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A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect
- neeee 14y agoThe huge black bar at the bottom is obnoxious.
- duskwuff 14y ago$(".freepass").hide();
- jdmaresco 14y ago$(".message").hide(); But it still doesn't give you the full article
- freehunter 14y agoIt beats having a huge advertisement at the bottom (and everywhere else that is whitespace). Although yes, Adblock could be used to get rid of it.
- Hermel 14y agoGerman?
- smallegan 14y agoI think in order for a language to gain any significant amount of respect it needs to be used in commerce and more than just illegal commerce.
- jennyjenjen 14y agoWell that wasn't a bigoted comment at all.
- freehunter 14y agoIs your argument that AAVE is only spoken by traders in illegal services? I think we have two different matters at hand, the first being the world that speakers of AAVE are raised in teaching them to speak AAVE, and the socioeconomic status that much of this world occupies. People raised speaking AAVE are not inherently raised to be criminals like your statement seems to imply, that's a completely different factor. Of course AAVE is not widely used in legitimate commerce, the argument that the article makes is that the speakers of this language are being unfairly punished for the language they speak, which leads to a poorer socioeconomic status. Either these people are trained to speak prescriptive English or they are barred from academic success. The argument of the article is that the treatment of the language causes this ongoing social issue, not that the social issue is preventing people from speaking American English.
- HarryHirsch 14y agoI think it's fair comment to say that AAVE is spoken by people of low socioeconomic status, and that is why anyone speaking it carries a stigma. The keyword is "code switching".
- freehunter 14y agoThat's true, but it's not fair to say that this is the language of criminals. There's two different issues at play. Speakers with a southern accent aren't all uneducated good ole boys, even though the stigma says just that. Speakers of Russian are not all in the Mafia. It's disingenuous to say that the language is only used by criminals, and labeling it as such only reinforces that.
- calibraxis 14y agoSuch racist comments have a twisted relation to the truth: the US virtually criminalizes its Black population. It's public knowledge that no other country incarcerates its people as much. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...) Any honest person can see that those of us with more "respectable" US accents form the real criminal culture. We took the land from people we exterminated, took slaves of people whose dialects we still ridicule, and to this day imprison and war like no other humans in the universe.
- richardjordan 14y agoWith a comment like that, either you didn't read the article or you just brought your own bigotry to it and left with it in tact.
- jholman 14y agoIn ASE, we spell that "intact". Tact is what he lacks. ;) (Sorry to be a prat, but it was so deliciously topical.)
- smallegan 14y agoI did read the article and was expounding upon footnote #1: "These are sometimes pidgins or creoles, such as the Chinook Jargon of the Pacific Northwest, and sometimes fully realized natively spoken languages, like Swahili or French, that become the de facto tool for commerce or diplomacy in larger areas." This ain't got nothin to do with bigotry and actually I don't got nothing against no "Ebonics"/AAVE.
- mpyne 14y agoSome of the nicest, hardest-working, and most experienced people I've had the pleasure of working with in my current job speak AAVE. Don't let your preconceptions cloud your judgment as to the validity of a language.
- smallegan 14y agoThis was ONLY a comment on what I think it takes for a language to grab hold and not a comment on the people who speak it.
- mpyne 14y agoDespite the strident tone, I never said otherwise. My defense of the language is based on the people I've encountered who speak it. It's like, I personally don't like rap, but I wouldn't begrudge others who do because they see something special in it that I simply don't see. I used to, until I realized it wasn't simply that people were being "stupid" by listening to rap, but instead that I was missing what they were seeing.
- javanscala 14y agoWow, I believe that was an overtly bigoted comment. So there is no legal commerce conducted in 'ebonics'? I had no idea when I was a kid that all those people making grocery purchases at the corner store were engaging in illegal activities.
- smallegan 14y agoIt was an observation and clearly not a rule, same could be said for other dialects like Cockney in England.
