Oh my, ebonics is back.... (employment, drug, statistics, Missouri)
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maybe, maybe not. but one of the 1st simple steps the AA community can do is to embrace proper english. i'm sure cosby and sowell and other AA's would agree. as a matter of fact i know an AA successful woman who chastised her son for making fun of his sister because he felt his sister 'talked white'. she basically told him: 'son, there are times and places to speak however you want, and then there are times and places where you simply CAN'T."
now if all AA's would embrace this way of thinking...... (sigh, what a nice thought)
For starters, "proper" English is a myth. There is no proper way to speak. There is only the most socially acceptable way to speak, which depends heavily on who you're speaking to. She's absolutely right that there are times when you watch how you speak and other times when you can speak freely. This applies to everyone. You don't swear in court and most people don't swear in front of their grandmother either.
There's no question many people expect standard English only so it is wise to use standard English in any sort of situation where you're trying to make a good impression. As inaccurate as it is, Standard English is associated with being intelligent and educated so to come across as both of those, Standard English is the dialect of choice. That's why it's called the standard dialect--because it's expected in school essays, used on the radio, and used in most professional settings. Linguistic studies have shown time and time again that there is absolutely no correlation between the dialect you speak and your level of intelligence but people continue to think like that, so to get ahead, you often need to play into their beliefs.
Many AA's have already taken that first step and embraced Standard English. I don't know if you've noticed but most AA's speak SAE even in casual settings and pretty much all AA's who speak BV in casual settings have the ability to code-switch to SAE in more formal settings. Not surprisingly, it hasn't solved their problems. Many AA's are also adamant about dressing nice and giving a good impression so they don't "give off a poor example for their race". It does help to the extent that giving a good impression in general helps, but it doesn't erase racism.
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English is my second language (Spanish is my first) and the one thing I noticed is that "Proper" English or Spanish simply isn't spoken to often. A better word for "proper" would be "currently popular/accepted". For a good example of this - break out a 1611 King James Bible or even the 4 or 5th revision of it and check out how the English language has evolved. Evolution in language is a law that is just as stout and secure as that of gravity. No endeavor (endeavour, for the purist) to preserve a language has, nor will it ever, succeed. Ebonics or hillybilly just sound uneducated and they sound stupid. That isn't based on science or "proper" English - it is merely a judgement call made by people occupying a certain place in time. Those same forms of speaking may be judged differently 100 years from now. That is language.
Is that 'language' limited to blacks? Would it even be considered a kind of insult or provocation if whites or Asians spoke Ebonics?
I remember someone posted a video on Ebonics on CD some time ago, where a white woman translated between Ebonics and English speakers on a plane
For starters, "proper" English is a myth. There is no proper way to speak. There is only the most socially acceptable way to speak, which depends heavily on who you're speaking to. She's absolutely right that there are times when you watch how you speak and other times when you can speak freely. This applies to everyone. You don't swear in court and most people don't swear in front of their grandmother either.
There's no question many people expect standard English only so it is wise to use standard English in any sort of situation where you're trying to make a good impression. As inaccurate as it is, Standard English is associated with being intelligent and educated so to come across as both of those, Standard English is the dialect of choice. That's why it's called the standard dialect--because it's expected in school essays, used on the radio, and used in most professional settings. Linguistic studies have shown time and time again that there is absolutely no correlation between the dialect you speak and your level of intelligence but people continue to think like that, so to get ahead, you often need to play into their beliefs.
Many AA's have already taken that first step and embraced Standard English. I don't know if you've noticed but most AA's speak SAE even in casual settings and pretty much all AA's who speak BV in casual settings have the ability to code-switch to SAE in more formal settings. Not surprisingly, it hasn't solved their problems. Many AA's are also adamant about dressing nice and giving a good impression so they don't "give off a poor example for their race". It does help to the extent that giving a good impression in general helps, but it doesn't erase racism.
I'll counter that with all the stupid left wing comments in this thread....
If you think that anonymous posters on an Internet message board are equivalent to WND, then perhaps you should not be using WND as a source. Or, conversely, you should believe everything anonymous message board posters write. Your comment assigns the same status to both a published self-proclaimed new source and these anonymous postings.
'Ebonics' is a terrible word* that should be stricken from every dialect of English. It rolls of the tongue more easily than its proper name African American Vernacular English (AAVE), though so I suppose that is why it is used. While I consider AAVE to be as valid a dialect as any other, dialect is no substitute for a written standard (which one should be able to conduct in speech as well).
*'Ebonics' doesn't even describe what it is very well:
Ebony = a dark-grained tropical wood, also in very rare usage to describe the skin color of a person of African ancestry.
Phonics = speech sounds.
So at best, one can conclude that 'ebonics' is the pronunciation of words by people with skin the color of a dark-grained wood. Awesome. I hereby declare that the man who coined the term gets an 'F' and is summarily fired.
Let's now make a comparison. In Britain, a land united by the English language but divided by dialects that span a far greater norm than 'Ebonics' and 'standard American English', do students that speak a dialect such as Glaswegian (think ebonics only nearly entirely un-understandable by a normal English ear) get graded on their use of a standard British English, or Glaswegian English?
Americans are often chided for being able to get by in only one language. Now we are letting American kids coast through school with only a knowledge of one dialect of one language.
Ebonics vs Ivonics
It is interesting that although one might think English variants would become more and more similar thanks to global media, Internet, literacy, migration etc., some people seem to feel like they need to go the opposite way...
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