Black American children are not verbally deprived despite their low test scores and the bad grammar many seem to have.
Whites have long believed that blacks speak bad English. Their reasoning for this has changed over time:
- In the 1800s whites thought it was biological: because the brains of black people were too small and their lips too big to speak English properly.
- In the 1900s whites thought it was sociological: bad parenting in black ghettos. Black parents do not talk to their children much or something.
Either way it is all wrong:
- Lip shape and size does not affect how people speak.
- The human brain does in fact have built-in language skills, but as far as we know they are the same in all races. There are not different kinds of languages according to race. Anyone of any race can learn any language.
- Children mainly learn language from their playmates, not from parents or schoolteachers. In any case, anyone who has been in a black ghetto household knows full well there is plenty of talking going on.
If whites were right about any of this then black children who grow up in white, middle-class neighbourhoods would not “sound white”.
Black children do score lower on reading tests and so on. That part is true. But even that fact is not as solid as it looks.
Those tests are written in Standard American English, the native dialect of middle-class White Americans in the North. After all, it is not just black children who score lower on those tests – so do white children in the South and white working-class children everywhere. Imagine if those same tests were written in Ebonics!
Standard English is an extremely important dialect. It is what all the schoolbooks are written in and nearly every book at the library. It is necessary for high school, university and the higher professions. It is Job Interview English. But it should surprise no one that the children of those who set the standard and write the tests do better.
Many blacks do not grow up speaking Standard English. Most speak some form of African American Vernacular English – Ebonics. It does not come from England. It comes from the pidgin English of West Africa of the 1600s.
Ebonics is different but not worse than Standard English. For example, it allows double negatives – but so does Spanish, French and Shakespearean English. It allows sentences without verbs, like “She nice” – but so does Russian. It has more tenses – but so does Ancient Greek. It can express any thought that Standard English can. It is native to rap. Standard English has borrowed heavily from it: okay, jazz, two-faced, sweet talk, put-down, redneck, etc. It is hardly verbally deprived.
The idea that Ebonics is bad English comes from “white is right” thinking where white people are the measure of all things. Whites have the cultural might to do that, but that does not make them right.
Source: This post is my take on the chapter of the same name by Walt Wolfram in “Language Myths” (1998) edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill. Wolfram is an expert on American dialects and sociolinguistics. He is a professor at North Carolina State University.
See also:
- reading scores and race
- “White is right”
- Ebonics
- Mock Ebonics
- Standard English
- Reading David Foster Wallace
- colour blind racism: the four frames
- “The average African IQ is 70″ – the same sort of thing only worse
- The white ethnographic gaze: the 1960s – so is this
Well written article. However I am a Black woman and I don’t talk ebonics at all. Many Blacks think I sound like a White girl and I find that sad because not all Whites speaks properly either. Speaking properly doesn’t mean speaking like a White person.
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Some blacks do grow up speaking Standard English. Michelle Obama is an example. Growing up she was accused of talking like a white girl.
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@Abagond
Where I live in the South, in a mostly Caucasian area, many of them have the nerve to say that Blacks don’t know how to talk properly when many of them don’t speak properly as well.
Many Whites don’t grow up speaking Standard English either. As well as many Blacks. Not speaking properly comes in all races and ethnicities but sadly America wants to stereotype Blacks with the worst stereotypes to make us look bad.
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Most American’s speak with horrible grammar. Trust me because we always have to correct it here in Japan. Almost no one speaks grammatically correct because if you wrote how you spoke you would properly sound like an idiot, that is why dialogue is so hard to write. The problem with most of these test is vocabulary.
Vocabulary does have an ethnic predominance when I was young it would be rare for some kid in my neighborhood to come across bidet but in the school acheivement test words of those sort were litter through it.
Now this is where I wish B.R. could back me up on this but most older Jazz have sophisticated word play. These words are readily know to those in the culture and back in the day it was the second meaning that was well known to blacks.
Grammar itself is a bastard with the adoption of foreign words in Latin, French, German which don’t conform to our language rules. Even now “I would like a sushi please.” It is an ackward phrase but in reverse even if you have high grammar knowledge you speech more likely will be stilted.
The phrases you pick would be strange and ackward but not grammatically wrong. When I was a kid there was great debate about these test and even from 2nd grade I supposedly had a college venacular but according to the teachers that didn’t make me genius. Grammar is like being told to paint in subjective lines and much like art it would be hard to tell what someone knew just by testing it. While they maybe great with grammar the could be piss poor in expression.
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Nice, Abagond. Beat them at their own game. Learn the Standard English, speak it, read it to our young (reading out-loud stories not just when there little up until teenage years). Read, read, and read again. Just taking notes for myself. Well shall see (I’ll report back in about 15+yrs, lol 😉
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That there are people who actually think (and still think) like that is appalling to me.
This is really a fact of racism, the disease of the mind that created the idea of whiteness, the belief that one belongs to specific “races” with specific characteristics.
Not my belief. At all.
Which is why I do not want to be called “white”. I have nothing to do with people with that mindset. And following politics and policies.
Peace
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“Speaking properly” is all about what the “norm” is.
Nobody anywhere speaks “properly”.
It’s like fighting over who has an accent or who hasn’t.
Everybody has an accent !
Simply, the dominant group imposes what “the” accent is supposed to be.
As a teacher of English in France, I was told my English was a “bad” model for students because I spoke … American English. I was even asked to talk phonetics classes to “correct” my speaking… Which I dropped after I proved them “my” English was simply not British and that students would gained from being exposed to American English since it NOW is the dominant type of English in the world… for good or for bad…
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“to take” phonetics classes “would gain” ^^ 😉
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Great post, Aba – I wonder what the score disparity is in math, however.
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Black children do score lower on reading tests and so on. abagond
The achievement gap is larger for math than reading. So unless you’re going to claim blacks do their math in ebonics, too, I don’t see much substance to your argument.
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It is necessary for high school, university and the higher professions. It is Job Interview English. But it should surprise no one that the children of those who set the standard and write the tests do better.
The children of many African immigrants do just as well or better than many northern Whites on these tests. Didn’t I see where you posted research on this?
It has to do with how children are raised, the values instilled in them, their preparation. Many African immigrants and their 1st generation children excel mathematically too. This is why there are many African immigrant and their 1st generation children in top professions of science, engineering, computers, and medicine.
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Nice, casual shoutout to Chomskyan linguistics at the beginning.
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Actually the majority of the kids that I grew up with could code-switch pretty readily between the two dialects. In my experience, the majority of Black people use ebonics only as a garnish to Standard English—it’s nothing like a whole other language. In fact, the way that I can usually tell a White poster is trying to sound Black incognito is when they fall into using profuse ebonics… it’s a dead giveaway, nobody talks like that except rappers giving an interview to VIBE and trying to sound street authentic.
To this day, I can (and do) slip in phrases from ebonics, southern slang, Caribbean slang, and church slang in order to make a point, emphasize something, or in making an inside joke. But none of us in my neighborhood grew up with ebonics as a primary language, and Standard English as a second language. All of us could read our tests in school.
Part of the reason for this is because my generation was born within the television era and most of us watched enough TV that, even in the case where some parents were a little more countrified, the kids were exposed to plenty of Standard English simply by watching their favorite programs.
Somebody ought to do a study on to what degree television teaches language within the modern era. (probably already been done, I suppose)
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@King
Great point, I was just making it in the other thread. I see no harm in it, actually.
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There is one thing that other places “have” less than the US. The institutionalization of the idea of “race”.
This should be one of the places to start working, imho. I know this is something extremely complicated to do, but I also believe that white supremacy actually benefits from it.
African students (who do not deal directly with the burden or “race” at home, usually also speak several other languages, at home and with family), very often, their families (similarly to Caribbean families) emphasize education as *the* goal. I know that from experience and from listening to the experience of other students, most from the Caribbean or Africa, in a Race Theory class. We discussed an article that compares different generations of African-Americans and families that migrated recently, and the study showed that the children of immigrant families who quickly adopted the African-American identity (blackness) proportionately failed more in class. It seems like the concept gives pride but doesn’t help to cope inside the system… Which seems quite logical to me. Interestingly, all the African-American students in that Race Theory class but one woman in her 40s dropped or were often absent, whereas the other students all enjoyed the discussion, that were sometimes heated.
From what I have been able to hear/witness, Africans migrants tend to despise African-Americans (“Blacks”) for not studying and working enough, and African-Americans tend to despise Africans for working too much for too little, and therefore supposedly trying to “behave white” and acting like “house negroes”, and making it difficult for others to get well-paying jobs. I have heard and witnessed that many times.
As always, it’s generalizations, but says something about a society.
The same phenomenon is growing in France, in parallel with a re-racialization of public discourse.
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Thanks, Sugarkiss
But I should probably also add that I’m not saying that there are not Black American young people who grow up without the skills to interview well, for example. And part of the problem may be the use of ebonics, but you’ll find that there are quite a few White American kids who also can’t interview well because of their reliance of on sitcom phrases, constantly using the word “Like” as a filler, using webonic words, etc.
My point was that most of the kids that I know who use ebonics use it as a linguistic style but can also seamlessly comprehend Standard English as well, for the most part.