- derleth 14y agoA correct observation, one supported by evidence, is that using the dialect correlates with being poor. Making the jump from that to "illegal commerce" was all you, and that was bigoted, especially since AAVE is strongly associated with African-Americans.
- smallegan 14y agoOther than the DEA or someone studying the dialect who hires based on your ability to speak AAVE? http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/24/dea.ebonics/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/24/dea.ebonics/index.html So I disagree it wasn't "all me" and it wasn't bigoted.
- nandemo 14y agoThere's a bright side to bigots publicly announcing their bigotry. For example, now I know I don't need to bother applying for work wherever Ryan Smallegan works.
- jennyjenjen 14y agoThanks for sharing. This was a good read and I think a lot more people could use to read it instead of just blindly commenting with rude remarks...
- richardjordan 14y agoThis was fascinating. Folks should leave their bigotries behind and read it, rather than seeing the word ebonics and using it as an excuse for racist comments.
- jinushaun 14y agoI think ebonics if a load of crock, but as an aficionado of linguistics, I don't understand the resistance to double negatives in "proper" English. The "ain't got none" construct exists in many other languages. The double negative reinforces each other, instead of canceling each other out.
- freehunter 14y agoI found myself nodding at the explanations of the grammer given in the article. I've never deeply thought of AAVE as a language, more of a corruption (which is a natural part of how living languages grow and evolve), but the article gives some depth to the discussion. At the very least it's worth a read through to help you make your own decisions about the structure of this language. Although I don't necessarily believe the claim that most AAVE speakers use the same grammatical structure, I believe this is somewhat of a liberty taken by the author. I've heard many variations on AAVE grammar working at college tech support, and my ability to understand the grammar being used fluctuates from person to person. This isn't a single cohesive language; it's much more ad hoc than that in my personal experience, even in a small geographic region.
- LeeHunter 14y ago"I don't necessarily believe the claim that most AAVE speakers use the same grammatical structure" That doesn't mean much. Mainstream speakers of standard English also use a variety of grammatical structures. Some speakers of standard English will even argue till they're blue in the face that certain grammatical structures are wrong, wrong, wrong even after you show them examples from Dickens, Twain, Hemmingway et al.
- ezy 14y agoYou have to define what you mean by "Ebonics". The term is awful... :-) According to the article's definition it doesn't sound like a crock at all. When a young person writes Spanish words and grammar in an English essay, sane people don't assume a degraded intelligence. We realize that this person is a native Spanish speaker. They are probably reasonably intelligent, but ignorant of certain normative rules of English and when and where a particular language/vocabulary is appropriate. That all Ebonics is -- not unlimited acceptance of non-normative english in the wrong contexts, or teaching people to write with black slang (unless that's part of the point of essay). The whole point is to teach kids who speak a different dialect to code switch when writing, for example. These students are wrong to use certain verbal constructions in (formal) written english, but it's the language in a particular context that is wrong -- not the language itself.
- Jun8 14y agoWhen my Historical Linguistics professor mentioned that determination of dialect/language difference is mostly political I was amazed and argued with him for half an hour and still wasn't convinced after that. I thought there should be a way wherein a linguist can collect and then analyze corpora, then scientifically discover and label dialects, isoglosses, languages, etc. Later, I learned that although there are tools for doing this analysis, the resulting labeling is mostly based on political/ideological distinctions. The common examples of the difficulties in determining language vs a dialect are: the "dialects" of Chinese; Macedonian vs Bulgarian; Swedish vs Norwegian vs Danish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect. I think most linguists would consider AAEV to be a dialect of English.
- twelvechairs 14y agoAs the famous saying goes "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy".
- akavi 14y agoWhich was said first, ironically, in Yiddish (a language that gains its status as such through its connection with an ethnic group, not military presence).
- joshrotenberg 14y agoLink with more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an... a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot Yiddish is fascinating. (And entertaining when spoken by Mel Brooks as an Ind ... er, Native American).
