OK. I am obviously not going to persuade anyone who believes otherwise that spoken speech is only corrected to the level of the local dialect in the classroom. I still suspect that those who believe that was a routine occurrence are remembering a couple of egregious highlights and expanding that to a general rule, but I will withdraw the claim as a point of discussion.
However, the following is simply wrong, objectively:
Spoken and written languages are parallele but different languages. There is no one who speaks the way that they write with the exception of the occasional effort by Mark Twain or James Joyce–and even such authors do not do it in all their works.
In fact, I know of no linguist in the past 40 years who would make the claim that “the spoken word is just a way to vocalize what’s on paper (or vice versa)” (and I cannot recall any linguist prior to that period who has made such a claim).
If you’re talking about “wholesale abandonment of grammatical rules” then you’re talking nonsense. Your imaginary store clerk did not abandon grammar. The worst he was guilty of was using a casual form of address and failing to enunciate.
I believe the correct Chinese would be closer to “Mountain tall”, and I’m not sure that “Tall mountain” wouldn’t be just as good. But I don’t know much about Chinese grammar. I do know that even native English speakers with very poor educations do not say “The tall is mountain”. I’ve never heard a small child or a mentally handicapped person say such a thing, much less an ordinary adult. If that’s the sort of mistake you’re complaining about, then you’re complaining about something that does not exist.
This hasn’t been mentioned specifically here, but in similar threads I’ve often seen people complain about “bad grammar” that is in fact perfectly correct…in a particular dialect. There are constructions used in some dialects but not others. This does not make them wrong. It is ridiculous to accuse people of abandoning grammatical rules or using bad grammar when the rules you’re talking about apply to a dialect other than the one that they’re speaking. You might as well say that the Germans have terrible grammar skills because they always want to put the verb in the second position even when it wouldn’t go there in English!
It’s fair enough to expect that in certain situations people will address you in English rather than German, and that they will use a widely understood English dialect rather than a more obscure one. However, if they fail to do this then the problem isn’t their grammar.
I speak exactly the same as I write. The only difference is that, since I have more time to think when I’m writing, I tend to use longer and more complex sentences. Other than that (and the occasional pause or “um, errr, well” while I’m thinking), I use the same exact grammatical rules in both verbal and written communication. In fact, most of the people I know do the same.
Yes, we all know that written English does not have stress markers, and we all know that people write “whom” more often than they speak it. None of that has any bearing on the matter at hand, though. As your cite points out, “The two grammars will be very similar, and they will overlap in most places”. It is those overlaps (which cover almost the entirety of the English language) that I am complaining about.
Okay, so I suck at giving examples. I’ll try to be clearer next time.
sigh Perhaps I’m just not being clear enough. Let me give some very concrete (and more applicable) examples:
“We was going to the store.”
“Me and John went to a party.”
“Where you at?”
“I weren’t the one that done it!”
“I can’t do nothing right!”
The above are wrong. They are grammatically incorrect sentences. They may be acceptable usage in certain areas or certain subcultures, but, according to the agreed-upon rules of grammar for the English language as taught in all primary schools to (in a perfect world) all students, they are flat out wrong.
Yes, it does. If English didn’t have a de facto standard, you’d be right, but it does. Unlike any other time in the past, we have access both to audio (or audio-visual) media as well as near-instantaneous, worldwide distribution. As a result of this, English grammar has been, at least at the national level, standardized. All schools across the entire nation teach the same exact grammatical rules to students. We hear the same dialect (or at least multiple dialects using the same exact grammatical rules) from news reporters and celebrities across the nation. For what may be the first time in history, we have a nation that has what amounts to a standardized, national dialect.
I’m not complaining about people speaking in a particular dialect when doing so is appropriate. Still, people need to realize that their particular dialect may differ from Standard English, and that Standard English, as the de facto standard dialect, should be considered to have the “correct” grammatical constructs.
According to the agreed-upon rules of written grammar taught (in some imagened perfect world), they are wrong. Your claim that you speak exactly the same grammar that you write cannot be disproven on a text-based message board, but it is unlikely in the extreme, given that no linguistic authority has noted this actually occurring among any other speakers of the language. I share with dropzone (and, perhaps, with you) a tendency to speak the language in a more formal manner than most people. However, my speech is no more identical to my writing than W. F. Buckley’s is to his–and he certainly does not speak exactly as he writes.
You are welcome to maintain that belief, but you are mistaken.
