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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

#41

Post by ceilingcorner »

fenomas wrote: post #40
ceilingcorner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America,…

This seems like a very strange position to take. For one, I think what you're attacking here is usually called "descriptivism", as opposed to prescriptivism. Relativism is already a term of art in linguistics for something unrelated. For two, it's hard to follow what point you're trying to make. If you think Australian English is correct in Australia, why not similarly say that AAVE is correct in a place where people…

AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it?

I didn’t say it wasn’t. Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions.

That isn’t the same thing proposed by the original commenter, who insists that it is correct everywhere.

It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing with the majority’s agreed-upon standard. Communication would become impossible. Political fracturing would probably happen.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#42

Post by bedobi »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #27
bedobi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ideas of quality and correctness are important Quality and correctness are important! And AAVE does have and enforce both. If you answered a question like "where be the car?" with "it be on the road" or "it's on the road" when in fact it be in the garage, you would be grammatically incorrect. I bet you have no idea what habitual be even is or how it works. (I didn't) And it all begs the question, why, in the US, is…

It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America,…

> Again, if you have no interest in the idea that some things are correct and others are incorrect, this will not appeal to you. But that is a postmodern relativistic position and not one that everyone agrees with.

Sorry, but you're just wrong. Everyone agrees grammar and correctness is important. AAVE has and enforces both. This has nothing to do with postmodern relativism.

I bet you can't translate or understand the difference between these sentences

We working We be working We stay working We steady working

eg, most people think AAVE "we be working" means "we are working". But it doesn't, and if you use or understand it that way, you're not being correct or grammatical.

Would it kill you to familiarize yourself with what's correct and incorrect in, and the grammar of, AAVE?

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#43

Post by bedobi »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #41
fenomas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a very strange position to take. For one, I think what you're attacking here is usually called "descriptivism", as opposed to prescriptivism. Relativism is already a term of art in linguistics for something unrelated. For two, it's hard to follow what point you're trying to make. If you think Australian English is correct in Australia, why not similarly say that AAVE is correct in a place where people…

AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it? I didn’t say it wasn’t. Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. That isn’t the same thing proposed by the original commenter, who insists that it is correct everywhere. It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing with the majority’s agreed-upon standard. Communication would become impo…

> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions.

But they're not. AAVE and many other dialects are stigmatized even in their own geographic areas and social contexts. The speakers "know" they're not speaking "right" even when they're just speaking akngst themselves in their own communities. (despite them actually speaking AAVE perfectly correctly - the only way you can speak AAVE wrong is if you make grammatical mistakes like thinking "we be working" means the same thing as "we are working", which it doesn't, that's grammatically incorrect...)

And no, I didn't say it's the "correct" version of English.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#44

Post by ceilingcorner »

bedobi wrote: post #43
ceilingcorner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AAVE is correct in a place where people speak it? I didn’t say it wasn’t. Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. That isn’t the same thing proposed by the original commenter, who insists that it is correct everywhere. It would quickly become unwieldy if every cultural subgroup wanted their dialect to be given equal standing with the majority’s agreed-upon standard. Communication would become impo…

> Certainly dialects are “correct” in their specific regions. But they're not. AAVE and many other dialects are stigmatized even in their own geographic areas and social contexts. The speakers "know" they're not speaking "right" even when they're just speaking akngst themselves in their own communities. (despite them actually speaking AAVE perfectly correctly - the only way you can speak AAVE wrong is if you make gra…

I have already said that it is incorrect from the perspective of the society-wide accepted version of English. Not from within the dialect itself.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#45

Post by ceilingcorner »

bedobi wrote: post #42
ceilingcorner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America,…

> Again, if you have no interest in the idea that some things are correct and others are incorrect, this will not appeal to you. But that is a postmodern relativistic position and not one that everyone agrees with. Sorry, but you're just wrong. Everyone agrees grammar and correctness is important. AAVE has and enforces both. This has nothing to do with postmodern relativism. I bet you can't translate or understand th…

First off, there is no established standard as to what is correct or incorrect in AAVE. It is like other dialects in America, such as Appalachian English or Louisianan English. It’s also not spoken by a large percentage of African Americans.