- jdmichal 14y agoI could pretty readily read (Latin-transliterated) Yiddish with just a couple years of German language classes. > "Eine Sprache ist ein Dialekt mit einer Armee und einer Flotte"
- tomku 14y agoI can understand the argument for supporting AAVE in schools, but at the same time, I strongly feel that this kind of split is exactly what leads to less diversity and more segregation in the long run. In an ideal world, we'd all be neutral about which dialect we hear and speak whichever we're more used to ourselves. In the real world, it just gives people another data point by which to divide the rest of their world into "us" and "them".
- Hairy_Sandwich 14y ago>I can understand the argument for supporting AAVE in schools I can't. Schools are supposed to teach you the official language and all the skills you need to succeed in society. AAVE won't help you (or be useful) at work, or in academia, unless you are studying AAVE as your job. I agree that it will be divisive in the long run, I think you are right that encouraging AAVE to continue and legitimizing it and calling it a language is the wrong way to go. Was the cockney English slang of 1800's England a language? I think most would say no, it was simply the bad English of the uneducated. I think AAVE is simply modern America's cockney slang.
- jlgreco 14y agoI don't really disagree, but I'm not sure you could call English "official" in the US. De facto standard at most.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoYou really can't and it's pretty frustrating when you consider my great grandparents were of German and Norwegian heritage and had to learn English in order to integrate when they came here. Clearly there are more socioeconomic and cultural reasons behind this, but it is puzzling why no effort has been made to make English the "official" language of the US.
- jlgreco 14y agoShrug I come from an area where many people, particularly grandparents of people my age, still spoke German in the home or sometimes exclusively. The WWII (and WWI maybe?) atmosphere killed it off to a large degree, but it still exists. There is a massive amount of variety in this country, though I still think English is essential as a common language.
- cvjones360 14y agoSpeaking as an African-American male I can say I've spoken both for a long time. When I’m around friends and family I speak AAVE and when I’m around ‘judgmental others’ and for business purposes I speak American English.
- chimeracoder 14y agoI believe the scientific name for this is 'revertigo'[0] : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n74O3GXRtbY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n74O3GXRtbY ([0]It's not really - it's a line from HIMYM - but the video clip is a good depiction of it anyway, if you watch the whole thing).
- spolsky 14y agoThe scientific name for this is actually 'code switching' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching)
- gchpaco 14y agoCode switching is actually when you wander between two or more languages in the scope of a single conversation (which is downright weird to listen to if you speak only one; girl I knew would wander between Russian and English conversing with her mother and I would try like the devil to follow when she started in Russian and eventually realize that it wasn't some weird English words). Based on my own (small) experience with it in English and French it's sometimes easier to find the word you're looking for in the other language; this only happens to me when I'm trying to speak English in public after I've been speaking French for a while tho. The grammar gets ... complicated.
- joshrotenberg 14y agoSpanglish is an interesting example of this, and I hear it quite a bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanglish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanglish
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- brechin 14y agoAhh... this brings me back to my college days (I also majored in Linguistics). I wonder what the current feelings are about the benefits/drawbacks of establishing an official US English dialect and/or declaring US English as (one of the) official language(s) of the United State? Thoughts?
- EvanKelly 14y agoI've only lived in Hawaii for three years, but I've definitely gained an appreciation for HCE (Hawaiian Creole English) or pidgin as it's more commonly called. There is lots of great linguistic research regarding pidgin done at University of Hawaii, and the language itself provides a great historical context, as it reflects the combined cultures of Hawaii (Anglo, Japanese, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Portuguese, etc.) through vocabulary and intonation.