Why do you insist on completely separating verbal grammar from written grammar? Are you saying that I could say “We was going to the store,” and that would be perfectly okay, but as soon as I wrote it down I’d be in error? Nonsense. There are certain grammatical rules that are standard for the English language, both in its written and spoken forms. Now, certain grammatical constructs may be perfectly acceptable in some dialects, but not in others. In that case, the Standard US English Dialect takes precedence (in the US), at least for the purposes of determining what is “correct”. I mean, otherwise, what’s the point of teaching standardized grammatical rules at all? Why not have schools in the rural South teach students that the proper conjugation for the verb “to be” is:
I are
You is
He/She is
We is
Y’all is
They is
We don’t teach that form of conjugation, even in areas where it is common, because it isn’t “correct”. It doesn’t agree with our national, de facto standard.
I think we may mean different things when we talks about speaking with the same grammar with which we write. I’m not counting things like shifts in vowel sounds. I’m not counting slurring or gliding between phonemes, such as is experienced when attempting to speak quickly. I’m concerned with basic grammatical rules for constructing sentences. For example, subject-verb agreement: My subjects always agree with my verbs. Proper tenses: my verbs are always in the proper tense. Double negatives: I don’t use them. There are probably more that I can’t think of right now. At any rate, you should be able to see by now that I don’t mean that I speak in some strange, stilted manner, enunciating each letter. Grammar and pronunciation are two separate things, and it’s the grammar that I’m concerned about.
(Please have mercy on my verb tenses, pronoun agreement, misplaced modifiers, or any other errors I might make here! It’s hard enough to try to compose something coherant without worrying about perfect grammar, punctuation or spelling.)
While I agree that one who uses improper grammar certainly sounds less professional and may sound less intelligent than one who uses correct grammar, I must speak up yet again for regional differences.
I was raised in Idaho. Comparatively speaking, people from that area of the U.S. have almost no accent and few locally accepted changes to the usual grammatacal rules. Idahoans sometimes go “up to the school” but in my experience double negatives, “ain’t” and the like are generally not used outside of very casual situations. I have since moved to Texas, first to a small town in east Texas, then to Fort Worth, now to south Texas. I have found that the acceptable margin of “incorrect” speech is much greater here, not only in casual speech but in formal speech (that of politicians or reporters on television, for instance) as well. Joe Random made the observation that Southern schools do not teach the conjugation of “to be” as:
…because that is not correct. (Actually, if you’re quoting east TX it should be “Ay’am” “Y’all is” “He/She is” “We is” “Y’all are” “They’all are” ) I will grant that the verb usage in the above is incorrect and not to be considered professional or correct speech. “Y’all”, however, is an entirely different animal.
“Y’all” is considered by many, if not most, to be the correct pronoun to indicate you plural, and sometimes you singular as well. If one uses “You” instead of “Y’all” one runs the risk of being branded a Northerner and therefore someone who has no idea what the hell is going on.
I currently work in a telephone customer service position, taking calls from all over Texas, and I have found that the line between professional and Dam’Yankee can be a very fine one. Even more confusing, here in south TX we have the added influence of the Spanish speaking population. I won’t even start in on the problems that English as a Second Language people encounter, as I believe it was well addressed earlier in the thread.
Suffice it to say that there are several different “professional” forms of speech that appear in different areas of Texas. As I take calls from people in different areas, what I need to use to be considered “professional” varies as well. A call from Austin might allow me to comfortably use speech much closer to what I grew up with as correct, while a call from Houston would put more importance on “y’all” and “fixin’ to”. This change in speech patterns and common phrasing does not serve to make me sound less professional to most people in the area, but more professional. (I still can’t bring myself to use “ain’t” or double negatives; I have coworkers who seem to find that acceptable professional speech, but my observation of the local media does not bear that out.)
I suppose what I am saying, at the base, is that incorrect grammar and words are only as incorrect as the majority of the area finds them to be. Although much of the style of writing of 200 years ago falls within “the rules” I wouldn’t speak in that fashion today.
They are wrong in the dialect many linguists call Standard American English, or SAE. They are not wrong in all other American English dialects. If the speaker is not speaking SAE, the rules of SAE do not apply.
*No, it doesn’t.
*The existence of an acrolect does not render the grammatical structures of all other dialects incorrect. There is no such thing as a “wrong” dialect, except insofar as a particular dialect may be socially inappropriate in a given situation. The rules of other dialects are not inferior to SAE, or “wrong” because they don’t comply with SAE.
