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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

#191

Post by Evbn »

anigbrowl wrote: post #98
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…

Also I feel like people (educators in Oakland?) just caved, and don't want to admit that they have failed to properly educate and include a huge swathe of people. I'm inclined to agree. I live in north Oakland, in a pat of the city where a lot of the Black Panthers were based and got involved in community development on a practical level, such as installing traffic lights on dangerous intersections and suchlike. A fe…

Chaucer would faint if he were forced to read this barely intelligible creole you call "English".

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

#192

Post by Evbn »

Hairy_Sandwich wrote: post #106
blocking_io wrote: post #86

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. You're wrong. Linguists have been studying AAVE for years. It has been determined how the grammar of AAVE differs from SAE. All are bad English, i have no doubt whatsoever, that all would be understood by a speaker…

"You're wrong. Linguists have been studying AAVE for years. " Yeah but I didn't say Linguists wouldn't be able concoct a grammar for AAVE, I said one AAVE speaker would not be able to point out the grammatical errors of another. The sentence I gave was an example of AAEV from the article. The article used the sentence "I ain’t tell nobody nothing about no sushi". I just gave a bunch of other examples I thought would…

When you can't spell a word consistently that you use eight times in one post --the most important word in your post-- we don't give much weight to your guesses as to who can spot inconsistencies in usage.

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

#193

Post by omonra »

losvedir wrote: post #175

Excellent 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 ac…

Could 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?

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

#194

Post by harichinnan »

nsns wrote: post #60
hkarthik wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

"Hindi" is made up of Marwari, Mewati, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Maithili, Bundeli, awadhi, chhattisgarhi... all of them different language with their own history and literature. This was done in '47 mostly for political reasons, to stop Bangla from becoming the Indian national language. In a way the Italian situation is similar [0]. [0] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Italian_l...

Hindi is written in Sanskrit letters and Urudu is written in Arabic script. The languages use same words. Hindi is the primary official language for India and Urudu is the primary national language for Pakistan.

Two dialects protected by armies navies and nuclear bombs.

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

#195

Post by Evbn »

losvedir wrote: post #175

Excellent 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 ac…

Watch The Wire, through at least Season 1. Those guys ain't dumb. Most of the AAVE speakers are villains, though.

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

#196

Post by omonra »

dsfasfasf wrote: post #61
DannoHung wrote: post #57

Theory: AAVE doesn't get respect because the vocabulary size in most AAVE corpuses is smaller than common English corpuses.

No, 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.

To be fair, people who speak ebonics do not want to sound 'white'. So both sides are doing this on purpose.

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

#197

Post by Evbn »

meepmorp wrote: post #101
drivers99 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A double negative is not double negation (in other languages), it's called agreement[1]. Just like you have to have agreement between numbers in English (It is / They are) you can also have languages that require/support agreement in terms of negative/positive. Yes, it's redundant information, but all human languages have a lot of extra information built into them at every level to make them easier to use. [1] http:/…

My intuition is that double negation in English is usually accompanied by a shift in stress to emphasize that the negation should be interpreted in the "correct" way (i.e., as negating a previous negation) rather than as mere agreement. I think English actually allows multiple negation with no significant change in semantics in many dialects, possibly as the default interpretation. Be interesting to do a corpus study…

How do you do a corpus study on stress? Audio/Video, I guess.

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

#198

Post by dsfasfasf »

Evbn wrote: post #179
dsfasfasf wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>and that acknowledging that explicitly is more productive than telling them never to speak their home language. Home Language... Hahahahahahahahah. Seriously, you guys need to lower the BS. It is no more a language then the Spanish Puerto Ricans speak (Some people claim Puerto Ricans speak a dialect of Spanish. Seriously, what the hell? I've had to argue with people that it is just a different accent and some of th…

You sound far stupider than someone speaking Ebonics, and all else equal, I would certainly hire an intelligent and peceptive Ebonics speaker and than someone who displays muddled thinking in grammatical SE.

I know you are but what am I....?

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

#199

Post by Evbn »

paranormal wrote: post #30
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.

> I think ebonics if a load of crock, but as an aficionado of linguistics... I was under the impression that modern linguists generally agreed that good linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. Could you elaborate here?

"Aficionado" != "scholar", which might resolve your confusion.

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

#200

Post by Evbn »

blocking_io wrote: post #114
[deleted] wrote: post #113

[deleted]

Can 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…

"She is a descriptivist, like all linguists." Is that statement descriptivist or prescriptivist? ;-)
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