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@Cornilia–
We discussed an article that compares different generations of African-Americans and families that migrated recently, and the study showed that the children of immigrant families who quickly adopted the African-American identity (blackness) proportionately failed more in class. It seems like the concept gives pride but doesn’t help to cope inside the system
This is exactly my point, but many African immigrant parents don’t need to read a study to know this. There are many other indicators.
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@ King
The numbers I saw go something like this: 10% speak only Ebonics, 10% only Standard English and 80% code switch. But Ebonics itself seems to be way closer to Standard English than it was in the 1960s, at least among the middle-class.
I agree about white posters and black rappers.
Language Myth #15 is “TV Makes People Sound the Same”. Might do a post on that too.
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@ Cornlia
What was the name of the study?
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@ Churchs
The post does not say how much of the achievement gap is due to cultural bias of the tests as compared to, say, bad schools or bad genes or bad parents or whatever. It was not the argument of the post.
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@ Churchs
The higher scores whites get on reading tests always kind of amazed me because it certainly does not square with my experience AT ALL. Especially not on this blog:
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Mock Ebonics:
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I did, in the See Also section.
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IMO: Ebonics, Spanglish and Creole … is a combination of languages converging into one. However it is viewed by the “larger speakers of the mother language” to be lazy to learn. That the person is not interested in properly learning how to speak. Most will agree that people from England, Australia or Southern US are hard to understand, because of how they enunciate their words. Within those groups, they marginalize dialects of the same language. In England, they new from language who was rich and who was poor. All were white.
We live in shallow world, where people make judgments (Incorrect and correct assertations) it’s part of how we are hard wired to survive, to detect whether another human being was a different and if they posed a danger.
So in as much as ‘”Standard American English” is based in the Northeast … we must again consider history and which groups settled in which areas. Down South, it was Irish and Scottish communities and their English is different than the English in England. Up North you had English, German and Dutch, all of which had to learn how properly prounouce the dominant language at the time (English) … Down South Scotts and Irish spoke the same and similar, therefore no one had to ensure all understood. There was no need to enunciate their words.
Latino kids who are forced to take ESL courses, don’t learn proper English and lose proper Spanish. That’s why many Latinos prior to ESL learned English fluently and quickly … and many used TV as their teacher.
So parents who do not insist that their children learn how to speak “properly” put their children at risk and jeopardize their child’s future and income potential.
Living in the Bronx, as a parent I had similar problems. My mother had insisted that I learned how to speak “properly” … in return I insisted that my children learned how to speak “properly” … my experience with my son led to this …
First Grade: before entering first grade, my son walked around with pencil and paper in his pocket everywhere. About 3 weeks into 1st grade, he started calling himself “stupid” and suddenly he was no longer interested in paper and pencil. I couldn’t understand what had happened. How could my child go from wanting to learn, to calling himself stupid and no longer interested. I realized that they only thing to change was his teacher. I met with his teacher and the first thing she said to me was “the reason why your son is having difficulties learning, is because English isn’t his first language!!” … HUH??? I was stunned, how could she say that, my child only knows ONE language and that was English … so I asked her “Do I sound like I have difficulties with the English language?” … You can see by the proverbial “lightbulb” above her head, that she just got caught writing my son off as “unintelligent” based on a false assumption. I quickly took my son out of the school.
Fast forward to the 5th Grade … I meet with his teacher and she says to me “Oh wow, your son speaks so eloquently, he enunciates all his words, he has such an amazing grasp of the English language … where did he grow up” (code for what white neighborhood did he grow up in) … my response to her ignorant statement and question was “THE BRONX.”
Fast forward to High School … first day of school in the Bronx … my son comes home “Yo yo whatz up yo … how yall doin” … both my husband (also from the South Bronx) and I look up with “Huh, who just walked through the door” … my response was “Na … go back outside and start all over, except this time speaking properly” … his response “Na ma, yall don’t be goin to high school in the Bronx” … our response was “So WHAT” … “We don’t have a problem with you learning the predominate street slang, but there is a time and place for everything and you need to learn how to switch, because when you go for a job, the last thing is you want to give someone the impression that you are not intelligent.”
Fast forward a couple of trying weeks, with a teenager who was dead set on speaking “street” … while out shopping, he was looking in a store front window and I noticed a group of teenage boys … I made the assumption of the language I was going to hear … so I asked my son to close his eyes and not to look but to listen … you see I know that he didn’t see the group coming by, so I knew that he couldn’t make a judgement based on looks … I wanted him to hear it and then make an assesment. … After they walked by talking, I asked him … “So tell me, did they sound smart or did they sound dumb?” … my son looked at me with an enlightened look on his face and said “wow mom they sounded dumb and I don’t even know who passed by” … Exactly my son, now do you want people to make a quick judgement and assume that you are dumb … thereby losing any first impression required in this society we live in???”
My son speaks both “proper” English and he also speaks the language of his peers.
When it comes to language or communication … why is it that in United States, we stiffle our children and threaten their future income potential by not helping them to fit in with the predominate culture in which they live in??? … We can do it our way, but the nail that sticks out the farthest, is the one that gets banged the hardest. … I am all for individuality, accepting and respecting our own culture … but American kids need to learn more than one English language. We are failing our kids by not insisting on a second languge starting in Kindergarten, whether it’s Spanish, French, Russian or Chinese-Mandarin. And considering that Mandarin is becoming a business language, why are we setting them up to fail … by insisting that poor language skills is acceptable (that includes the Brits, who come to the states with such a heavy accent and different use of dialect) … because it’s bad to “fit in”?
When I think of all those excrutiating days that my mother made me repeat words and sentences until they were correct … often makes me realize that my mother did me a favor.
Ebonics, Spanglish, Pigeon, Creole … are great, because they encompass our “mother” cultures and our history … but we live in the United States and in this country the ruling dialect comes from the Northeast and Southern California (Hollywood). We are not helping our kids by fighting the dominate culture.
We need to teach our children both.
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That’s it. I officially give up on white people.
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lol @ brothawolf
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@ stilletotreehugger
I’m glad your son got it right.THere is a time and place for everything.I do think its fine to talk a certain way around certain people just not at work or around whites because they will think that is how you talk all the time.
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That’s too bad … I guess that’s what White people say about us … “I give up” … so how are you going to avoid them? Just curious if there’s a “safe” place to escape to? Because in Africa they’re practicing some serious hateful stuff to other Black people. In Latin America, they’re practicing some scary stuff. In the middle east, thety’re killing off their own people.
So where are the sane Human Beings, who don’t commit atrocities?
My friend said to me “it’s genetic memory” … well damn, I guess WE ARE alll screwed. So do we give up? Roll over play dead? Pretend their ghosts, like Asians do??
There are good and bad people in every race, culture and religion.
Surely some of us has had good experiences? They can’t all be bad? Could it be that we just don’t know how to see the good anymore and we are just focused on the negative stuff??
We fought so hard for the “terrorists” NOT to win … But they won, because now we Americans don’t have the freedoms we once had. Now we suspect everyone of having ill intentions.
How sad. I refuse to lump all of humainty in to the “You suck” category.
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Thanks. But it’s not just “Whites” … it’s Educated people in general. Educated Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Arabs … educated people prefer to talk to and listen to people who sound just as educated and certainly are never interested in talking to someone who “sounds” dumb.
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When it comes to the English language; shouldn’t white people be the “measure of all things”?
For that matter; even among white people people who actually speak it like people from England seem to be considered smarter on average than people from the US…..
I mean its a “white” language created by “white” people……if what you do doesn’t mix with their version of english wouldn’t that make it improper by default?
Isn’t anything else cultural appropiation?
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I actually thought, that Ebonics originated in slavery. Slaves were never taught English language in a official capacity and we were kept from learning to read.
I also thought black slaves, used Ebonics to communicate with each other, so that their slave masters, couldn’t understand what they were saying.
I also think, that blacks kept speaking Ebonics as a way to rebel against white culture, therefore having something to claim as our own, being blacks were stripped of their own language and culture.
I’ve heard every kind of “dialect” from all the different European races and they are not seen as “ignorant” or “uneducated” by white people in America, only Ebonics.
Abagond said it right, its the “white is right” at work.
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That being the case, what language should African Americans speak? … Should the larger culture adopt to the “smaller” cultural language? … If we are going to have people embrace their “mother” language … what would that be? … because 98% of Latin America and North America lost their native languages. In Africa many people speak their mother language AND that of another European country (French, Dutch, English, Spanish) language … So what should African Americans speak if they have No memory of their different “mother” languages and want people to speak … “Ebonix” and want the larger culture to adopt that as the official language of who??? Caribbean Americans? Latino Americans? Unless we are going to start teaching and learning Swahili (one of the few dominant languages of some African countries.)
For that matter … African Americans should stop telling people to learn English or get out of “their” country.
This is such a Multi-Faceted situation.
Regardless of WHAT language we speak … we should speak it well and clear.
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Those that came across the Middle Passage came from different parts of Africa. Not all of Western Africa had the same language. Either way … slaves had to figure out how to communicate with other slaves.
Ebonix … so what were they speaking in Jamaica? What were they speaking in Brazil? What were they speaking in Mexico (there are Blacks from Mexico) … so there is NO WAY that all slaves spoke Ebonics.