- brown9-2 14y agoThis is only barely related, but I read something a few weeks ago that I think those interested in this topic would also find interesting: A few years ago, researchers discovered that schoolchildren in Baltimore had invented a new gender-neutral singular pronoun: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-yo-pronoun.aspx http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-yo-pronoun.aspx
- pacaro 14y agoAn interesting article, thank you. "Yo" seems to feel more natural than the usual Spivak options. I was mildly amused at the "pause/unpause" word pair mentioned in the article, I had always assumed that the pair was "pause/resume"...
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoI'd say there are "pause/unpause" and "pause/resume". The former details that resuming is by releasing the pause state, eg repeatedly pressing on a pause button. For "pause/resume" the resumption can be achieved by pressing play, for example, rather than by unpausing. It's analogous to "mute/unmute" and "mute/resume[sound]" where the unmute is by pressing the "mute" button, ie releaseing the mute state, whilst the resumption of sound can be achieved by pressing a volume up or down button.
- joshrotenberg 14y agoTwo unrelated (to this) but interesting linguistic things I've discovered recently: Boontling: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Boonville-s-quirky-dialect-fading-away-4308006.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Boonville-s-quirky-dia... (Cockney) Rhyming Slang: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang Not necessarily on topic from a political standpoint, but both good illustrations of how language forms and changes to suit the needs of those who use it.
- auctiontheory 14y agoThe public schools are these kids' last and only hope to learn the communications skills (aka standard English) they will need to make it to the middle class. Don't ruin it for them.
- gecko 14y agoThat's not what he's suggesting. Rather, he's suggesting that the schools separate teaching how to communicate amongst themselves v. how to communicate in a middle-class manner, and not label the former "wrong" and the latter "right," but rather the former "personal" and the latter "formal." That's not different from students of yore having to learn Latin to get along in college: it wasn't that they were speaking English (or French, or German, or whatever) poorly, but rather that Latin was required to get ahead in the world. Same thing here.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- blocking_io 14y agoYou should really read articles before commenting on them. She says that these kids are speaking AAVE because that’s what they know; it’s not wrong — it’s their language. She thus advocates teaching students who speak AAVE at home the concept of code-switching. The general idea is simply the notion of switching between two different languages as needed. No one is advocating that students aren't taught formal English, but that the language they speak is properly recognised. Doing this will actually improve students' ability to learn formal English.
- mattsfrey 14y agoI think that it isn't well regarded as a language because at root it is simply an adaption of another language (English). There's differing vernaculars anywhere you go, depending on the culture and the demographic. There's no use in regarding them each individually as "languages", they are termed correctly as just being vernaculars. When I started working at a factory when I was 18, I was suddenly bombarded with blue collar vernacular. By the time I was 21, double negatives, particular "ain't got no.." were fairly ingrained in my speech and I still talk like that in informal situations. I certainly wouldn't advocate that becoming a nationally recognized language. AAVE is perpetuated culturally but almost any AA you meet can speak formal English just fine, being necessary for success outside of their cultural enclave. Making it a separate language per se doesn't serve any real function and will really only cause another level of division on a national level.
- jlgreco 14y ago> When I started working at a factory when I was 18, I was suddenly bombarded with blue collar vernacular. By the time I was 21, double negatives, particular "ain't got no.." were fairly ingrained in my speech and I still talk like that in informal situations. To add to this, I have experienced similar. Years of working on farms/in food processing plants has left my informal speech riddled with expletives. I switch that on or off depending on the setting, but in situations that I am comfortable in that are not professional settings (for example, my mothers dinner table), it can slip through without me noticing.
- derleth 14y ago> I think that it isn't well regarded as a language because at root it is simply an adaption of another language (English). As Italian is simply an adaption of Latin. So, was Dante writing bad Latin or good Florentine? > I certainly wouldn't advocate that becoming a nationally recognized language. Why not?
- unhammer 14y ago> I certainly wouldn't advocate that becoming a nationally recognized language. The US has no official language, so it's a moot point. The article talks about how _teachers_ should recognize the language. Not teach the language, recognize it as a language, and not assume you're dumb just because you grew up speaking a different language (assumption like that have a definite negative effect on student performance).
