The race in general has been through alot in America, same as many races. So African Americans try to stray away from the white ways of life cause I mean seriously, civil rights stuff was just a good 40 years ago, it's not all gone yet. It'll take time to change all this, most of the ideas of that way of living, the thug life, has only been around for a while good 20 or so years. So stuff is always changing have to give it time, all we have to do is hope for the best and try to help teach people on the different situations that are going on. On both sides, needs some advice about life and stuff. Just do your part that's all cool.
Blacks can't speak English - Bill Cosby
by closer2fine 129 Replies latest jw friends
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Leolaia
Leo, thanks for your research and thought into this. I really don't understand the level of passion this subject generates.
Because racism is alive and well in America. Look at what happened during the Ebonics controversy. Rickford & Rickford have a whole chapter on the "Ebonics humor" that arose in 1997 which often presented in slightly-veiled terms the most disgusting statements about blacks. Of course, it was "okay" to say racist things because "We're only talking about the language, not the people". Yeah right. I have somewhere clipped from the paper a whole series of "Mallard Fillmore" strips that I found quite offensive, and Rickford & Rickford have other examples, like the "Ebonics Loan Application" that has nothing to do with the language but only asks the applier to state the number of thefts and check the box if you're a "VD Spreader", "Hubcap Salesman", "Rapist", etc., or the "Ebonic Olympic Games" which included the "Torching of the Olympic City", "One Additional Felony of Choice", and so forth. We saw pouring through the media white contempt and hostility towards the way many blacks speak, as well as deep shame and disgust towards the same within the black community. Since African-American English is stigmatized in way no other dialect is stigmatized in America (prolly more than Chicano English or Appalachian English), and especially since historically whites inferred from their speech that blacks were "stupid" and "ignorant" (and mocked it in minstrelry), it should not come as a surprise that shame and deep-seated emotions on both sides arise.
I could never, in a million years, pick the ebonic dialect apart by examining the structure the way you have Leolaia,
If you don't mind, I thought I'd quote a part of a great article by Geoff Pullum that really explains its structure well, and shows how it compares with other languages:
But essentially all linguists agree that what the Oakland board was dealing with is a dialect of English. I will refer to it as African American English (AAE)--though of course it is not spoken by all African-Americans; many speak only Standard English. The general public seems unaware that AAE is regular, stable, and governed by rules of grammar and pronunciation that are as consistent as those of any other spoken language. It differs strikingly from the standard dialect, but there is no more reason for calling it bad Standard English than there is for dismissing western dialects of English as bad eastern speech, or the reverse. Yet AAE is constantly described as if it were English with mistakes and omissions. For example, it is alleged that the copula (am, are, is, etc.) is omitted in AAE--carelessly left out, critics seem to imply--or incorrectly used in the uninflected form "be." This is a jumble of falsehoods. The rules regarding the AAE copula are quite detailed and specific. If it bears stress, as it always does at the end of a phrase, it must be pronounced; thus it is obligatory in "Couldn't nobody say what color he is," meaning "Nobody could say what color he is" (examples in this paragraph are from the utterances of Larry, a speaker studied by William Labov(5)). If the copula is negated, it cannot be omitted; it is pronounced "ain't," as in "You ain't goin' to no heaven" ("You aren't going to any heaven"). There is a special habitual aspect that standard English lacks, and for this "be" is used and must never be omitted; "they be sayin' " means "they habitually say." The copula is also obligatory when it is in the past tense. Only when the AAE copula is not marking habitual aspect, not negated, not stressed, and in the present tense can it be unpronounced ("he good" means "he's good"). Russian, Hungarian, and other languages have a very similar rule (see chart).