I thought Ebonics is new amongst all languages? I don’t think it’s older than 100 years?? IDK … someone please share the knowledge.
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I sometimes hear Whites complain about African American speech, at the same time saying people with French or other thick European accents sound interesting.
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My husband and I had a discussion about this not long ago, but it was more in reference to the way Southerners speak. We’re both Southern, but he hates country accents and has taught himself to speak “correctly” by mimicking people on television.I speak standard english mostly, but I do code switch, especially when speaking to my family.
I’ve never really paid attention, but do southern whites speak Ebonics? What is that called?
I watched “End of Watch” last year and there was one scene were the cops are called to a home in the hood. They’re speaking to the drugged out black mother of a missing child and she giving them a description of the girl she says, “She be fo'(four)” which really bugged me. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever heard “be” used this way. Most black people speaking ebonics would say “She fo'”, but not “She be fo'”. Not to mention this is in L.A. not the eastern part of the country so she probably would have a Californian accent and would’ve said “She four”.
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StilettoTreeHugger:
I agree with you, that blacks need to teach their children to speak “proper” English first and if they choose to speak, “street language” or Ebonics as a second dialect.
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Again, my own perspective is that Ebonics (slang) is OK to learn and use in the correct context. The only caveat is that you must learn Standard English to the best of your ability. Being able the master the lingua franca of any given culture is always going to be the first measure of how intelligent others think you are.
BUT… we should also fight the notion that anything that is Black American is somehow ghetto and stupid. Most will bear witness to the fact that when phrases are strictly “ebonic” then the speakers are seen a low brow, and thuggish. But lo and behold, two years later, when the exact same phrase are adopted en masse, by the White youth culture, it’s suddenly becomes OK.
-“You Go girl!”
-“Talk to the hand”
-“24/7”
-“No you di in’t!”
-“Two snaps!”
These phrases are see as ignorant when made up by people like this”
But are do darn cute when they are copied and repeated by people like this:
It’s all in the perception. The people who invent the sayings are dummies, the people who copy the sayings and repeat them are clever, fresh, and cute.
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King:
That’s a very good point you made, here.
This is such a blatant, double standard. You also see this with the wigger, a white teenager can adopt black culture and be seen as “hip” or cool” to his peers but let a black teenager, be himself. He’s “ghetto” and he must be a “thug”, that sells drugs and is a criminal.
Here is a recent double standard that sent my blood boiling….
McKayla Maroney’s “not impressed smirk” OMG! she’s gotten so much “positive attention” for doing something so negative!
I ran a search for McKayla Maroney’s “not impressed smirk” and got so many hits, the things people are saying are all positive.
The strange thing about it, when she first did it, almost everyone( including most whites, not all of them) was quick to condemn it but almost immediately after, white America switch up and began to make excuses for her and even claimed it wasn’t a big deal, after all.
I mean people, could you imagine how the media and white America, would have destroyed, Gabrielle Douglas and black people as a whole ( because blacks are not individuals, so we are always grouped together as a collective entity ) if she would have done anything close, to what McKayla had done?
We wouldn’t have heard the end of it, “you see, those black ghetto girls, you can take them out of the hood but you can’t take the hood out of them”
You see how whites get a pass for being so spoiled and entitled and so disrespectful?
Now McKayla is getting offered movie and TV roles and even got to meet the president up close to pose with that face!
I haven’t heard of any movie or TV show deals, regarding Gabrielle Douglas.
Matter of fact, i haven’t heard of gabby in regards to anything in the media, which is odd being she was the highlight of the show by winning the most gold medals in the individual, all around gymnastics.
So the double standard does apply in every instance, language, culture, upbringing,morals and values.
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GREAT info, as always Bulanik.
As always, your research and analysis is superb 🙂
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Great observation Sondis on McKayla Maroney.
Were you aware that she just became the spokesperson for the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group?
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-mckayla-maroney-unimpressed-7up-20130301,0,6931810.story
You’re right though of course. Had that been Gabby Douglas smirking on the stand, the accusations of spoiled brat, sore looser, poor character, embarrassed America, would have stuck and been the unfortunate “reason” why so companies weren’t using her for endorsements.
But as it is, Gabby doesn’t seem to be doing too badly in the endorsement department.
http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/dollars/post/_/id/835/endorsements-lucrative-for-gabby-douglas
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@Abagond, allow a day or two to look for the article. Thanks.
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It’s very interesting to see all the adjectives associated with languages in all the comments !
“country” (well a noun), “thick”, “”white””, “franca”…
Actually, Bulanik, all the European languages have Indo-Europeans roots except Basque, Hungarian and a few others.
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@Abagond and everyone.
Here is the article I “quoted” by memory.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2547158?uid=3739832&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101887730217
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This one seems to be complete: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3686134/Waters_EthnicRacial.pdf
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The manner of speech of enslaved Africans here was heavily influenced by that of the typically un / undereducated whites around them (even well to do slaveholding families didn’t always bother to formally educate their daughters; but only their sons). The enslaved Africans, in turn, had influence on the whites around them.
White children and enslaved African children especially had influence on one another’s speech patterns, as the two tended to be playmates to each other up until the age where the enslaved children were officially put to work.
To the end, a lot of what are termed ‘Ebonics’ are actually Southernisms brought ‘North’ when large numbers of Blacks started exiting the South in search of greener pastures….
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This is an interesting post. In the book Shifting by Charisse Jones & Kumia Shorter-Gooden, Ph.D. There is a chapter that talks about articulate speech in the work place and as a professional. Using articulate voice and diction in the work place and shifting to casual speech among friends and family and in the community. I agree that young children should be taught to speak the king’s english at home clearly and articulately. But what if the youngster doesn’t have parents that are articulate in speech? Black people have to polish up everything to be acceptable by white society. That is if one wants to be successful in life. This is a good thing. Everything starts at home. But if said child’s parents don’t have the tools to help their children then it could be the difference between failure and success in the the world. Voice and diction and articulate speech is important. That’s why young black children need mentors if the parents don’t have the necessary tool to help their youngster accomplish success.
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Ebonics is just lazy articulation and diction. It should not be encouraged.
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Voice and dictions classes are very helpful.
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Enrolling youngsters in speech and drama classes are a plus as well.
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I agree with the point that everyone has an accent but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there’s no such thing as a true “proper English”. Or in this case, “Proper American English”.
In simple terms, the proper Dialect would simply be that which is most widely understood with the least difficulty.
I would even state that this would be the mechanism in which certain aspects of Ebonics have been incorporated into “Proper English”. Their usage simply became more widely understood.
Now, when a dialect includes features that the listener just doesn’t understand the common reaction is often to call it “ignorant” or “stupid” even if its idiosyncrasies follow just as many rules as the “proper” dialect. If not more.
Like having the “H” in “Hu” to be silent for some reason. Or adding “r” sounds after words like “idea” and taking “r” sounds out of other words where they belong.
To me this just seems stupid but when I look at things closer I can see it’s not really about intelligence. The people speaking this way aren’t doing so because of a loose grasp the various rules behind what they’re speaking but because they were taught different rules.
Rules that don’t make any sense at all and have no reason for existing, but there’s a whole bunch of examples of that in “proper English” anyhow.
I would also like to point out that there’s a significant difference between an accent and a dialect though they’re often paired together. Dialects usually come with a set of their own additional rules while accents on the other hand are just different ways of accenting various sounds.
In this case, “Ebonics” is not an accent nor is it really comparable to one. It’s a dialect with rules.
Accents are just the way you make the sounds that the language or dialect you’re speaking uses.
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Careful, Agabond, you’re beginning to sound like John McWhorter.
Kidding aside, many languages contain multiple dialects. They are usually distinguished either by geographical region or socioeconomic subclass. In most cases, the version spoken by the group with the money/power becomes the “standard” version. This doesn’t make it any better as a means of communicating. It simply makes it the dominant version and its importance derives from its relationship to money and power.
In fact, “Ebonics” (or, as they said when I was in college, “Black English Vernacular”) is in many ways a better way of communicating than standard English. Take, for example, the multiple negative, which is used freely in many vernacular versions of English, and is formally incorporated into many other languages. Most of us understand that multiple negatives reinforce the negative-ness of a thing. Most of us use multiple negatives in our ordinary speech. They are useful to reinforce the negative-ness of a thing, something that isn’t as easily done in standard English. Thus, when Hank Williams included the quadruple negative in his “Nobody’s Lonesome For Me” (“Ain’t nobody never gonna love me no-how”), we know he means he ain’t gonna get any loving.
That does lead to the question about the achievement gap in this area. We know that code-switching or even speaking multiple distinct languages, as most kids in other parts of the world do, improves a child’s ability to learn any language. In other words, kids from home environments with a strong vernacular should logically do better on standard English than mono-lingual or mono-vernacular kids. But in this case they don’t. Why?
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Life would be so “boring” if we all spoke the standard English all the time.
The fact is white Americans should not get to define what is considered “proper” considering how they butchered the queens English..but as the saying goes “when in Rome, be like the Romans”
Anyway, Bulanik, as for Jamaican patois being some kind of “dialect” or an “accent” that some ‘dimmi dimmi white boy’ can mimic in a Superbowl commercial — this ones for you 🙂
I would have respected VW more if they had the white guy sound like this farmer instead of sounding like a bad version of the reporter.
