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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

#181

Post by pekk »

Cushman wrote: post #132
smsm42 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leetspeak can be classified as a dialect too, if you'd like, it has its own words (leet, pwnd, haxor, etc.) and you can find grammar differences if you look hard enough[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet#Grammar

That's pretty unconvincing. Despite the heading "Grammar", it mentions differences that are lexicographic or merely orthographic in nature. The only real grammatical process mentioned is "changing its grammatical usage to be deliberately incorrect" which has some obvious problems. "All your ___ are belong to ___" is an idiomatic expression in Internet Standard English, but that does not a grammar rule make.

You haven't articulated any real objective principle to distinguish when two ways of talking are the same language. The decision seems to be based on politics (in this case politics of race)

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

#182

Post by Evbn »

mtviewdave wrote: post #154
smsm42 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So should there be AAVE-English academic dictionaries with entries like "ain't: are not", etc.? What about l33tsp34k and txtng spk, u wnt 2gt dctnrz 4 it 2?

>So should there be AAVE-English academic dictionaries with entries like "ain't: are not", etc.? This is already the case in Standard English dictionaries: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aint >What about l33tsp34k and txtng spk, u wnt 2gt dctnrz 4 it 2? Actually, given how often I see it, I wouldn't be surprised if "U" was the standard English spelling for the second-person pronoun (or at least an acceptab…

U is logically parallel to I, and is accepted in (India) Indian English.

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

#183

Post by dsfasfasf »

Evbn wrote: post #180
dsfasfasf wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting tire of this BS. Give me examples of the "AAVE dialect" that are not just examples of bad English. In Latin America there are a lot of dialects which are called like that simply because a minority of people speak it. But in reality they are full spoken languages (i.e. not just a few rules on top of an existing living language like English) You saying that AAVE is a language is an insult to those dialects…

I stopped reading at "I am tire", as you have shown yourself to be worthlessly illiterate.

What are you talking about? It is a new dialect. No, it wasn't a typo made at a rush, that is how I spell "tired" in my new dialect. Rather than ridiculing me you should tell me the difference between the dialect I speak at home and standard English which I imagine you speak.

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

#184

Post by omonra »

Cushman wrote: post #163
omonra wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument seems to rest on the premise that teaching them in Standard English will imply that ebonics is wrong. And that is somehow bad. I, meanwhile, just don't care. The world will not care about their feelings - and the earlier they learn SE, the better. I am only interested in what is the most effective way to learn SE (any variety that news anchors speak in Anglophone countries). I want them to succeed outsi…

> And I think the best way that would be achieved is if they learn proper English at school, full stop. Of course you're entitled to an opinion, but this is not the opinion of, among many notable others, the Oakland school board since 1996. I entreat you to consider that they (and I) might have a good reason that extends beyond "feelings". Perhaps a good reason elaborated upon at length in the article linked at the t…

"but this is not the opinion of, among many notable others, the Oakland school board since 1996."

Yes - and they've been considered a joke because of it since 1996. The decision was "derided and criticized, most notably by Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume who regarded it as an attempt to teach slang to children". So my opinion is shared by many prominent black leaders.

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

#185

Post by pekk »

Cushman wrote: post #156
eridius wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He most certainly did not speak modern English, which is the English we're talking about. > Students of English language and literature will also know that, had you lived in England up to the 17th century, you’d also have been doubling your negatives with gay abandon and not incurring the wrath of the grammar police. The key part here is "up to the 17th century". If you had bothered to continue reading, you would hav…

Shakespeare most certainly did speak, and write, Modern English. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English . If your claim is that he did not speak an identical dialect to you, well, neither do many English speakers who use double negatives for emphasis (or because they are grammatically required) every day.

This is ludicrous. The language spoken by Shakespeare was undoubtedly and clearly different from anything regularly spoken today, and nearly unintelligible to any English speaker without an interest in Shakespeare or older forms of English. If that is not a different language, then what objective basis do you have for saying that AAVE is a different language?

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

#186

Post by Evbn »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #120
blocking_io wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really comparing how second language learners mangle a language to the first language of millions of Americans? As I said, English learners would not consistently apply rules. They make different mistakes. AAVE speakers reliably use the same grammar, and can understand each other unambiguously. Please explain why Standard American English is superior to AAVE. Why do you think SAE is any more valid than AAVE?

> Why do you think SAE is any more valid than AAVE? Wasn't AAVE originally created by people consciously trying to imitate SAE as best they could after limited education? Don't all the differences represent mistakes now immortalized?

Your description matches every language just as well.

English is a nonsensical mess spoken by fools who couldn't keep their German, Latin, and Greek separate.

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

#187

Post by pekk »

Cushman wrote: post #151
adventured wrote: post #142

Why 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…

Why 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,…

You 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?

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

#188

Post by Evbn »

Cushman wrote: post #155
Hairy_Sandwich wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there are any rules to "AAVE" either, one speaker of this dialect? creole? language? or whatever we're calling it, would not be able to point out grammatical errors in the speech of another. I think the following would all be considered valid AAVE: I ain’t tell nobody nothing about no sushi. or I didn’t tell nobody nothing about no sushi. or I didn’t tell nobody about no sushi. or I didn’t tell nobody a…

> I think the following would all be considered valid AAVE: Here's an idea: Stop guessing about a language you don't speak, put your linguist hat on, and go out and find an actual attestation. I suspect you will be surprised.

Or just read a book on the topic. Many of them are written in SE.

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

#190

Post by pekk »

Afton wrote: post #78
dsfasfasf wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, you are equating AAVE with Spanish. AAVE is how people of poorer means speak or with less education speak, even if it's not politically correct to say it. Spanish is an actual language hundreds of years old and spoken by multiple nations. By your logic you might as well recognize English slang as an actual language. -Edit: So for those arguing that AAVE is a dialect, then If I add a few rules to any other…

I'm not downvoting you. But your position is untenable, and comes from a misunderstanding about what a language is. It's not that it's not politically correct, it's that it's factually incorrect. No one is arguing that there is or isn't a class and racial component to who speakers of AAVE are. They are primarily black and poor. But that point is irrelevant. Kids raised where people speak AAVE will grow up speaking AA…

Simply declaring that it is a language gets you nothing too. If every minor variation creates a whole new language, then almost no two people with a vocabulary of a few thousand words actually speak 'the same language'.
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