Something similar is true of the multiple marking of negation, misleadingly termed "double negation," and treated as an illogicality. This feature is also found in Romance languages. There is a direct analogy between AAE "Ain't nobody called" with the equivalent Italian "Non ha telefonata nessuno," literally "not has telephoned no one." Both mean "No one has telephoned." It is a rule in both languages that under certain conditions indefinite words with meanings like "someone" or "anyone" "must" be replaced by their negative counterparts when they occur in a negated clause. No grammatical or logical mistakes are involved; multiple negation marking is a grammatical requirement like number or gender agreement.
Many people think of these as "mistakes" and "grammatical errors", but really these are grammatical rules in their own right. It's like pointing to a difference between Spanish and French and saying that Spanish is "corrupted French" because it doesn't follow a particular French rule. It especially is inaccurate to say this for African-American English because for the most part, the Africans didn't even encounter a form of the standard to corrupt; the southern whites spoke their own mixture of British dialects. In the case of French, 200 years ago before the French Revolution, "royal French" was not the same dialect as the standard today. The language of the aristocrats was different. But then the common language of the Parisian people, the peasant nonstandard variety, suddenly became the standard variety in the Revolution -- and suddenly all the other dialects in France were judged as inferior "patois" in comparison to it. The language subordination process involved in the new standard resulted in shame among the local people in other provinces whose language was less cultivated and pure compared to the Parisian variety. But it is pure historical accident that the Parisian variety became the standard, just as it was a historical accident that the dialect of Staffordshire became the basis of Standard English. And when Standard English arose in the late 1600s and 1700s, it was reviled as terribly awful English. The distinction between shall and shalt was lost, the distinction between you and thou was lost, and so forth. It was a lazy language for dropping all the -ths (as in speaketh), and -sts (as in canst). But that was the dialect of those in power and it stuck as the standard. But there wasn't really anything intrinsically inferior about this version. And even today, the pronunciation of the standard in the UK (called "Received Pronunciation") has the deletion of r's as most prestigious. Just think of the Queen's English, and how the upper crust are careful not to pronounce those r's. In the US, it's the exact opposite. This is because in the 1700s, the upper class in the Eastern US were speakers of this aristocratic English and they didn't pronounce the r's. But then in the 1800s, speakers of other dialects who did pronounce their r's rose through industry and money and became more influential, and the influence of the old aristocracy waned. Then after 1900, the wave of Eastern European and Italian immigrants brought thousands of poor, working class individuals who, because they were second language learners of English, did not pronounce their r's and say things like "bettah" and "fadda" for "father". And so the standard in America demanded the pronunciation of r's (expect Bostonian English, as we know is more conservative), the exact opposite of the standard in Britain. So it's all arbritrary, it all depends on whose dialect is spoken by those in power. And in America, race is all about power, subordination, etc. and thus standard English and the other white dialects were placed on the same footing above African-American English. That is why few people realize that regional white dialects are not the same thing as the standard -- they are distinct nonstandard dialects, but because they were spoken by whites they were not stigmatized and subordinated the same way, and thus we don't quite hear so much discourse about white southern English as being corrupt and illogical. Usually we just hear Southern English just as being quaint, slow, etc.
but I know that when I listen to it, I can understand it. It may take me a few seconds to get the meaning, but I almost always do.
If one is unfamiliar with a dialect or pronunciation pattern, it usually takes just a short while to get the hang of it. I worked for a Chinese immigrant and I found her English very hard the first day to follow (she would say "Joze" for "those" for instance), but it has never been a problem since. Many whites claim they cannot understand Black English but it is less because it is structurally different from their own vernacular and more that they have psychologically blocked their minds from wanting to deal with understanding it. It is what Keith Whinnom calls an "ethological barrier" to communication. It is also based on the very weird phenomena of the "McGurk Effect", in which visual input directly alters what you actually hear. It has been experimentally shown that, for instance, the brain thinks it hears a higher pitched voice if the person looks sterotypically feminine, while more butch and black women are perceived with a lower voice, even though it is exactly the same voice dubbed in. You can even mishear one sound as something else (i.e. a /g/ as a /d/) if you are visually misled. So one's attitude can also directly affect their comprehension level.