Some of them actually allow for more elegant expression of certain ideas than SAE does. The “be + verb” construction in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, popularly known as “Ebonics”) is perhaps the most famous example of this. In SAE this construction is not used, so it is considered incorrect. However, in AAVE “My sister be waiting for me after school” is not only perfectly correct, it conveys a different meaning than “My sister is waiting for me.” Both structures are used in AAVE, but the former indicates habitual action while the latter simply indicates present action.
*That is sheer snobbery. SAE is more useful than many other English dialects because it is more broadly understood and in many situations considered more appropriate, so of course students should be helped to approximate SAE if necessary. But that doesn’t mean that the grammar of SAE is correct and the grammar of all other English dialects is incorrect. There is no linguistic basis for making that kind of judgement.
Aside from being factually incorrect, it’s simply unhelpful to tell people that their usual way of speaking (which is likely also the way everyone in their family and immediate community speaks) is bad, wrong, or stupid. That does not encourage them to learn the acrolect. It encourages them to hate it and mistrust anyone who embraces that style of speech.
I wasn’t going to post to this thread anymore, but Joe Random’s replies have made my attempts at self-restraint too much to bear.
Joe Random, I’m with you. I speak the way I write, too. I also share your frustration. I’ve read the writings of people who, when they speak, elevate grammar mistakes to new levels. In most, if not all the submitted samples, their grammatical errors also carried over to their writing. If it wasn’t so sad it would have been hilarious.
Can we at least agree that certain types of speech may have negative consequences? Saying, “I done been there.” or “I be going there” in certain contexts will very likely be a detrimental thing to the speaker. If someone insists on speaking that way anyway, they face the consequences. Just like someone very likely suffers negative consequences when they show up at the office dressed in flip-flops and beachwear. To do so anyway (and then wonder why they get a negative outcome) is either: 1) oblivious, 2) ignorant, 3) stupid.
I don’t believe anyone has claimed otherwise. Some forms of speech are obviously more socially acceptable in certain contexts than others.
This applies to all dialects, though. SAE is not always socially appropriate.
*There is not, however, anything inherently wrong with beachwear or dressing in beachwear. It is not in and of itself incorrect or stupid. It may be inappropriate in certain settings, but a business suit would be equally out of place at the beach.
What is unfortunate is when circumstances prevent a person from ever purchasing the business suit of SAE and leave him with only the beachwear dialect his parents gave him. This sad situation doesn’t make a person stupid, bad, or wrong, though.
*I think most people who say “you was” (as in the OP) know perfectly well why this simple turn of phrase sometimes provokes a negative reaction from others. It is generally not for reasons that make the self-appointed grammar police look very good. I don’t believe that many of them are motivated by concern for the poor non-SAE speaker’s future career prospects. They just want everyone else to speak exactly like they do, either because it makes life easier for them or because they mistakenly believe that their way is the only correct way.
You believe that it is impossible for someone to learn to modify the way they express themselves, to change the way they use grammar? No, I simply don’t believe that.
Possibly not, but it still doesn’t change the fact that it is a reality. And like UrbanChic points out, some people who speak with “bad” grammar also write with bad grammar. Should a prospective employer ignore that fact when looking to hire an employee?
I agree that a low tolerance for “colorful” speech or different dialects is a bit much. I kind of enjoy hearing other people’s unique ways of expressing themselves. But we’re still left with some of the more “over the top” examples, and how people react to it. Some groups of people speak using a ton of profanities–“Fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that.” Does that mean that if they speak that way in a church that the people who are offended are out of line in feeling offended, or in thinking negatively for these people for not realizing that there’s a time and place? Does that mean that we are not allowed to form opinions about people based on how they choose to express themselves?
Heh. I’ve been transcribing a lot lately. I challenge any of you who claim to “speak the way you write” to have yourself taped and transcribe it. Do it when you don’t know it’s happening. I’m with tomndeb on this one.
Incidentally, this is also why it’s so hard to write dialog in stories and such. If you wrote dialog the way people really talked, it’d be illegible in most cases. I’m not talking about just slang or pronunciation - simply put, most people start sentences and leave them dangling, leave things hanging, repeat phrases, etc. in a way that works when spoken but is impossible when written out. It’s a true art to write dialog that sounds like what we think we hear when we talk, but also makes sense.
*You’re changing the subject. No one has attempted to claim that all possible forms of speech are universally appropriate. I certainly have not. I have simply been responding to repeated, inaccurate assertions that grammatical constructions found in some dialects are incorrect just because they are not found in SAE, that speaking another dialect is “wholesale abandonment of grammatical rules”, or that speaking another dialect is a sure sign of stupidity or poor education.
