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Opinions on "Ebonics" | ||
Tags: United States | Dialect | ||
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| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4917 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 25 21 March 2012 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello everyone at HTLAL!!!
I was having a discussion today with my uncle, which ended up becoming heated lol. He was saying how it's ridiculous that speech therapists cannot correct black kids who use incorrect pronunciation when they’re speaking Ebonics. (Typical examples of Ebonics are = Ask, being pronounced as axe and different grammatical features such as saying we be instead of we are ) There are TONS of differences, but it’s for the most part 95% comprehensible, sometimes if there are bunch of real “hood” black people hanging out together and speaking to one another, you won’t understand a LOT of what they say, mainly due to the different vocab as opposed to the huge pronunciation difference, although without doubt there is a large difference in pronunciation, easily akin to that of BE vs AE. Regardless, he was saying that they should be corrected because it’s “Incorrect” English, and was created in the past 30 years as an attempt by African Americans to distance themselves from the white community which they tended/tend to be “resentful” towards. I said that it’s not wrong; it’s simply a dialect, because there are somewhat standardized grammatical differences and almost all dialect speakers “make the same mistakes.” I also said that no language is superior/inferior to any other in terms of communication, and that in some cases, Ebonics is a lot more expressive and rich when it comes to vocabulary regarding the city life and drug dealing. The point my uncle was trying to make was that they should be taught Standard American English in schools because it is very hard to get a job if you talk in such a stigmatized way, which I agree with, and Ebonics, especially the more deviated it gets from SAE, is stigmatized by pretty much everyone, even by some blacks. Also, Ebonics is more of a continuum, not all Ebonics is as deviated from Standard American English as some. Some people are literally VERY hard to understand, but they would be what you would call, for lack of a better term, a real “Hood Rat” (Someone who lived their entire life in the “hood” and acts very much like a stereotypical inner city African American would) (***Note I do not use this term offensively, as this is what African Americans refer to these people as, although it may be offensive in some cases, this isn’t one, as it is not being used derogatively.) I said it doesn’t really matter, and that as long as we understand them I can careless about how they talk, and if anything, it gives us another “dialect” which we can appreciate, and as I said before, Ebonics is very expressive for certain topics, and even white teens use a lot of Ebonics terms for things because SAE tends to lack some of the expressiveness. Sooooo HTLAL, in all of your linguistical wisdom, what do y’all think about this? And what do y’all think about Ebonics in general? I especially wonder how foreigners view Ebonics, because I think a large reason we understand it so easy here in America is that it is very commonly used in Music and Media, and we’re CONSTANTLY exposed it, even in white communities. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5537 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 25 21 March 2012 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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In academic circles, "ebonics" is often known as "African American Vernacular English"
(AAVE). It's closely related to the vernacular English spoken in the southeastern US. Some useful resources: Wikipedia A PDF The most interesting part of AAVE are the verb tenses, which are very different from those of standard written English. As for your debate with your uncle, AAVE is certainly more than a few decades old, although if you believe the research in the PDF above, there have been some noticeable changes in the last 30 years or so. What else can I say? Yes, it's a real dialect. Yes, students who don't speak standard American English will often be treated as stupid (but so will people with thick southern accents). Yes, some speakers of AAVE are pretty fed up with US society, and are torn between the realities of economic advancement and the desire to remain loyal to their friends and family. But then again, this shouldn't be surprising—many Americans think that a Texas or southern accent is "authentic", and feel a bit ambivalent about people who sound too highly educated. Edited by emk on 21 March 2012 at 7:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5386 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 25 21 March 2012 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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In a perfect world, a person could speak Ebonics if that's what feels most natural to them and still have every opportunity open to them. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Most employers would be less than impressed with a candidate saying "axe me again".
I'm open to dialects and I support people who speak Ebonics and want to promote their dialect as an equally acceptable form of speech. Unfortunately, attitudes towards the dialect will not change in the near future, and I'd advise anyone to also learn SAE. Not to suppress or replace Ebonics, but because knowing both forms is at present the scenario that's most likely to allow a person to reach the success they are looking for. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Dshödsh Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5221 days ago 14 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 25 21 March 2012 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
I usually watch English movies without subtitles, both for practice and because I prefer it that way unless it's very hard to understand. But let's put it like this: if I see an Afro-American on screen who isn't Morgan Freeman or Will Smith or whatever, my reaction is immediately "aww well it's subs again". And that's with those who speak in a relatively "standard" way, let alone full-fledged street slang... Also, isn't Ebonics technically a sociolect and not a dialect? Edited by Dshödsh on 21 March 2012 at 7:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GeneMachine Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 4689 days ago 16 posts - 40 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC1, Latin Studies: French, Japanese | Message 5 of 25 21 March 2012 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Technically, sociolects are a subset of dialects. Dialects are not limited to geographically defined speech patterns - which would be topolects - but also encompass socially or ethnically defined varieties of language.
As for the "correctness" question brought up by the thread starter - AAVE is a legitimate dialect and in no way "incorrect" English. It has a consistent grammar, vocabulary and phonetics. This question has been settled, resettled and re-re-settled by the linguistic community since the sixties. For me as a non-American, non-native speaker, it is just another dialect, which carries no huge burden of connotations. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Beginner123 Newbie United Kingdom szkotka.wordpress.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4899 days ago 4 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Polish | Message 6 of 25 21 March 2012 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a speaker of Lowland Scots, I can't say it strikes me as any different from when people complain that Scots "speak bad English."
5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| manish Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5551 days ago 88 posts - 136 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 25 21 March 2012 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I spoke AAVE when I went to school in NYC. A huge problem I've noticed with AAVE speakers is that they tend to write the same way they speak... That definitely lowered their grades.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4641 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 8 of 25 21 March 2012 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with it being a dialect. I also agree with the fact that if someone cannot speak formal English, then they should not be hired for certain jobs.
Swiss Germans have their own dialect, but as far as I know, they can still speak Hochdeutsch. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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