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I always get this from my kids, why should we learn how to do this. In which I tell them of any subject much like finance and an interest bearing account. If you put your money in an interest bearing account earlier you stand to make more than if you put more money in later. The later you put it in the less you get. Right now you are the earlier who will give that information to your kids and give them a leg up, who will be able to give more to your grand kids. However if you are the one not taking it serious then you slow down generations of your offsprings because they have learn by themselves something you could have helped them out with.
Proper English is the key into success. It is very hard to get that success without it because the area we live in.
However if you want to talk about proper English I love my Leeds, and Essex friends but the way the speak is properly looked down on. In my younger years I woke up in a hostel with four Scots I didn’t understand a word they said. Here in Japan I had Scottish roommates and it took a few years to understand them but here you lose lexicons and accents. It was also why standing in Florence one of the Southern States girl said I am ungulating and the rest of us were like you are what. The subtext of language is quite interesting but unless we had major corporations speaking the Ebonics it is hard going trying to get a job in this culture.
I think language is so playful that you can see its effects in subgroups.
It is kind of like college you start off basically speaking in the same manner but as people go deeper into their majors you start losing the conformity you had.
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As a British born black immigrant of West Indian ancestry my experience is different. Code switching was a value that was imposed on me by my parents for as long as i can remember. When I entered school I had a heavy cockney accent and my parents put me in a speech class to learn how to speak middle class English. My parents did not mind how I talk when I was with my friends but insisted that I use the “Queens English” at school and any other formal setting.
When I came to this country I was bullied because I sounded white. It was very confusing since every black person I knew talked like me or my parents. It took me a few years to shake this acting white BS and I am more likely to challenge anyone who says that tripe to me, Patois or Jamaican English is a source of pride and most West Indians know that there is a time and place for every dialect. The Ebonics issue is just another way to demean black people and too many African Americans have internalized this idea. Black children should be taught standard English since it is the franca lingua of this country and but there is nothing wrong with black English. It is part of our beautiful struggle.
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@ Legion: Thanks for cosigning my comments.
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King of trouble
big computor problems
you mentioned me
yes jazz words invented by jazz musicians has had more influence on ebonics and american slang into mainstream american language than any other fonte
i brought a huger lisgt of words in on the mock ebonics thread
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B.R. good to hear from you. As usual my son is speeding along and slow me can barely catch up. Jazz had a big impact on the language itself. However, when people say ebonics is lazy I kind of question that. Ebonics for lack of a better name is just a way of speaking that has helped a group grow up with a common identifier.
Now I can’t believe I am going to defend Ebonics after getting my butt kicked for not being able to speak it so many times but I really had to think about it. So I am going to spit out some of my thoughts on it.
For those who are interested in Language I recommend at least this book The Elements of Expression by Arthur Plotnick.
Lexiconal, Patios, Creole, and other versions of English give an easy identifier of the group in which you are around. Standard English is a little crazy as it is very hard to really say what is standard. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago so I should have spoken with either the black accent and lexicons of my area or at least a South Chicagoan accent. Unfortunately for me I didn’t but great for my track career because I had to be fast to get away from the constant beatings of my neighbors. Ebonics has some excellent expressions and can be just as passionate, interesting as the so called Standard English.
Still like I said before if you only speak ebonics you will find it hard to raise up to corporate level.
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Ha, funny, King of Trouble, I lived for a few years in Hyde Park, 53rd and Cottage Grove a couple of those years…
I am a big beleiver in the high value that black American expresions and slang have brougth to American language and culture , principly through jazz culture and the incredible musicians who brought us their art and way of expressing communication to each other
There is so much wit and intelligence involved in that evolvement of a way to communicate among each other without white people knowing what they are saying back then
The history of jazz has the whole deal in it about racism and how black culture was put down and stripped down and at the same time copied and marketed for white profit…it is a history well worth studying
If people want to talk about “ebonics (not a word Im really thrilled with, its some kind of intellectual labeling without really knowing the origins)”, jazz history and culture is the place to dig for some real treasure and information about it…check out the words I brought in on the “Mock Ebonics” thread, it is huge and will tell you a lot if you see these expresions and how many of them are mainstream American expresions now…jazz musicians shaped popular American culture in so many ways
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@Abagond,
The higher scores whites get on reading tests always kind of amazed me because it certainly does not square with my experience AT ALL. Especially not on this blog:
Could that be because your blog attracts educated blacks while all racialised blogs attract some fairly dumb white racists.
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Would you respect a doctor who spoke in ebonics? I’m guessing the answer is no, I don’t think I could.
The reason I ask that question is, I speak a regional form of English myself and I’m proud of it but we are conditioned to hearing ‘received pronunciation’ (Britain) as the accent of authority and education. Were I to see a doctor who spoke with a regional accent, I think I would feel uncomfortable. He may be a good doctor but conditioning has made me biased against him, at least initially.
There is obviously a racial component to the disdain for ebonics but its not purely racial.
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@ Brengunn
I think it depends what you mean. I can count 6 or 7 younger doctors among my friends. Most of them will ebonicize a bit amongst friends when we’re in the mood for it. But as I said above, I don’t know anybody who speaks ebonics as a second language, its usually a sprinkling few phrases and idioms.
You wouldn’t expect that a doctor could get through Med school speaking ebonics as a language. You also wouldn’t expect him to use it in consults with his patients. But that doesn’t mean that they do’t engage in it at all.
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Is ebonics classified as an accent or is it just a dialect? Is ebonics spoke in different regional accents but with the same phrases etc?
Were a doctor to use ebonic phrases during a consultation, that would give me serious cause for concern. But more than that, were a doctor to speak in perfectly good English but with pronounced accent, I would also feel uncomfortable. At least until I’d assessed his competence. BTW, that includes doctors who speak with my own accent.
I can only assume this is because ‘educated’ people speak in received pronunciation or standard American English, so we expect this of professionals such as doctors.
PS, I only apply this to native English speakers. An accent with a foreign doctor would give no cause for concern.
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Above post meant for King, sorry.
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@ Brengunn
Well, the actual word “Ebonics” was created by Robert Williams back in 1973 during a conference called the “Cognitive and Language Development of the Black Child.” So it;’s really a fairly new idea. It didn’t really fall into common parlance until the mid 1990s.
Ebonics is not a well defined concept, There is no official ebonics dictionary or grammar book. It’s just a very loose term used to describe a Black dialect of American English that varies from region to region.But ebonics is basically a kind of slang. So you wouldn’t expect a doctor to address you in slang during a consultation because it would not match the setting. I think that accents are a bit different because a person can be speaking Standard English and still have an accent. Accents can either be stylized intonations, based on regional isolation, or they can be residual pronunciations, left over from a previously learned languages.
So I’d be OK with an accent, but uncomfortable with slang, coming from my surgeon..
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@ Brengunn
Is ebonics classified as an accent or is it just a dialect? Is ebonics spoke in different regional accents but with the same phrases etc?
It’s more complicated than that.
First, everyone has an accent. Accents are a result of how different groups pronounce their vowels. Beyond that, there are differences in general pronunciation. Different groups may pronounce words differently but that doesn’t necessarily affect their accent. Only vowels affect accent.
Second, one can also mispronounce words. For example, dropping letters at the end of a word. But, once again, mispronunciation doesn’t determine accent, either. Only vowel pronunciation affects accent.
And, finally, different groups can have words and expressions unique to themselves. That obviously doesn’t affect accent, either.
Ebonics has all of these. It has a unique accent, unique pronunciation, mispronunciation and some unique words & expressions. None of this makes ebonics a “dialect”. But ebonics has another thing, as well. It has its own grammar. Or rather it has its own incorrect grammar. In particular, bad subject / verb agreement. Some people want to legitimize the bad grammar by calling it a dialect. It’s not.
I suspect what is currently called “ebonics” was also spoken by illiterate whites at one time. When poor whites learned to read and write they also learned proper grammar. That’s why you only see poor blacks still using it. They haven’t learned proper grammar because they’re pretty much illiterate. You might occasionally see literate blacks using ebonics. They call themselves speaking another dialect. But that’s like claiming to speak another dialect because you’re mis-spelling and mispronouncing words.
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Church’s the first part of what you say above wasn’t too bad, but there are some problems with the second part. Firstly, ebonics is such an informal definition of a thing that changes constantly, and varies by region. So some of your categorization would be impossible.
Ebonics is a linguistic goulash, of Southern idioms, Jive talk, Harlem slang, Black Church phrases, Hip-Hop and Rap phrases, and even some West African linguistic structure. It’s not as simple as just being the result of uneducated people butchering the language because they were not taught any better. There are a lot of sources and influences, and all ebonics does not sound the same.
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@ Brengunn
Ebonics is what linguists call African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It is a dialect of English. It has its own accents – what people mean when they say someone “sounds black” over the telephone even when they speak in Standard English.
RP is an accent, a way of speaking Standard English. Ebonics has its own ways of pronouncing English but it also has its own words and grammar. It comes from West African English. In the 1700s and 1800s picked up stuff from white working-class American English. Unlike what Churchs is saying, it does not come from any known dialect of white English. It has features, for example, found in West African English but not in any known dialect of white English – like sentences without verbs (“She nice.”).