Then I am confused. This is what you said (bolding mine):
What “circumstances prevent” a person from ever “purchasing” the “SAE”? I took this to mean that circumstances would prevent some from ever changing the way they talk, therefore they were stuck (forever) using language that was woefully out of place in some contexts (not unlike the person wearing beachwear to the office). If that is not what you meant, what did you mean?
I agree, I don’t think using a different dialect is an automatic sign of stupidity or poor education. However, if someone is too unwilling, or too oblivious to modify the way they speak in some instances, then something is amiss. They suffer consequences that they would (I assume) wish to avoid suffering. To continue to speak in a way that is destined to keep heaping these unwanted consequences upon them seems, well, oblivious or stupid, does it not? So in other words, it’s not the actual language they use, so much as their unwillingness (or inability) to do something about it.
I would not expect a person to forsake their profanity-peppered language when they are amongst people who understand their point and speak the same way. I would not think ill of them for doing so, since speaking that way is “normal” for them in that context. I would expect them, however, to reign it in at church. If they are unable to do so (or unwilling to do so) then they are either oblivious, or a moron. I don’t see much difference between that expectation and the same expectation about the use of radically non-standard grammar (in some contexts).
I don’t know about forever, as someone’s circumstances can change over the course of their life. But I did mean that a person can grow up in a situation where they either never have the chance or never have a reason to master SAE. This is a far cry from it being “impossible for someone to learn to modify the way they express themselves”. Lack of intellectual capacity is not the issue.
*Quite often the problem stems from the attitude of the SAE speakers they’ve been exposed to. Would you want to stop talking the way your friends, family, and neighbors did in order to imitate the funny-sounding speech of people from outside your community who sneer at you and call you stupid? If you did, do you think this would be looked upon favorably by your peers?
*Or maybe they’ve made a conscious decision not to sell out their own heritage.
The well-intentioned “Ebonics” debacle was based on the sensible idea that the best way to help young AAVE speakers master SAE was not to tell them that they were wrong/stupid/lazy and demand that they give up AAVE in favor of SAE. Instead the plan was to teach kids that they could speak both ways, and switch back and forth whenever they wanted to. Presenting the acrolect as “correct” English and the local dialect as “incorrect” does nothing but inspire resentment.
I didn’t think it was. I also didn’t think that anyone—anyone—is “stuck” speaking a certain way. If they don’t want to speak that way.
No one is asking them to talk that way amongst their peers, in their own neighborhood. Just like no one (or at least not me) is asking someone who usually speaks with multiple profanities to stop talking like that in their own group (where such talk is "normal’). But if they choose to keep talking one way, no matter where they go, (like church, for instance) no matter what the reaction/outcome, then that is their choice. And they deal with the sometimes bad consequences of that choice.
A person who wears a business suit instead of their usual “native dress” is not selling out their heritage. They are wearing a “costume” that is befitting a certain situation. Just like someone will wear a nicer outfit to church (as some churches expect that). And just like the person who wears the suit to the office. Or do you consider that “selling out”? No one is asking them to speak/dress/think a different way, all the time, just to wear/speak differently for certain circumstances. If they are unwilling to do that—oh well. That’s a choice they make.
Sure. Fine. So was the Eubonics program teaching kids to “sell out” when they tried to tell them that they could speak both ways?
I’m sure a few of the self-appointed grammar police will be willing to grant that, in their own inferior social circles, stupid, lazy, uneducated people may speak in their stupid, lazy, and uneducated manner. Not all are even that tolerant, though. Why else the push to “correct” people of their “bad” grammar when they’re speaking their own dialect perfectly correctly? Why else insist that particular constructions are flat-out wrong rather than merely inappropriate in a formal or professional setting?
*No, because it was set up so that children would not be told that they were stupid for speaking their own dialect.
The OP here is not complaining about the suggestion that some dialects might be better in some situations than others, or that it would be helpful for people to know how to switch back and forth between them. It is complaining about people being branded as stupid because they cannot or will not to speak the acrolect.
This has nothing to do with swearing in church or behaving in an unprofessional manner. It is about people being called stupid, lazy, or uneducated by people who not only don’t know their dialect but who are themselves so ignorant that they don’t even recognize it as a dialect.
) I will grant that the verb usage in the above is incorrect and not to be considered professional or correct speech. “Y’all”, however, is an entirely different animal.