Will it hold a black person back in the business/social world? Of course.
No, I disagree....what holds a person back is the failure to become bidialectal. Now, a person make a choice to eschew standard English and speak nothing but the dialect all the time, but the fault lies not with the language but with the person for the choices he/she made. If a kid is teased for using standard English because it is "acting white", then it is not the language itself that harms the kid but the peer pressure and social attitudes. And if the person never had the opportunity to adequately acquire standard English due to personal circumstances, then again the language is not holding the person back but the quality of education and access to the standard. If a person has full access to the standard and puts the effort into learning it well, then again being able to speak the dialect is not going to hinder his/her skill in using the standard well. It would only hinder if it prevents acquisition of the standard, and that is not the case. It may take more work than those whose dialect is already very close to the standard (e.g. Western and some Midwestern and Northeastern white dialects, who have it relatively easy, which is again not surprising since the standard approximates the language of those in power), and learning the standard pronunciation is particularly difficult, but then again some speakers of white dialectal Englishes have it hard too -- think of those in Detroit who say stuff like "biyahd duahg" for "bad dog". They too have a non-standard vernacular and have to learn the standard quite conciously and learn to pronounce the words in a new way than they do at home.
Should the black community have charted a different course for their language? I guess you could say "of course, given that it is of detriment to them", but it seems to me that would be asking of the black community something that has never happened in any community, ever. They didn't conspire to create ebonics, it just happened, like any and every dialect or language.
Yes, "charting a course" implies control over your fate, and control is precisely what was lacking in life under slavery and segregation. And the missed opportunity of Reconstruction and the squealched dream of equality is really what would have made this whole discussion moot. Had full and free access to standard English and quality education been available in the 1870s and 1880s, and were blacks able to live without harrassment and in safety, and were freely able to pursue professional employment, then I doubt black English would be perceived as a problem today because we would have already had generations of fully bidialectal speakers across the board. Jim Crow and segregation ensured that problems that should've been solved in the 19th century are still around today.
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got my forty homey?
I think the Ebonics foolishness is just so that another group of people can feel that they are not Americans. Just like the celebration of Kwanza, or Mexicans and Dominicans who refuse to learn English and thus every sign, insturction book, official documents come in english and 26 other langauges. In New York City last week dominicans were allowed to vote for elections taking place in the Domincan Republic! Why not just vote over there? Or Puerto Ricans in New York were allowed to vote on a referrendum as to whether the Island should become a state.
What ever happened to Americans and America? We are quickly sinking into a third world nation.
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jgnat
JUST TRY and convince a deaf person to give up their American Sign Language in favour of English, in order to "fit in" to society better. Language is intimately tied to our identity, and should not be put in the hands of bureacrats to resolve.
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frenchbabyface
Jgnat :Language is intimately tied to our identity, and should not be put in the hands of bureacrats to resolve.
this statemente talks a lot by itself ! (it is a right not something that you can rate nor have to rate anyway) ... that is only variety. -
got my forty homey?
Being deaf and sign langauge are very different issue. These are covered by the Amercian with Disability's Act. Obviously I was not refering to those who are deaf.
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Xena
I think she is referring to the two different types of sign language forty...I remember as a dub there was some issue over which type to use....some people in the deaf congergations got very worked up over it.
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gitasatsangha
It's too bad we can't all just speak esperanto.
Estas tre malbona ni ne paroladas la esperanton.
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Crazy151drinker
By using the previous definitions of Language:
1) Pig Latin is based on English
2) My buddies and I start speaking to each other in Pig Latin
3) Pig Latin is now a certified language and everyone should respect me and accept the fact that I dont want to learn English.
4) By saying that I shouldnt be speaking pig-latin you have shamed my newly created culture.
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frenchbabyface
3) Pig Latin is now a certified language and everyone should respect me and accept the fact that I dont want to learn English.
who said that ?