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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

#71

Post by nollidge »

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…

> I think AAVE is simply modern America's cockney slang.

Well, what linguists think is that it's at minimum a dialect with consistent grammar and using features of many other forms of communciation that you'd probably consider "real" languages.

Just because it's not what you were taught doesn't mean it's "bad" English or slang.

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

#72

Post by gyepi »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #14
freehunter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument that AAVE is only spoken by traders in illegal services? I think we have two different matters at hand, the first being the world that speakers of AAVE are raised in teaching them to speak AAVE, and the socioeconomic status that much of this world occupies. People raised speaking AAVE are not inherently raised to be criminals like your statement seems to imply, that's a completely different factor. O…

I think it's fair comment to say that AAVE is spoken by people of low socioeconomic status, and that is why anyone speaking it carries a stigma. The keyword is "code switching".

AAVE is indeed spoken by people of low economic status, but is certainly not limited to them. I have met many, many African-Americans of high economic status who also do so, but informally and generally only with other African-Americans. I think the stigma is more closely associated with their culture than economic status.

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

#73

Post by dyno12345 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #39
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…

> determination of dialect/language difference is mostly political I heard that expressed as " A language is a dialect with an army and navy " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an... I found it quite true when you look at cases like Dutch vs. Afrikaans or Swedish vs Norwegian vs Danish. Declaring your dialect a "language" can be a tool of nationalism.

As counterexample I would still call American English and Brazilian Portuguese dialects, even though they have armies and navies. I'm not sure if I would call Afrikaans a dialect.

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

#74

Post by javanscala »

smallegan wrote: post #4

I think in order for a language to gain any significant amount of respect it needs to be used in commerce and more than just illegal commerce.

Wow, I believe that was an overtly bigoted comment. So there is no legal commerce conducted in 'ebonics'? I had no idea when I was a kid that all those people making grocery purchases at the corner store were engaging in illegal activities.

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

#75

Post by breadbox »

eroded wrote: post #32
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.

As a programmer, double negatives make me reel with horror. I cannot parse an English sentence with a double negative as being a single negative; it's utterly illogical. At best, they're an unnecessary hindrance.

Think of the AAVE negation, not as an operator, but as a tense. It's like in Standard English when you change a sentence from singular to plural, or from first-person to third-person: several words are required to change in lockstep or else the sentence isn't grammatical. Negation in AAVE works like that.

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

#76

Post by smsm42 »

blocking_io wrote: post #49
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…

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 En…

I don't see how it follows. For example, for a native speaker of a language that has no definite/indefinite articles, it is common to omit those in English. Also, for speakers of languages without plural or complex tense system, it is common to systematically omit plurals or use only one or two tenses in English. Would it mean that English without articles, plurals and with only present tense would not be a "bad English" but would be a language on its own? ESL students would be delighted to know their English isn't bad, it's just their own view on the English language, equally valid, I'm sure, but somehow I do not see that happening just yet.

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

#77

Post by mhartl »

AAVE gets no respect because of the social status of those who speak it, not because it's "ungrammatical". Of the stratified [1] dialects of American English, it's a basilect; "standard" American English, spoken on TV and taught in schools, is the acrolect. Pro tip: if you want to get ahead, learn and speak the acrolect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilect#Stratification

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

#78

Post by Afton »

dsfasfasf wrote: post #58
JoelSutherland wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read the article. "Schools should recognize the legitimacy of AAVE as a language for their students, and teach those students to recognize when and how to switch between AAVE and American English as appropriate. But most schools don’t do that. They simply teach students that the way they speak is wrong. Don’t talk this way; talk our way. Wheeler says we’re still not doing right by children who grow…

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 AAVE. Simply declaring it 'not a language' gets you nothing. It's not 'just slang', it's a system of speaking with its own set of rules, just like any other language.

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

#79

Post by nollidge »

dsfasfasf wrote: post #58
JoelSutherland wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read the article. "Schools should recognize the legitimacy of AAVE as a language for their students, and teach those students to recognize when and how to switch between AAVE and American English as appropriate. But most schools don’t do that. They simply teach students that the way they speak is wrong. Don’t talk this way; talk our way. Wheeler says we’re still not doing right by children who grow…

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…

> AAVE is how people of poorer means speak or with less education speak

That doesn't make it not a language. What you're saying is that we should base categorize forms of communication based on the social status of their speakers. I hope you can see why that might be problematic.

> By your logic you might as well recognize English slang as an actual language.

This doesn't make any sense. AAVE is not slang, which you'd know if you read the OP.

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

#80

Post by greggman »

dsfasfasf wrote: post #58
JoelSutherland wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read the article. "Schools should recognize the legitimacy of AAVE as a language for their students, and teach those students to recognize when and how to switch between AAVE and American English as appropriate. But most schools don’t do that. They simply teach students that the way they speak is wrong. Don’t talk this way; talk our way. Wheeler says we’re still not doing right by children who grow…

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…

Some cultures consider non standard dialects just that, "non standard". They don't deride people who speak them as poor or less educated.

For example consider Japan. Nearly every region in Japan has its own dialect. Everyone learns, for lack of a better way to say it, "standard Japanese" which is the kind used by news broadcasters. But, to their friends and family in their hometown they speak their local dialect which is often not understandable by people outside their region.

They know when to speak standard Japanese (for example a job interview) and when it's okay to speak the dialect.

The article is suggesting that AAVE should be considered a dialect and treated the same way. That seems reasonable to me given it's the same in many other countries. It also means respect for the culture of AAVE instead of contempt which seems like a good thing to me. So many people speak it. Why is their culture any less valid than another?

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