping the vernacular of your heritage, as an amazing strength. And, beyond that, African-American colloquialisms have injected beautiful additions to English. If not in our speech, most definitely in our recently learned ability to shake it on down.
So what happens when you try to print Ebonics? Didn’t Cecil touch on this with The HUD Brocure ?
I offer that action speaks louder than words. The perception of the Executive Director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants called the attempt to print the language “racist…malicious…deeply insulting to African-American people.”
The dialect appears to be reguarded in a negative way by a lot of the folks who are associated with it. What say you?
Tom, I actually copied that link in from the other site I linked to, and didn’t check it myself. My bad. I’ll see what I can figure out.
Doug:
“Creole” and “African American Vernacular English” or “Ebonics” are not the same dialect. And, in any case, AFAIC, the HUD debacle ignores the fact that the average black person who does use the dialect is perfectly capable of reading standard written English.
In addition to Phil’s comments, I’d note that if you provided as an official document a phonetic transcript of any dialect or accent in the U.S., you would be (correctly) accused of insensitivity at the very least.
Publish the same document in a purely phonetic transcription of the spoken language of Jesse Helms and see how fast it would be retracted. (The same would hold for a document that recorded in text the spoken language of Giuliani, Ted Kennedy, Clinton, or either George Bush.)
Love your comments and your voice, elelle! You can talk to me like that any time…in “a voice,” as Garrison Keillor recently said, “that you could use as pie filling.”
