I'd read these books (from possible future titles) :
// Twenty Inches of Monkey
// The Hydraulic Facelift
// Deceased When Last Seen
Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
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Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#12Recommend a chandler or comparable book? I read one at random years ago and it was fun
I'd recommend starting with some of his collections of short stories, like 'The Simple Art of Murder' - https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20140930 or 'Trouble is My Business' - https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20150520
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#13To what extent does this jargon change over time?
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#14Recommend a chandler or comparable book? I read one at random years ago and it was fun
Raymond Chandler wrote seven novels. I read somewhere that his favourite was "The long good-bye", but I didn't care for that one so much. I think my favourite was "The lady in the lake", though that's the last of the four Chandler novels that made it into this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Top_100_Crime_Novels_of_Al...
I only read "Playback" for completeness: that last one is definitely less interesting than the others.
There are also the short stories, some of which were later incorporated into the novels and are therefore not republished so often in their original form. Chandler referred to them as "cannibalised".
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#15"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had:
How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and you constantly felt pressured not to use it?
Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is)
Of course not, right? To the contrary, it's kind of expected that people who work with Australians make an effort to get used to and understand the Australian variety of English.
But for some reason, stigmatizing and not making an effort to understand African American Vernacular English is to this day kind of widely and subtly accepted, even in the US.
It shouldn't be! And most of us could probably use making an effort to understand it better.
Langfocus is one of the most popular language channels on YouTube, they made a really good video on AAVE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZpCdI6ZKU4
There's also this awesome lecture by linguist Daniel S Ferguson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btSxzfB_98M
Obviously, I myself am not African American. But I couldn't help but share these and encourage everyone to take a moment to learn a bit about it!
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#16"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had: How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and you constantly felt pressured not to use it? Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) Of course not, right? To the contrary…
These sorts of objections always seemed superficial to me. To the former point, I gurantee you that parts of Australian English are in fact discouraged whether rightly so or not. Australians casually use expletives that are heavily frowned on in the USA for example and I gurantee you 'hoodlum' English does as well.
To the ladder and imo more significant point, the reason a lot of the sort of African American vernacular you're addressing is discouraged is because there is no inherently african/black language. It's an outcome of societal factors. It's frowned upon by institutions, albeit for pettier/racist reasons by individuals, because it implies a racially biased failing by the systems of education which are otherwise viewed as having successfully (to a degree) normalized the prestige grammar with other enrolled pupils.
Whether or not the prestige grammar should be held in such high esteem is red herring, imo anyway, when compared to asking why the systems of education are so obviously able to yield the desired outcome for students so long as they have the right skin color. We'll never be able to achieve antiracist goals with tools and systems that have racist effectiveness.
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#17"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had: How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and you constantly felt pressured not to use it? Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) Of course not, right? To the contrary…
These sorts of objections always seemed superficial to me. To the former point, I gurantee you that parts of Australian English are in fact discouraged whether rightly so or not. Australians casually use expletives that are heavily frowned on in the USA for example and I gurantee you 'hoodlum' English does as well. To the ladder and imo more significant point, the reason a lot of the sort of African American vernacul…
> the reason a lot of the sort of African American vernacular you're addressing is discouraged is because there is no inherently african/black language
What? Of course there is no "inherently african/black language". Africa itself is a giant continent home to the most linguistic (and ethnic, and genetic) diversity on the planet, so that would be a tough claim to back up.
And no, out of the laundry list of reasons AAVE is stigmatized, that "there is no inherently african/black language" is not one of them.
The rest of your reply, despite best efforts, I literally don't even understand what any of it means. I don't mean to be uncharitable but it's kind of ironic given the topic being English Language...
To the degree you're trying to say something about AAVE being bad grammar, or being perceived to be bad grammar, that's not even half of it. Even those who speak perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but with an African American accent only, are still stigmatized. So it's not enough for speakers to speak grammatical Standard American English, they have to completely change they way they speak in order not to be stigmatized, which is sad and wrong.
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#18"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had: How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and you constantly felt pressured not to use it? Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) Of course not, right? To the contrary…
DFW wrote about this decades ago: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...
English has various dialects. Anyone not educated in the "standard" dialect is at a disadvantage, but it's better to teach the standard dialect as a dialect, because that's what it is.
Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect.
This practice applies broadly across vernacular dialects and is not just limited to AAVE.
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#19"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had: How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and you constantly felt pressured not to use it? Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) Of course not, right? To the contrary…
DFW wrote about this decades ago: https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-... English has various dialects. Anyone not educated in the "standard" dialect is at a disadvantage, but it's better to teach the standard dialect as a dialect, because that's what it is. Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect. Thi…
That's why I deliberately used Australian English as an example. It's not clear why most people would intuitively not stigmatize a speaker of Australian English, but (consciously or otherwise) simultaneously stigmatize a speaker of AAVE, or even someone who speaks perfectly grammatical Standard American English, but merely with an African American accent. In the latter case, they're both just grammatical standard english with different pronounciation. (if anything, an African American speaking grammatical Standard English, with an African American accent only, is less foreign, since the speaker is speaking, well, standard American English, whereas the Australian would be speaking not only with different pronounciation but with slightly different grammar and vocab etc as well) Is it because Australian English is an official prestige standard, albeit not in North America?
> Instead of telling a student that his English is wrong, instruct him in the differences been his vernacular and the standard dialect.
I agree, but sadly while this seems to be the consensus advice from linguists, in practice, telling people their manner of speech is wrong (explicitly or through just stigmatizing them in other ways) is still widespread both in schools, at work and in other contexts.
Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo
#20"Hoodlum lingo"... Reminds me a bit of something a random thought I had: How would you feel if you were constantly told your manner of speech was "wrong" and you constantly felt pressured not to use it? Would it be OK for Australian employees to be pressured to not speak Australian English, since it's indisputably in many ways different from "Standard English"? (whatever that is) Of course not, right? To the contrary…
Bad example. Here in Australia, I call my mate a cunt all the time.
But if my mate and I worked as store cashiers in the US, we'd be expected to refrain from doing that. Or we would have to look for new jobs in short order. And that's fine.