- pacaro 14y agoI think that English has a challenge because there is no defined "correct" English, there is no clear distinction between dialect, accent, and formal speech. In some languages there is a clear and understood role for dialect, in those countries it is understood that most people speak both a dialect and the formal language. You choose the most appropriate mode for the context. More importantly, there isn't a necessary judgement on hearing someone speaking dialect that they "must be ignorant".
- tokenadult 14y agoThanks for the submission. This is an interesting article about applied linguistics for primary education in the United States. Approximately around 1900, the United States reached its peak period of receiving immigrants who were not English-speaking when they arrived. Today, nearly all Americans speak one variety or another of English, even though only about one-fourth of the United States population consists of persons whose ancestors spoke English before arrival in the United States. English has been assimilated by almost all inhabitants of the United States precisely because it is the only language that unites all those inhabitants. (Three of my four grandparents, all of whom were born in the United States, spoke a language at home other than English. My two maternal grandparents received the entirety of their schooling in church-operated schools in the German language, one in Nebraska and one in Colorado. But they spoke English just fine as adults, and that was the language I communicated with them in both by direct conversation and by postal letters. My Norwegian-speaking paternal grandmother went to college, majoring in English, and relied on her knowledge of another Germanic language to help her progress in reading Beowulf in the original Old English. I still have her college edition of Beowulf at home.) The worry in the United States today is about the primary education of young people who grow up in cohesive communities of speakers of varieties of English that differ from broadcast standard General American English. The cases of African-American speakers and Hawaiian speakers of dialectal English are both mentioned in the article. To me, as someone who studied linguistics in my university studies, it seems a "no brainer" to meet elementary school pupils on common ground and to make sure their teachers understand the home language background of the pupils as the pupils are taught standard English in school. (Everyone appears to be united in the cause of making sure school pupils learn the standard national language, with the only serious dispute being about means.) There are, alas, social disadvantages in the United States from having nonstandard speech patterns https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123171 even if those speech patterns are well accepted in some social subgroups here. Just as my grandparents were free to use German or Norwegian to communicate throughout their long lifetimes, let today's children speak however they like in their private lives, but let's meanwhile provide all learners the opportunity to learn the speech patterns that are most expedient to adopt here.
- Jun8 14y ago
- rootbear 14y agoOne side of my family has roots in the Great Smoky Mountains part of Appalachia. The English spoken there has its own rules and vocabulary. I have a book, "The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English", that my sister gave me and it's fascinating. Speakers of this variation of English are often perceived as uneducated, not unlike AAVE speakers. Some features of Smoky Mountain English, like the double negative, are quite similar to AAVE. I live in Maryland now and have visited Tangier Island and the English dialect spoken there is yet another interesting story. Sadly, the Southern accent I had from growing up in Huntsville, AL, is now all but gone.
- DannoHung 14y agoTheory: AAVE doesn't get respect because the vocabulary size in most AAVE corpuses is smaller than common English corpuses.
- dsfasfasf 14y agoNo, it does not get respect because that is how people from a lower socioeconomic level speak. And if you come from a higher socioeconomic level you might not want to speak like that so as not to be confused from the lower socioeconomic level because it can kill off many opportunities in the work place or love relationships. Unfair? maybe, but this is how the real world works.
- novacole 14y agoAs a black male I speak both, but it depends upon the person that I'm speaking with. If I'm speaking with my professors or employers, obviously I use standard English. With friends, depending on the importance of the conversation I will most like speak a mixture between standard English and AAEV. The thing is, all people who speak AAEV understand standard English, it would be impossible not to. No child who grew up in a household that speaks AAEV will be confused by the statement "I do not have any time for that", even though in their home and in their neighborhood they hear it as "I ain't got no time for that." This issue is that when entering elementary school, students who grow up with AAEV simply use the dialect that they are used to. I will venture to say that there is no (Adult) person who speaks AAEV that doesn't know proper English. Some simply speak primarily in AAEV because everyone else in their inner-circle does. Others do so as an act of rebellion against the larger white society. Speaking standard English is seen as "Acting White" (assimilation), which is deeply frowned upon in certain circles.
