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>In most well paid professional contexts, English speakers are expected to be able to understand... Which is entirely outside the scope of discussion. We were

by tsotha 14y ago

>In most well paid professional contexts, English speakers are expected to be able to understand... Which is entirely outside the scope of discussion. We were talking about whether or not a person could speak American standard English. This isn't about other countries, by the way, so if you're going to continue why don't you go ahead and read the article. >Standard American English is nothing more than regionally distinct lowest common denominator of intelligibility. It's use does not signify intelligence nor education any more than other accents. If it's just a question of accent then I would agree. But if it's a question of grammar and word choice I don't. The article isn't clear on that point, since Freakonomics is about junk science that titillates and not about actual science. If you "sound black" because you have an accent that's just a reflection of where you grew up. If you "sound black" because your grammar is bad it really does reflect on your education.

saosebastiao 14y ago
> If it's just a question of accent then I would agree. But if it's a question of grammar and word choice I don't. The article isn't clear on that point, since Freakonomics is about junk science that titillates and not about actual science. If you "sound black" because you have an accent that's just a reflection of where you grew up. If you "sound black" because your grammar is bad it really does reflect on your education. A dialect is a combination of accent, vocabulary, and grammar. And no, it doesn't reflect your education. It reflects the culture in which you were raised. There literally is no Standard English, let alone a Standard American English dialect. If you have been taught that there is, you have been taught incorrectly. All languages evolve, as a result of culture (including pop culture), geography, and time period. Even today, linguists have no consensus on the proper third person pronoun to use for an anonymous or hypothetical person. Some might say "He", some might say a randomized version of "He" or "She", and some might say "They". As of 30 years ago, all of them would have told you "He", and that anything else was bad grammar. But culture (acknowledgement of sexism) combined with common usage (which was/is incorrect grammar) have definitively changed the accepted standard. Languages change. This isn't just an attempt at being politically correct...it is a fucking truism. The simple fact that I am referring to you as "you" is an acknowledgement of this fact. A strict interpretation of "you" requires usage in a plural second-person context. Culture, specifically in the reference to royalty in the plural (an implicit acknowledgement of royalty as being ambassadors of God), changed it from a plural pronoun into a singular pronoun in limited use cases. Contextually improper and uneducated overuse of the form led to its complete abandonment as a plural pronoun. It is now considered a grammatically correct singular pronoun in every known English dialect today. Any sort of attempt to legitimize one dialect as proper or as a standard is a pure manifestation of xenophobia at best. Within the context of the article, people confuse the African American Vernacular with the lack of an education. In reality, it is a racist expectation that those belonging to one culture conform to the independently evolved standards of the culture that systemically isolated them and abused them for hundreds of years. I never said that the article was about other countries. It is about the ability to look past someone's dialect to see their education and experience. "Sounding Black" doesn't make you stupid. It makes you different. And if you can't learn to get over it, you don't deserve a well-payed professional job...the kind of job where you will meet and talk to people from thousands of different backgrounds, all of whom will be noticeably different from you. You deserve the ditch digger job where you can be racist and expect everybody else to conform to what you grew up with. And yes, that last sentence was grammatically correct as of a few decades ago. Get over it.
- tsotha 14y ago
  Hah hah. Ignorance like you display is a special skill, honed over many years and with much effort. I wondered how long it would take you to call me a racist for expecting black kids to learn what everyone else learns. Are black kids too dumb to learn standard American English? Who is the racist here?

by tsotha 14y ago

saosebastiao 14y ago

> If it's just a question of accent then I would agree. But if it's a question of grammar and word choice I don't. The article isn't clear on that point, since Freakonomics is about junk science that titillates and not about actual science. If you "sound black" because you have an accent that's just a reflection of where you grew up. If you "sound black" because your grammar is bad it really does reflect on your education. A dialect is a combination of accent, vocabulary, and grammar. And no, it doesn't reflect your education. It reflects the culture in which you were raised. There literally is no Standard English, let alone a Standard American English dialect. If you have been taught that there is, you have been taught incorrectly. All languages evolve, as a result of culture (including pop culture), geography, and time period. Even today, linguists have no consensus on the proper third person pronoun to use for an anonymous or hypothetical person. Some might say "He", some might say a randomized version of "He" or "She", and some might say "They". As of 30 years ago, all of them would have told you "He", and that anything else was bad grammar. But culture (acknowledgement of sexism) combined with common usage (which was/is incorrect grammar) have definitively changed the accepted standard. Languages change. This isn't just an attempt at being politically correct...it is a fucking truism. The simple fact that I am referring to you as "you" is an acknowledgement of this fact. A strict interpretation of "you" requires usage in a plural second-person context. Culture, specifically in the reference to royalty in the plural (an implicit acknowledgement of royalty as being ambassadors of God), changed it from a plural pronoun into a singular pronoun in limited use cases. Contextually improper and uneducated overuse of the form led to its complete abandonment as a plural pronoun. It is now considered a grammatically correct singular pronoun in every known English dialect today. Any sort of attempt to legitimize one dialect as proper or as a standard is a pure manifestation of xenophobia at best. Within the context of the article, people confuse the African American Vernacular with the lack of an education. In reality, it is a racist expectation that those belonging to one culture conform to the independently evolved standards of the culture that systemically isolated them and abused them for hundreds of years. I never said that the article was about other countries. It is about the ability to look past someone's dialect to see their education and experience. "Sounding Black" doesn't make you stupid. It makes you different. And if you can't learn to get over it, you don't deserve a well-payed professional job...the kind of job where you will meet and talk to people from thousands of different backgrounds, all of whom will be noticeably different from you. You deserve the ditch digger job where you can be racist and expect everybody else to conform to what you grew up with. And yes, that last sentence was grammatically correct as of a few decades ago. Get over it.

tsotha 14y ago
Hah hah. Ignorance like you display is a special skill, honed over many years and with much effort. I wondered how long it would take you to call me a racist for expecting black kids to learn what everyone else learns. Are black kids too dumb to learn standard American English? Who is the racist here?