Ebonics is the largest source of White American slang, but it is more than just a bunch of slang words said with a certain accent. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, for example, was written completely in Ebonics.
Its grammar and pronunciation are bad only if you assume Standard English is the only correct sort of English. But all that makes Standard English “correct” and Ebonics “incorrect” is who is in power and who is not. It has no objective, linguistic basis.
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Below is an interesting excerpt taken fromThe MAAT Newsletter:
“The Anglo-Saxons dominated until 1066 A.D. when William the Conqueror, in what was called the Norman Invasion, established the rule of the French language, which was deeply rooted in the Latin spoken by the early Romans. French became the official language of the church, the schools and parliament, but the masses of people on the British Isle now spoke ‘Anglish’ This language, then, began to be influenced by the French, which was already genetically a Latin language kin to that of the Romans. ‘Anglish’ borrowed so extensively from the French language that even today, if you look at the etymology of 85 or 90 percent of the English vocabulary in any dictionary, you will find that English has received most of its vocabulary from the Romance languages, but the grammar of English still basically follows the German syntax and word order. For that reason, English is not considered to be a Romance language. The Romance languages are French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Italian, etc. The Germanic languages are German, English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, etc.
“The same thing, I submit, occurred with the slave descendants of African origin…Black Americans are speaking an African language (Ebonics) with some European influence.”
Source: http://www.melanet.com/clegg_series/ebonics.html
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It’s probably worth repeating that ebonics is a moving target linguistically. For example, the kind of ebonics that you would find in many slave narratives would be markedly different than what you would find today being spoken in the South Side of Chicago. Yet, a person who speaks english can pick up a book written in either version of ebonic dialect and understand it almost completely upon first reading.
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I dont think you can totaly grasp “ebonics” if you dont look at black american jazz artists and they way they comunicated
the way black jazz musicians took words and made nouns verbs or created phrases that other people cant understand or took words and shifted them into other meanings, took incredible wit and intelligence, and is really the root for so much American slang
It really speaks to a “cultural ” manifestation that was parralel to black American jazz musicians literaly creating popular American music and dance culture
If there was “jive talk in Halem”, its because they were copying black American jazz musicians and life
Many rap words are an extension of the jazz slang, or new words for some of the jazz expresions , like “chill out” comes from “be cool”…
I know sometimes its hard in contemporary times to really take the effort to look back into the past and really understand culturaly what was going on, but, jazz history has a huge rich history of black American culture and how things evolved in the developement of American culture
I mean really, the amount of words I brought in on the “Mock Ebonics” therad is just astounding…in amount of words and in creativity and wit involved in the evolution of this kind of comunication
“ebonics” is kind of a chumpy word for me and doesnt do the reality justice…this is about a group of high leval individuals who evolved their leval of comunication to a very creative point
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@B.R. for the longest I hated Ebonics but getting your butt beaten from all the way down from 79 to 63rd Street for the inebility to use it from different racial groups made me reflect on it. I find that I prefer “Ain’t I a woman” Strong messages in a tone that could not only grab the audience but not let them forget. I find that Blues kicks your soul and comes up to wrench you heart. I think far too long we only look at the now of something instead of really looking at the progress of it. Can you sould intelligent using Ebonics, I feel so enough people littered through our history have. Ebonics does not have to hem in thinking it can be a very poetic way of expression. Yet, I will reiterate that if you only know Ebonics it will be hard going making it up the ladder.
@ King, I agree it is a moving language but I figure much of language unless dead or Church latin moves. Plus I think Chicagoans love being different. No Bloods and Crypts when I was growing up only Folk and People. Which when ever I heard the dread “What you be about” I wish that I could say I was mute and couldn’t understand.
Yet, I will yield that I must be the most tone deaf person alive when it comes to hearing languages. 16 years I lived in a very heavily Ebonics influences area and not once did I ever pick it up right. Ebonics was not spoken in my house but outside in the very neighborhood I live, in the playgrounds I was around, and by kids I had to met everyday and never a once did my vocals acquire the right tones. In my head I sounded alright but once word left my mouth it was flat and according to everyone sounded white. I could never get away with saying “I ain’t never liked her” I could only get away with, “From the moment I met her bile choked my throat.”
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haha King of Trouble…I feel you
gosh, I have such fond memories of riding with my mentor to rehersal up 79th and Jefferies…so many fine women walking around
I played the High Chaperal up there on 63rd and Blackstone, I beleive is the correct street
For sure the mix that King and Church reffered to , is in black American slang, its just that the jazz influence is just immence, and is less about using words like “aint” and more about creative words and expresions , like “jive” “chops” “gigs” “cool” “groovy” “bread” or “cake”, many words that also seeped into just plain American cultural slang
and, the black American jazz musicians who were the top, were geniuses, so , geniuses have their way of coming up with creative comunication styles
I find too, that these cultural evolution of words in black American style, go along with cultural movements in music and dance, there is something that goes hand in hand and each generation has their own way of expressing themselves and regenerating the creativity…something pretty fascinating if you think about it
Brazil has a tremendous slang ethic going also
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yeah, I think the High Chaperal changed to “the Checkmate” that used to be over on 55th and I played there also, opening for BBKing, this was in 68 or so….the place was empty….haha later on BBKing got much better received
The thing about Chicago is, it was a typical northern urban city that received a huge black migration from the south…In these cities, you have black Americans that have been there for generations, and they speak differantly than many of the people who arrived from the south…so there was a kind of clash of culture…you even had words like “country” used in distain of the newly arrived migrants from the south….so, I think you were caught in the middle of that as much as anything…that and maybe a cultural thing…heck, I was playing black music with black bands and socialising my puberty years with a black American scene…I picked up on slang very fast and especialy playing jazz, or funk, it certainly is natural,and I slip in and out of jazz slang at will, but, very clearly, there are many great jazz musicians who are more like you, dont really speak slang, are very well educated .There is no monolithical take on this , I think
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“educated” is relative , by the way, since many great jazz musicians might not have gotten degrees in collage, but they are really “educated” on another leval
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@ abagond
Its grammar and pronunciation are bad only if you assume Standard English is the only correct sort of English.
Yeah. And you misspell words only if you assume the dictionary has the correct spelling.
It has its own accents – what people mean when they say someone “sounds black” over the telephone even when they speak in Standard English.
A lot of people can tell the race of someone over the phone even if the person grew up around another race. There are physiological differences in the pharynx.
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@ BR
Since you like jazz so much you should probably learn where the words cums from. LOL!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_%28word%29#Likely_derivation_from_jasm
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Well, Church,its not the word “jazz” that Im referring to,its the way the musicians who played “jazz” comunicated
the truth is, Buddy Bolden was noted as a trumpeter who played the style that would later become known as “jazz” in New Orleans in the mid 1870’s. Its a fact that because of the Jim Crow laws, classicly trained musicians had to get together with blues musicians and other styles that were played then, and, at the same time, you had people like Jelly Roll Morton playing piano in the bordellos introducing what he called “the Spanish tinge”, probably referance to Cuban music that would make it to New Orleans ports at that time..
“jazz” came from the streets , it is a street music, basicly but not exclusivly from New Orleans. Marching bands playing at funerals was another fonte of how the music developed, with the bands starting out slow and in a durge and coming back faster and more animated for people to dance to…ironicly the same thing was happening in Recife and how Frevo was developed
Louis Armstrong’s mother was a prostitute and he grew up in an orphanage…
Im not concerened that some Chicago papers were going through some kind of identity search in 1915, the newspapers twist stuff up from day one, the same thing happened with names like “jack swing” where an author coined the phrase in the Village Voice , actualy “frevo” was suposidly coined by a newspaper also … the only thing we really need to know is that “jazz” came from black American culture, and it spillied over into American culture in a really big way, and, the slang, that came from black American jazz, layeyered the foundation of American slang in a huge fasion and carries over into mainstream language up into today
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I meant to include Abagond with Church and King as giving some good information on this also
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@ Church’s
That’s not what he means. You can tell by the way that most of us write that we understand the importance of the Standard English lexicon in the immediate, practical sense. But what you are missing is that in a macro, long-term view the Dictionary and grammar books themselves change significantly.
For instance, this is the Lord’s Prayer in Olde Aenglish (AD 60)
[1] Fæder ūre þū þe eart on heofonum,
[2] Sī þīn nama ġehālgod.
[3] Tōbecume þīn rīċe,
[4] ġewurþe þīn willa, on eorðan swā swā on heofonum.
[5] Ūre ġedæġhwāmlīcan hlāf syle ūs tō dæġ,
[6] and forgyf ūs ūre gyltas, swā swā wē forgyfað ūrum gyltendum.
[7] And ne ġelǣd þū ūs on costnunge, ac ālȳs ūs of yfele.
[8] Sōþlīċe.
Here is a direct translation into King James English (AD 1611)
[1] Father of ours, thou who art in heavens,
[2] Be thy name hallowed.
[3] Come thy riche (kingdom),
[4] Worth (manifest) thy will, on earth as also in heaven.
[5] Our daily loaf do sell (give) to us today,
[6] And forgive us our guilts as also we forgive our guilters
[7] And do not lead thou us into temptation, but alese (deliver) us of evil.
[8] Soothly.