- pothibo 14y agoSecond french example is not a double negation. As for the other french examples, I'm ambivalent.
- pothibo 14y ago"I ain’t never eat no sushi." Does this means you 'will never eat sushi?'
- mhartl 14y agoAAVE gets no respect because of the social status of those who speak it, not because it's "ungrammatical". Of the stratified [1] dialects of American English, it's a basilect; "standard" American English, spoken on TV and taught in schools, is the acrolect. Pro tip: if you want to get ahead, learn and speak the acrolect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilect#Stratification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilect#Stratification
- rayiner 14y agoWhen people ask how Bangladesh fought a war to separate from Pakistan just because they spoke different languages, I want to point them to some of the comments in this article to show how deeply language can be tied up with prejudice, classism, power, etc.
- hawkharris 14y agoI grew up using expressions that might fall under the umbrella of Ebonics. However, I tend to avoid using them in work settings. Friends who are also black have shared anecdotes about employers sounding put-off during phone interviews. Until this bias is addressed, young people should be aware that speaking Ebonics can have negative professional consequences.
- Evbn 14y agoSo can having a black name or black skin. It is a bug in our society, and acting white is a workaround, not a fix.
- hawkharris 14y agoYou're creating a false dichotomy between using Ebonics in the workplace and "acting white."
- voxfrege 14y ago> No modern linguist embraces the term Ebonics. Too bad. As a non native english speaker, I could intuitively understand what it means. While "AAVE" doesn't tell nobody nothing.
- voxfrege 14y ago> No modern linguist embraces the term Ebonics. Too bad. As a non native english speaker, I could intuitively understand what it means. While "AAVE" doesn't tell nobody nothing.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- blocking_io 14y agoCan you point out where in the article it advocates teaching students AAVE? Rebecca Wheeler, the professor at Christopher Newport University mentioned at the outset, is a descriptivist, like all linguists. She says that these kids are speaking AAVE because that’s what they know; it’s not wrong — it’s their language. She thus advocates teaching students who speak AAVE at home the concept of code-switching. The general idea is simply the notion of switching between two different languages as needed.
- Evbn 14y ago"She is a descriptivist, like all linguists." Is that statement descriptivist or prescriptivist? ;-)
- fusiongyro 14y agoAn interesting book on this topic is "Twice as Less," which deals with manifestations of the mismatch between English and AAVE in math and science.
- tadhg 14y agoDavid Foster Wallace covered this really well; his spiel to his students on this topic is included here: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html#backfromnote39 http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html... (the whole essay is definitely worth reading).
- latj 14y agoI know its not a mother tongue but a tiny part of me thought this was going to be about Perl.
- Evbn 14y agoIf someone here would stand up and say the Perl is a valid computer language but AAVE is not a valid human language, my head would explode.
- adventured 14y agoWhy not white redneck english then? I've met numerous people in West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, etc. that speak as different a form of english as ebonics represents. It's perfectly fine for the english language to spawn related children, but the purpose of language is understanding / communication, and it's ideal for the people of a country to be able to communicate in a standard language to maximize efficiency (in trade, social interaction, you name it). I'd argue it's ideal to navigate people that speak broken english (whether they're caucasian, african american, hispanic, asian, whatever) back toward speaking a more standardized version of it.
- Cushman 14y agoWhy not Spanish? You can't get here from there. If a child speaks a coherent first language at home, you can't "navigate them back" to ASE, it will only confuse them (and further reinforce your preconception that they are speaking "broken" English). You need a teacher who speaks their first language fluently to instruct them on the standard language, and when it is appropriate to use. (And, as stated in the article, this is not a new nor should be a controversial idea; it has been school board policy in Oakland for 17 years.)