Secondly, I really don’t know what you are trying to argue for. AAVE is an interesting dialect and something that makes America a richer place, just as all the other dialects do. That doesn’t make it equal to the common established standard, just like Appalachian English or Louisianan English are not “official.” Especially when these dialects have nowhere near the level of historical or cultural development and influence that standard American English does. What literature is there in Appalachian English? What movies? What historical documents?

Do you understand why treating every dialect as equivalent to the standard one is an extremely unwieldy thing to do? Are we to treat every new dialect that appears as completely equal to the standard historical language?

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#46

Post by grasshopperpurp »

bedobi wrote: post #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…

Some text to complement the videos.

>It is impossible to conclude with a balance sheet of plusses and minusses which would add up to a final decision on the creole origins issue. To my mind, there is enough persuasive evidence in these data to suggest that AAVE did have some creole roots. The very fact that copula absence is widespread both in AAVE and in mesolectal creoles, but not in White Englishes outside of the American South (where it can be argued that Whites adopted the speech patterns of Blacks) strongly suggests that at lest some of the predecessors of modern AAVE arose from a restructuring process similar to that which produced the English-based creoles.The fact that the constraint hierarchy for following grammatical environment is so similar across the vareties shown in table 16 further reinforces this conclusion.43 The fact that AAVE varieties which might be considered closer to their creole origins on historical grounds (18th century varieties, Samaná) also behave more like creole varieties in some respects (for instance in permitting some deletion of first person am and/or in permitting some degree of past tense copula absence) is also a plus for the creole origins hypothesis.

https://web.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAV...

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#47

Post by bedobi »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #27
bedobi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ideas of quality and correctness are important Quality and correctness are important! And AAVE does have and enforce both. If you answered a question like "where be the car?" with "it be on the road" or "it's on the road" when in fact it be in the garage, you would be grammatically incorrect. I bet you have no idea what habitual be even is or how it works. (I didn't) And it all begs the question, why, in the US, is…

It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America,…

+ I think you're wrong about this too

> Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America

Then how come, in the US, Australians are not stigmatized and pressured into speaking Standard American English? Because, well, they're not. If anything, there's an expectation that people who work with Australians make an effort to understand their variety of English.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#48

Post by ceilingcorner »

bedobi wrote: post #47
ceilingcorner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America,…

+ I think you're wrong about this too > Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America Then how come, in the US, Australians are not stigmatized and pressured into speaking Standard American English? Because, well, they're not. If anything, there's an expectation that people who work with Australians make an effort to understand their variety of English.

Or it’s because the differences between the two are smaller than the differences between regional American dialects and standard American English? Not conjugating be is a pretty big difference.

And yes, if an Australian started using certain vocabulary words like cunt in a professional context, it would not be acceptable.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#49

Post by bedobi »

bedobi wrote: post #24
pelagicAustral wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because AAVE is just bad English and is intrinsically understood by people that going to a place and learning localisms is not the same as impersonating another individual. Furthermore, in the current social spectrum it would take no time for someone even trying to be accused of cultural appropriation... no thanks.

But that's the thing, AAVE is not "just bad English", or a localism. (unlike Australian English, which really is just bad English, and a localism) You really ought to get off your high horse, watch the video. You might learn something.

For anyone triggered by the above comment saying Australian English really is just bad English...

I don't actually believe that, I just wrote it trigger you on purpose. Now go and think long and hard about why it's ok for you to be upset when someone says your variety of English is just bad English, but it's totally OK for you to say AAVE, or even just Standard American English spoken with an African American accent, is just bad English.

Re: Raymond Chandler’s guide to street, hoodlum, and prison lingo

#50

Post by bedobi »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #27
bedobi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ideas of quality and correctness are important Quality and correctness are important! And AAVE does have and enforce both. If you answered a question like "where be the car?" with "it be on the road" or "it's on the road" when in fact it be in the garage, you would be grammatically incorrect. I bet you have no idea what habitual be even is or how it works. (I didn't) And it all begs the question, why, in the US, is…

It’s considered incorrect because the combined cultural output of the previous five centuries established an educated baseline as to what is considered proper. It’s not simply an arbitrary designation or a consequence of “privilege” and culture isn’t just an empty variable that is selected randomly. The point about Australian English is irrelevant. Australian English is correct in Australia and incorrect in America,…

> Or it’s because the differences between the two are smaller than the differences between regional American dialects and standard American English?

clearly not - Australian English is far more different to Standard American English compared to... Standard American English, just spoken with an African American accent.

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