And here is how it is rendered in modern English (AD 2013)
[1] Our Father in heaven,
[2] hallowed be your name.
[3] your kingdom come,
[4] your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
[5] Give us today our daily bread,
[6] And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors
[7] And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil.
[8] Amen.
That is the same language, shown through snapshots of it’s evolution. There is no ETERNALLY RIGHT WAY of saying things. People progress the language to suit themselves, as time goes on. And power determines which group’s linguistic morphology wins out as the official literary cannon.
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@ king
In an earlier comment, I almost gave a passage from Beowulf as an example of Old English compared to modern English. But here’s the thing, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling have changed a lot over the last 1,500 years. But the grammar hasn’t changed very much. There has been a simplification in the morphology but the syntax is still pretty much the same. And that’s why ebonics is different. It’s just bad grammar.
Also, the first example of the Lord’s prayer in your comment is from 600AD not 60AD.
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OOOPs! Sorry, I must have inadvertently missed copying over the other zero in 600, so my mistake, and let the record show 600 AD.
The language structure of english has simplified but the vocabulary has increased dramatically. Where are all of these new words coming from?
As for rules of grammar and sentence structure, I disagree. The rules have not changed fundamentally, but there have been many revisions of usage around the margins. I could dig up examples for you but it will be boring and I don’t consider myself an expert on language development.
[Where the devil is Bulanik when I need her???]
But let me cut to the chase. If you were sucked up by a tornado, and dropped in an open field on the isle of Britain in 600 AD, and ran headlong into an Anglo-Saxon warrior, as he shouted his challenges, you would have no idea what he was saying. In fact as he threatened you with his raised axe you could not say a word to save your life that he would understand. That’s how much the English language has changed in the last millennium and a half.
And no matter what changed, or exactly how it changed, the point is that it did change massively, and each new revision began as a “wrong” way of speaking until it became popular enough to be widely accepted. That is the broad principle of language to which we are referring. I don’t think anyone is arguing against Standard English. We’re just pointing out that a change is language is “wrong” only until it becomes popular enough to be “right.” Therefore its all relative in the long run. It’s not like mathematics or chemistry.
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@Churchs,
It has a unique accent, unique pronunciation, mispronunciation and some unique words & expressions. None of this makes ebonics a “dialect”.
I didn’t think ebonics was a dialect either but I looked it up in the dictionary before I posted, just to make sure. This is the definition: A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists: Cockney is a dialect of English. Clearly, by that definition it is a dialect.
I suspect what is currently called “ebonics” was also spoken by illiterate whites at one time. When poor whites learned to read and write they also learned proper grammar.
Regional dialects have always been the norm. In actual fact, RP and SAE are the anomalies though necessary anomalies.
@Abagond,
It doesn’t surprise me at all that ebonics has retained some African grammar. In Ireland, English is spoke with Gaelic Grammar. Then, English was forced on the Irish, too.
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@King,
The Lords prayer through the centuries is a great illustration of the changes a language goes through. I would never have thought the first was English.
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A book was wrote about the history of slang, I remember reading an article about it in the Guardian, I think. It was the authors contention that slang is essentially a male form of speaking. The words are made by males and mostly spoke by males, as seen by the plethora of words for penis, it’s the language of street men. Ebonics is heavy with slang, would anyone consider this theory to fit ebonics, too.
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@Brengunn
I agree.
As an Black American of West Indian descent I understand:
Standard American English
Ebonics
and
some Jamaican patwa because of my parents being from Jamaica and me being born in America. Understanding these dialects helps me get by in this world because it apart of my heritage and culture. By the way, I understand Ebonics but I don’t speak Ebonics. I have been told by many Blacks that I sound ”White” when I speak.
@King
Many of the words in English came from Old English and we even borrowed some words from other languages as well to make the English language. Many people who speak other languages find English the most difficult out of them al because English is a language that constantly changes throughout the ages.
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B. R.
“educated” is relative , by the way, since many great jazz musicians might not have gotten degrees in collage, but they are really “educated” on another leval
DDC: Many Jazz musicians were indeed educated Miles Davis father was a prominent dentist and Miles Davis family was very affluent.And mastering “Jazz” as a musician would indicate a level of mastery that probably would exceed a college-level degree.
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@deepdkchocolate,
Who cares if they were educated or not? That’s one of the great things about music, poor men can reach the top and touch more people’s hearts than hundreds of educated writers, thinkers, philosophers, politicians and the like.
And mastering “Jazz” as a musician would indicate a level of mastery that probably would exceed a college-level degree.
It’s not really comparable. I hate this Western disrespect for anyone and anything that’s not college educated. It’s one of Western societies more detrimental snobberies.
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@ king
On the other thread you wrote numerous paragraphs trying to justify welfare. And now you’re trying to justify incorrect grammar. I’ve already explained why your argument fails. But you go right on ahead and excuse ignorance if you like. It’s not hurting me.
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@Churchs,
Social welfare is a pillar of a humane society. I can’t understand you equating ignorance with one of crowning glories of 20th century Western democracy.
Why shouldn’t ebonics or any other regional dialect be championed? It would be a dull world indeed, where everyone spoke in a BBC/NBC accent.
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@Brengunn
Well said.
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@ Brengunn
Any charity that increases dependence while destroying families is misguided.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/08/welfare-reform-turns-ten-evidence-shows-reduced-dependence-poverty
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@ Church,
Coming from an International experience that doesn’t actually ring true. I am not for long term dependancy but the amount of assistance that a Japanese family gets is tremendous. I think the way a society is set up depends on how much charity will destory the family structure. I am watching both Japan and Korea who have a lot more funding to family stucture and that isn’t what is breaking up the family units.
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Deepdkchocolate
Then we are in agreement, black American jazz genius can come from all spectrums of black American lives…
And your true point about Miles father being a dentist and coming from an upper middle class background also speaks to the point that musical genius is not dictated by poverty, it can come from anywhere
Miles did drop out of Juliard music school because he was learning more from Charlie Parker out on the bandstand than in the school, a thing I did myself
Miles sure suffered racism in its most aggresive vitrol mannor, having been beaton by racist cops, and, according to one of his wives, racism affected Miles very much…
my main point was that, black American jazz musicians are responsible for a huge amount of slang that went mainstream American, but, at the same time, there are many black American jazz musicians who dont use slang…I dont want to give a misimpresion about black American jazz musicians, who are not a monolithic group and come from all kinds of backgrounds
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@ B.R. “Blackstones” now there is a name I haven’t heard in a while. Use to be the strongest black gang but in my time they were mostly old timers. A few of them use to make sure that my sister and I made it back safely from 59th and Washnaw till Damen. I am not much for Gangs but the Blackstones and La Raza are two groups that saved my life personally. Now the Blackstones could throw jive a mile high and wide. Half the time I just tried to understand if they were asking me a question or not. “Young brother gone ahead and get your education don’t be a knucklehead like us.” they use to say when they saw me. Use to call me “The Professor”
I was personally save by them when someone pulled out a knife on me on the Western street divide.
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First of all I was reading The New York Times @ the age of four most of my white peers could not read on their grade level in high school. I attended a Fresh Air Fund camp as a child and the white family I stayed with were shocked to find that I, an inner-city black kid, could read and had better critical thinking skills than their own children who were white, suburban and “privileged”. A child in africa isually speaks 4-5 languages with fluency in childhood. I believe that black children have greater linguistic skills than whites.
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B. R.
Deepdkchocolate
Then we are in agreement, black American jazz genius can come from all spectrums of black American lives…
And your true point about Miles father being a dentist and coming from an upper middle class background also speaks to the point that musical genius is not dictated by poverty, it can come from anywhere
Miles did drop out of Juliard music school because he was learning more from Charlie Parker out on the bandstand than in the school, a thing I did myself
Miles sure suffered racism in its most aggresive vitrol mannor, having been beaton by racist cops, and, according to one of his wives, racism affected Miles very much…
my main point was that, black American jazz musicians are responsible for a huge amount of slang that went mainstream American, but, at the same time, there are many black American jazz musicians who dont use slang…I dont want to give a misimpresion about black American jazz musicians, who are not a monolithic group and come from all kinds of backgrounds
DDC: Exactly, I often dispute the notion that all black people pre-1960 came from poverty and spoke slang wore rags and picked cotton as sharecroppers.Black Americans lives were as diverse and unique as white americans. Black people were doing things back in the day that were unprecedented.
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Yes , Deepdkchocaolate, you have it right, to master jazz takes skills that are very high leval and actualy go beyond a college degree…most college educated jazz musicians have to start over on the bandstand…for sure lots of them I have to deal with have to learn all over again…
I totaly get your point about stereotypes and the 60’s, and I agree…too bad lots of white people just dont know enough black people to understand the incredible diversity and skills and range of talent that exist in any black American community…I was a teenager in the 60’s, and, I learned so much from my black American collegues, men and women, they were my role models, in every aspect you can think of
King of Trouble, yeah, “The Blackstone Rangers”…way to break another stereotype…these gang members helped you out…great story
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@DDC,
Its always about putting us down when they know absolutely nothing about us and ain’t trying to learn anything. Would simply rather believe we r all abject and impoverished.
Jesus, the size of that chip on your shoulder is effecting your thinking.
DDC: U people get ur panties in a bunch over much less, like Prince being mentioned in a thread about white musicians, or blacks making money in country music..lol.
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I stand by my second statement though, why do you feel the need to qualify Jazz in terms of a university education? Can’t Jazz stand alone? And what does it say of the world that cannot be compared to a University degree? That it is not worthy.
DDC: It’s a convo, calm down.. Ipointed that out to demonstrate the level of skill involved in being a jazz musician in a manner that most americans identify with in terms of defining what is of value and what is not in this society which would be a college education.
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First of all I was reading The New York Times @ the age of four most of my white peers could not read on their grade level in high school.
Personal anecdotes are not evidence.
DDC: Noone said it was evidence, defensive much?
I believe that black children have greater linguistic skills than whites.
Dangerous territory!
DDC: For u it would be.
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U people get ur panties in a bunch over much less, like Prince being mentioned in a thread about white musicians, or blacks making money in country music..lol.
Cracking on to me over someone else’s comments now? Where’s your famed critical thinking? lol!
DDC: What does that have to do with critical thinking? Ur all involved with limiting is and trying to define and control us , how else would u explain ur presence here and everywhere else we r? It’s not to try and learn anything or grow.
DDC:Ipointed that out to demonstrate the level of skill involved in being a jazz musician in a manner that most americans identify with
You pointed it out because you’re insecure.
DDC: I think ur here because ur insecure..
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Brengunn, I think the real point Deepdkchocalate is trying to make is that, to play jazz, you need skills that are even more than a college education…as a matter of fact, in the 60’s, quite a few jazz musicians were self taught, I am too, basicly, except for one year of learning theory at music school, that I left , because I was learning more on the bandstand
and that, black American jazz musicians come from all backgrounds and economic levals…that is all….which doesnt negate all you are saying but it does distinguish that black American jazz musicians and black Americans, come from all kinds of backgrounds , to aceive what they have
these days, most jazz musicians do study at universities…getting it wrong lots of times….they are great at teaching how to arrange for jingles and movie soundtracks and write and arrange for big bands, but, how to hold your part in the right groove and help your bandmates get through a 12 bar up bop, or learn the right groove in a samba , or basicly just how to get in touch with their feelings and turn off their thinking brains, etc, escapes their university training
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Noone said it was evidence, defensive much?
You opened the paragraph with your reading and thinking skills, you ended it with your belief in black linguistic superiority. Any logical person would think you were using your personal anecdotes as evidence. They wouldn’t even need to be ‘defensive’.
DDC:
That is my “belief” I was posting my point of view or “opinion”, is that alright with u? If i were posting information of an evidentiary sort i certainly would post links supporting my assertions with scientific studies, now wouldn’t I? I mean, huh?
Dangerous territory!
DDC: For u it would be.
You don’t seem to have a sense of humour. Are you a black supremacist?
DDC: U seem to be very insecure with that, are u a white supremacist?
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Yet another example of white arrogance incapacity to have a normal healthy convo that isn’t fraught with arrogance contempt and sheer ignorance.Can’t have an opinion differing from theirs ..lol.
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ngunn
What does that have to do with critical thinking?
Well, if you can’t figure it out, I can’t explain it to you.
DDC: I will tell u, nothing, just a sad attempt @ irony on ur part..lol.
DDC: how else would u explain ur presence here and everywhere else we r? It’s not to try and learn anything or grow.
I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this blog only for black people? And why should I try to learn from you, when the majority of what you say is nonsense.
DDC: Difficult for u to do any sort of self-introspection and try and understand why whites like u inundate sites like this one which r geared towards discussing black people and culture when u don’t even like black people…Allegedly, huh? I don’t hang out on white websites telling white people what to think or how to think..This is a malaise very specific to ur race.
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Okay, I’ll explain it. You used an example of another white persons post about the musician Prince to draw conclusions about me. That is a serious lapse in your critical thinking skills.
DDC:
No need to explain.. And I disagree I think u and that other poster are exactly alike. Haven’t had an independent thought in years.
why whites like u inundate sites like this one which r geared towards discussing black people and culture when u don’t even like black people…Allegedly, huh?
I had been discussing black dialects in a perfectly reasonable fashion till I had the displeasure of commenting to you. It’s been nothing but irrationality ever since.
DDC:
Black dialects..lol. U always have some ridiculous premise as to why u have to show up in black blogs and shower us with ur contempt and ignorance.
Yet u continue to comment to me, sounds like u have problems.
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And u know who will show up and delete any convo that casts u people in a bad light that u create for urselves..Take pride in white privilege..lol.
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DDC:
Most people do since an exclamation point is used to end a sentence that expresses strong emotion, not too bright are u?
Exclamation points are most often used as expressions of surprise or lightheartedness. Never are they used to signal displeasure. And you’re in no position to talk about intelligence, as all that reading of the NYT has not taught you to use quotation marks or italics when you’re quoting a post.
DDC:
Definition:
A punctuation mark (!) used after a sentence that expresses a strong emotion.
I know u have been trained by society to believe u know what ur talking about and r superior but don’t ever substitute that for real, genuine knowledge or u will end up looking very foolish, as u do right now.
DDC:
Of course u don’t , I think most of this convo has gone right over ur head.
Okay, right.
DDC:
Something about me fascinate u?
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Exclamation points are most often used as expressions of surprise or lightheartedness. Never are they used to signal displeasure. And you’re in no position to talk about intelligence, as all that reading of the NYT has not taught you to use quotation marks or italics when you’re quoting a post.
DDC:
Great minds don’t worry about the small stuff, should i hire u to make my posts grammatically correct? where I come from we call that person a “personal assistant” or a “flunky” lol…
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deepdkchocolate
Mind if break up the unpleasantness with some comic relief ? ^_^
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@ Sondis, lol..Ooohh u r a naughty one..I love Schoolhouse Rock!
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Yeah, i loved it as a child and still do as an adult.
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@ Sondis, I, love Schoolhouse Rock. AWESOME!
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Yeah, Mary burrell! ^_^
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it’s so funny how I hearken back to Schoolhouse Rock when I am writing..lol.
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@ Sondis, if that is indeed ur photo, U have a great smile..
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Yes, that’s me in the photo, i kindly thank you for the compliment. ^_^
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Haha! Church’s you crack me up. However, I’m not mad at you, because you serve a purpose. Every story needs it’s villain and you play your part well. I just can’t figure out if you actually believe everything you’re saying or if you’re simply stubborn, and also like to debate.
Back to ebonics.
What is comical about people like Church’s is that they even care about ebonics at all. In the old days they certainly didn’t. In fact, it was primarily the actions of White people who most affected the advent of the ebonic dialect.
Once Black people were brought to the New World, one of the consistent practices among White slave owners was to break up language groups so that those who spoke the same language did not end up in the same places. Another recorded practice was forbidding slaves to speak in an African language, for any reason. A third practice was to spend as few resources as possible in teaching slaves a new language.
So consider if you were taken from your country of origin, then separated from other people who spoke your language. Then you are forbidden to even speak your native tongue aloud, at the risk of a severe beating. Add to that the fact that you are not exposed very much of your new language, out on an isolated plantation or farm, and nobody is interested in teaching you much beyond what you need to follow simple orders. And finally, since you are in a new environment, you have no names for many new things that you encounter.
Given those circumstances, what would be likely to happen? Would you not be forced to develop a rudimentary form of the new language which used “bad grammar” and incorrect syntax? Would you not have to make up words for certain things you didn’t know? Would you not be forced to build your new language on the structure and suppositions of your old language?
But that’s not all. What if your captors kept this system in place for centuries? And when you were finally set “free,” you were still segregated into your own neighborhoods with people who, for the most part, had been forced into the same circumstances as you had been? After centuries, would it be likely that your adapted language, founded on the misinformation and neglect of your captors, would simply disappear?
Then centuries later, people like Church’s come along and critique the very dialect that was formed based on the misdeeds of his own ancestors. There would be no ebonics (in it’s present form) today if not for the role of White atrocities, mistreatment, miseducation, cruelty, and arrogance.
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@ Church’s
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@ King..HA! LOL.
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We can always rely on Jim Kelly to tell it like it is.
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Back to ebonics.
What is comical about people like Church’s is that they even care about ebonics at all. In the old days they certainly didn’t. In fact, it was primarily the actions of White people who most affected the advent of the ebonic dialect.
Once Black people were brought to the New World, one of the consistent practices among White slave owners was to break up language groups so that those who spoke the same language did not end up in the same places. Another recorded practice was forbidding slaves to speak in an African language, for any reason. A third practice was to spend as few resources as possible in teaching slaves a new language.
So consider if you were taken from your country of origin, then separated from other people who spoke your language. Then you are forbidden to even speak your native tongue aloud, at the risk of a severe beating. Add to that the fact that you are not exposed very much of your new language, out on an isolated plantation or farm, and nobody is interested in teaching you much beyond what you need to follow simple orders. And finally, since you are in a new environment, you have no names for many new things that you encounter.
Given those circumstances,
what would be likely to happen? Would you not be forced to develop a rudimentary form of the new language which used “bad grammar” and incorrect syntax? Would you not have to make up words for certain things you didn’t know? Would you not be forced to build your new language on the structure and suppositions of your old language?
But that’s not all. What if your captors kept this system in place for centuries? And when you were finally set “free,” you were still segregated into your own neighborhoods with people who, for the most part, had been forced into the same circumstances as you had been? After centuries, would it be likely that your adapted language, founded on the misinformation and neglect of your captors, would simply disappear?
Then centuries later, people like Church’s come along and critique the very dialect that was formed based on the misdeeds of his own ancestors. There would be no ebonics (in it’s present form) today if not for the role of White atrocities, mistreatment, miseducation, cruelty, and arrogance.
@ King, “applause” ..People like Churchs believe that “slavery” was living in the garage with no cable.. Seriously.
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They can judge DDC on her ad hominems and anti-white sentiment, while they’re at it.
DDC:
I didn’t know it was a crime to express an “anti-white sentiment” particularly on a blog that is geared towards black people and culture..lol.But it is perfectly ok to express an anti-black sentiment on the same blog..
There would have been no need for me to be my “passive-aggressive self” had DDC not misconstrued my post to mean, “keep the black man poor and in his place” when it was nothing of the sort. Should I not defend myself when others are in the wrong or should I just roll over and be “educated”?
DDC:
I did not misconstrue anything u posted, ur upset u were challenged about a few things u posted and u ain’t been right since. Is this u below? And u should’ve left it right there.
@DDC,
I do,especially since the “stereotype” dictates that most premiere musicians or any blacks that have achieved anything in America come from poverty or that any black person born pre-1960 in America must’ve grown up in a river-bottom somewhere in abject poverty, it simply isn’t true.
I only thought of that angle after I had pressed post, that for a black person the stereotype is always poor man made good. Apologies.
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B.R. are you still playing because I would love to hear some of your stuff. As of now I am struggling with Japanese taiko, although the beats are there my short term memory suffered a little because of some past incident. Still I figure with enough practice I can get the basics lodge in the long term.
I believe that if you look at a language system especially English were there are more second language users then you will start to see the variations. Ebonics is just one of those, I am not embrassased when someone uses it. There was a college educated guy over here in Japan using it but he could spin, toss, and make it lay on its back. He started a school somewhere in Tokyo and I think he is doing well. Ebonics is part of the spice of that poor dull unimaginative standard.
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King of Trouble
I am still kicking out here, you can see lots of my differant work here:
(www.youtube.com/91849) Ive got a bunch of records out
You are a great example of what is being talked about here, thanks for your testimony, of a guy raised in the deep south side of Chicago, who gets dogged for not speaking the lingo of the block, yet, gets protected by the Blackstone Rangers
Brengunn, you have to understand, Deepdkchocolate is also addressing Church , and, she made a correct point about Miles Davis.Its important to make these distintions, unfortunatly , it might have nipped a point you are making in the corner…I would have been foolish to argue about Miles Davis
I am a beleiver that black Americans brought incredible creativity to American english.It is part of this cultural force that came with the people brought over from West Africa , and is a testimony to overcoming some of the largest obsticles and actualy laying foundations for part of the culture that they were brought to, and totaly influencing that countries cultural direction…this didnt just happen in the USA, it happened in many other contries in the Americas where slaves were brought
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King of trouble, easiar to click this link now
(www.youtube.com/91849)
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sorry didnt come up, try this
http://www.youtube.com/91849
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@ king
I just can’t figure out if you actually believe everything you’re saying or if you’re simply stubborn, and also like to debate.
If you’re wondering whether I believe welfare is parasitic and undermines the family while increasing unemployment? And that ebonics is mostly mispronunciation and bad grammar? Then wonder no more.
However, I’m not mad at you
Your comment played the martyr and took personal jabs at me. So I think you probably are. Regardless, I doubt “fo’ shizzle mah nizzle” and “you be trippin’ ” had anything to do with slavery.
I have no interest in a personal squabble.
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@ king
Back to the issue. I went to a ghetto school so I know exactly what ebonics is. Most of the students used slang, mispronunciation and bad grammar. Even I mispronounced words. I never used poor grammar or said “aks” instead of “ask”. But I dropped letters. To give an example, black kids would say, “Whatchu be goin’ to da stoe fo?” Whereas I would have said, “Why are ya’ goin’ t’ tha store.”
My parents didn’t speak that way, either. So don’t give me this legacy of slavery” crap. Its a legacy of ignorance. If you associate with ignorant people you pick up their bad habits. “Code switching” is just lazy. When I became aware of what I was doing I cleaned up my language in public. That was in college. But I would default to mispronunciation in private. Now, I use proper pronunciation all the time. Ebonics is a bad habit like cussing. The more you do it the worse it gets. But the longer you make a conscious effort the easier it gets to avoid.
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@ Churchs
Right, but where do “correct” pronunciations come from?
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Haha!! Church’s there you are! I was beginning to think you had missed the catnip! I trust you had a restful weekend.
Anyway, back to demonstrating you appalling lack of cause and effect reasoning!
You see, once you set a thing in motion, it doesn’t just stop because you wish for it to. So when you create the condition of oppressive social isolation and under-education, it lays the groundwork for the development of a separate daughter version of the language from the isolated and neglected minority.
But once you allow that version of the language to continue for centuries, due to further isolation of the minority population into certain parts of town, a certain economic class, and a separate but unequal education system, then the language/dialect is obviously going to be perpetuated. Sure, and the language is also going to evolve (as languages do) and new ideas will find new words to express them, so phrases like “fo’ sh1zzle mah n1zzle” and “you be trippin’ will be added. But this is all a result of not including Black Americans as integrated equals into the social order in the first place.
Did you think that the now centuries entrenched idea of Blacks having their own separate American culture and dialect would suddenly vanish once Civil Rights Legislation was passed? Is your understanding of social inertia really that limited?
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@ Churches
Ah, then you are in fact, a Black person who categorically rejects the use of ebonics under any circumstances?
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Why not whine to Agabond and have my comment deleted? It seems Agabond is upholding the tenets of white supremacy here? When u can’t handle a comment that isn’t kissing ur behinds or co-signing ur idiocy all u have to do is whine to ur resident house nee-gro and he censors censors censors deletes deletes deletes..lol.
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@ DDC
If you want me to stop deleting your comments, then stop insulting people. That simple.
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And i will noyt set up here and kiss the arse’s of people who don’t respect me or my race, i am not U.
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@Legion,
Didn’t like being thought of as white, aye. Couldn’t handle handle the privilege!?
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Right, but where do “correct” pronunciations come from?
Interesting question. You believe language simply evolves and that there is no right or wrong — only different. Taken to its logical conclusion that could be said about anything. You could say there is no incorrect spelling only different spelling, no incorrect pronunciation only different pronunciation and no incorrect grammar only different grammar.
There is some truth to that. There are alternate spellings and pronunciations — though alternate grammars are very limited. But its wrong to think that anything goes. Pronunciation, spelling and grammar DO follow certain rules. And those rules weren’t chosen arbitrarily. There are exceptions but the rules are fairly consistent. Language should be consistent. That’s what makes communication clear, concise and ultimately possible.
The different languages and dialects that have evolved have done so over hundreds or even thousands of years. And they did so when the vast majority of the populations were illiterate. I suppose that when all communication is oral because no one knows how to write it doesn’t really matter how something was pronounced a hundred years previous or a hundred years hence. As long as your family and neighbors understand one another then that’s good enough.
But now our society is literate and relies on hundreds of millions of people being able to understand one another in writing as well as speech. For one little pack of ignorant illiterates to say, “Our misspellings, mispronunciations and poor grammar are just as valid as the English used by over a billion speakers in 54 countries” is asinine.
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I don’t think that’s the argument being made. The argument being made is the understanding that a great part of language is relative and trend-driven. As I’ve said several times before, I don’t think anyone is advocating that people should not learn Standard English, but you seem to want black American speech patterns and slang to disappear altogether.
Do you feel the same way about the Australian “corruption” of the Queen’s English, after so many years of isolation for their mother tongue? How about stupid words like Dingo, Kangaroo and wallaby? Should that “little pack of of ignorant illiterates” reform their language to sound more like Londoners?
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^ Ha! I really hadn’t thought of that!
What’s the world coming to if we can’t have English in England??
Here is one of your fellow sophisticates:
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@Churchs,
Okay, I cede the point that dialects may not be as important as the standards such as ‘RP’ and ‘SAE’ due to the standards being the language of power, literature and national/international dialogue etc.
OTOH, dialects tend to be feeders of vocab for the standards as they grow much faster, with the vocabulary being much more fluid. They are also controlled by young people rather than fusty old academics. For these reasons, they may be an essential part of a healthy language, as they constantly refresh what could be rather dry and monotonous, if left to the chin strokers.
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Government spending, welfare, etc are off topic here.
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^^ I deleted recent comments about this on this thread, a topic King and Churchs have already debated elsewhere.
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Fair enough. Thanks.
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Deleted the name-calling match between Brengunn and deepdkchocolate.
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Wow abagond, things are getting out of control on your blog, lately. @ : o O ) >
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I am not native English speaker.I have great interest in learning English.I am learning English http://www.youtube.com/user/twominenglish learning English with videos is very interesting.
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[…] Language myth #13: Black children are verbally deprived (abagond.wordpress.com) […]
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