- pekk 14y agoYou didn't answer the question. Why not Standard Redneck English? Is it not a different language? Isn't its lack of status due to the lack of status of its speakers? Other than race, how is this different?
- Cushman 14y agoI suppose it wasn't clear; I don't see a difference, except that California is more progressive linguistically than Kentucky.
- EamonLeonard 14y agoI'm not an expert, but find this fascinating. A somewhat related subject, English as spoken in Ireland is referred to as Hiberno-English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English
- grumpygremlin 14y agoThe main problem 'AAVE' is that it is impossible to express complex or precise ideas with it. The entire point of the pidgin is ambiguity. How much this affects the thought processes who speak it as a primary internal dialect is. I believe, a major factor in why blacks have made little progress compared to any other minority group.
- ComputerGuru 14y agoIs no one else seeing a paywall?
- archagon 14y agoThe Magazine used to be subscription only. Now you can read one free article per month online: www.marco.org/2013/02/24/the-magazine-sharing
- losvedir 14y agoExcellent article, uncharacteristically poor HN comments. I only learned about AAVE in the last few years and it was eye opening. I realized I do have a sort of instinctual prejudice against it, though. From the article: Many of us unfairly judge others based on how they speak. Kenneth the page, on the late, great 30 Rock, spoke with a southern accent meant to exemplify his yokel-ness. Maybe you think that British accents sound dignified, or that the Minnesota accent on display in Fargo betrays its speakers’ intellectual inferiority. I'd like to snap out of this, and I thought a good way would be to watch videos of articulate, smart, (preferably math/science-based discussion in AAVE). This post talks about Feynman[0]: Feynman’s accent, one of America’s more stigmatized, becomes a strength rather than a weakness. It is a sad fact that we easily underestimate people because of their accents. but since my first exposure to that accent was Feynman videos, I've naturally associated it with intellectualism. I'd like to have similar positive connotations with AAVE. Anyone have any video suggestions? [0] http://dialectblog.com/2011/09/03/great-minds-accents/ http://dialectblog.com/2011/09/03/great-minds-accents/
- omonra 14y agoCould you share with us "videos of articulate, smart, (preferably math/science-based discussion in AAVE)"? Perhaps this is the missing link for us sceptics - we associate it with poor uneducated individuals. Ie - by definition, if someone whose primary language was AAVE wants to sound articulate and smart they will resort to SE?
- losvedir 14y agoWell, that's just it. A native-AAVE speaker will use SE when speaking to me, even if their preferred dialect at home is AAVE, so I don't get exposed to it. Think of this reporter [0]. However, I'm sure he's an intelligent men, and I'm sure when speaking informally he'll fall back to AAVE. What I'd love to see is someone at, say, PhD Math or Physics level speaking in AAVE, preferably about that subject. I'm studying a bit of Arabic, and I see parallels. In Arabic, there's the formal register, called Modern Standard Arabic. This is the dialect used in the Quran and printed in newspapers and such. However, people don't routinely speak in this register -- they speak in their local Gulf or Levantine or Egyptian dialects, which are pretty different from each other and from MSA. The pronunciation of letters is different, the vocabulary is different, hell, in Egyptian the question word goes at the end of the sentence whereas in other dialects it goes at the beginning. They, too, think of their local dialects as "wrong" or "beneath" MSA, even though it's the native tongue of themselves and everyone around them, and they have to study for years to be comfortable with this somewhat artificial MSA dialect. It's not quite as regimented in English, because the dialects are more similar, and because no one natively speaks the formal register, but the principles are the same. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti1dHabjH3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti1dHabjH3k [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ3dk6KAvQM&t=4m31s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ3dk6KAvQM&t=4m31s
- anateus 14y agoI see a mention of it below, but none in the article, and I wanted to highlight that there is a term for this: Diglossia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia