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Slaughtering of English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5523 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 17 of 37 01 January 2010 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I agree with the people who say that Ebonics is a dialect of its owns and not a ‘bad version of English’. If you look at it as being a substandard version of regular English than Afrikaans (a language spoken in South Africa) must be a ‘bad version’ of Dutch (since they highly simplified it), but it is not, since it has a long history and is spoken by millions of people today. Languages change and evolve into something different, purists should stop thinking in this ‘bad’ and ‘good’ way.
Gusutafu, Would you consider 'Afrikaans' which was carried to South Africa by poorly educated 17th century Dutch farmers to be 'bad Dutch'? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 18 of 37 01 January 2010 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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English is just a bastard child of German and Norman, it's not even a language.
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| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5523 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 19 of 37 01 January 2010 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Stop trolling, German sounds nothing like English. English has more Frisian and Anglo-Saxon roots than German. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5520 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 20 of 37 01 January 2010 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
I don't know much about this, but it sounds as if Afrikaans is a descendant of poor Dutch, so considered in the capacity of Dutch, I would say that it is probably pretty bad, but in this case most people seem to call it a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5810 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 21 of 37 01 January 2010 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
First off, Gusutafu, you ignored the central point of my entire post, so I'll quote it for you. Feel free to ignore it again.
You keep arguing from bad metaphors. My point is that you don't have the right to tell millions of native English speakers that their dialect of English is wrong, any more than I have the right to tell the millions of Swedes that their language is a corrupted and ugly form of Danish. Would you be offended if I said that?
I explained my point badly, but I think it still stands. Would you ever do that and actually think you're speaking English on a fundamental mental level? Probably not. I shouldn't have defined the point in terms of what the speakers call the language they're speaking; rather, in the subconscious agreement they are making about the medium of communication they are going to use. They KNOW on a subconscious level that the language they are speaking is called English, and I don't know that we have the right to override that.
Judge and be judged.
What are you using as the arbiter of what is "correct" spoken English? From the sounds of it, it's Standard Written English.
You basically said that modern African-Americans speak a language of a few hundred simple phrases that resemble "me no want eat." That's pretty damn racist. In general, you condemned as wrong the dialect of English in which "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was written,in which Ray Charles and the Blind Boys of Alabama sang, in which is rooted the oratory of Martin Luther King, in which one of the great struggles of mankind was played out. That's also pretty damn racist. I'm not saying you are a racist, but your argument certainly is offensive.
No, by my own description it had some of its genesis in a creole three hundred and fifty years ago. Since then, its constant interaction with other American English dialects has produced a language that is both undoubtedly unique and indisputably part of the greater framework of the English language. Edited by Woodpecker on 01 January 2010 at 5:22pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 22 of 37 01 January 2010 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Beauty? Irrelevant. History? Number of speakers? Very relevant indeed.
The whole concept of "a creole" stems from a flawed understanding of language. In days gone by, it was believed that language was an essentially divergent phenomenon. Indo-European split into Indo-Iranian, Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Slavic, Hellenic; Indo-Iranian split into Sankskrit (whence Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali etc) and Persian (whence Farsi) and so on. The massive amount of evidence for contact phenomena in languages was ignored, passed off as borrowing, until the days of slavery where for the first time new languages could be seen forming extremely rapidly. The reaction was to regard these as somehow different from other languages, so the concept of a "contact language" was created as distinct from "proper" languages, so the word "creole" implies a less important or less valuable form of language. However, we've now come to accept that more and more of the languages we know today were formed in this manner -- even Latin, long held as the paragon of "good" language, was originally a "creole" between an early IE language and the language of the non-IE people living in the Tiber river valley. Now let's look at English. The island of Great Britain was populated mainly by Celts 3000 years ago, with Brythonic speakers stretching from the channel to the banks of the rivers Forth and Clyde in Central Scotland. 2000 years ago, the Romans brought legions of many nationalities. 1400 years ago, they (most of them) left, and a flood of Low Germanic speakers came in, occupying the east coast as far as Edinburgh, and slowly expanding west. 1200 years ago, the northeast of what is now England and the southeast of what is now Scotland was invaded by Norse-speaking Danish vikings. By the time England regained the territory that it now holds, they had been invaded by Norman French armies. The Yorkshire "dialect" you mention is a unique blend of features from Brythonic, Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Norman French. How is it that this is a dialect and not a creole, but Ebonics is a creole and not a dialect? The only unique distinguishing feature I have seen about creoles in comparison with other languages/dialect is... there's no creole spoken by a majority white population. I don't like the term "creole". Edited by OldAccountBroke on 01 January 2010 at 5:37pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5810 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 24 of 37 01 January 2010 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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This thread should be locked.
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