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A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

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Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#41

Post by pacaro »

I 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".

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#42

Post by pacaro »

brown9-2 wrote: post #25

This 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

An 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"...

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#43

Post by gecko »

auctiontheory wrote: post #35

The 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.

That'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.

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#44

Post by hkarthik »

Jun8 wrote: post #15

When 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 too…

This is pretty true in India, which is divided into states mostly by linguistic lines. I've heard "dialects" which sound distinct enough to be separate languages (Marwari versus Hindi) and "languages" that sound similar enough to be dialects (Urdu and Hindi).

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#45

Post by at-fates-hands »

jlgreco wrote: post #28
Hairy_Sandwich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I don't really disagree, but I'm not sure you could call English "official" in the US. De facto standard at most.

You 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.

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#46

Post by wildwood »

jinushaun wrote: post #11

I 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.

There's some research[1] that suggests that some dialects of Old English used double negation reliably, but that this got phased out in 'proper' Middle English.

It's interesting that double negation is standard in French, but not used in Germanic languages. In this case, it seems like the Germanic influences on English won.

[1] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-11-08/features/06110...

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#47

Post by WalterBright »

jinushaun wrote: post #11

I 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.

"Sir, you are employing a double negative." -- Mr. Spock

"Interesting, now try it without the quadruple negative." -- Amy

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#48

Post by zieski »

Hairy_Sandwich wrote: post #26
tomku wrote: post #17

I 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…

>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…

If by /supporting/ we mean to accept that a large class of students speaks a divergent dialect of English at home, then I am all for it. Instruct children on American English but don't demean, discourage, or devalue them because of the dialect they grew up speaking.

I don't think the article or comment really supported teaching AAVE to the exclusion of American English, the article at least tries to point out that teachers often view AAVE as an indicator of low intelligence instead of a separate dialect and supports changing that stereotype.

Re: A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect

#49

Post by blocking_io »

Hairy_Sandwich wrote: post #26
tomku wrote: post #17

I 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…

>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…

As the article points out, if it were 'bad English', the rules of AAVE would not be consistently applied. However, speakers know how to use the rules and they always apply them. Saying that 'calling it a language' is bad is truly ignorant. As far as linguists are concerned, it is a language. If you say otherwise, you are simply wrong. There is nothing inherently better about the English you speak compared to their English.
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