Should Public Skools recognize Ebonics?

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Schools should recognize ebonics in the same way that they should recognize Asperger's, or club foot, as a kind of disability to help students overcome-not in the sense that ebonics should be incouragedt by the school system.

Schools should be aware that some students were brought up in a nonstandard dialect, and be aware the ways that might hinder them learning to read and write.

But Obama ( colin powell, condeleeza rice) did not get where they were speaking in ebonics. Only the rare individual who strikes it rich as a top 40 rapper can expect to succeed exploiting ebonics. So whats the point of the school system fostering ebonics?

The main issue in socializing education with off-standard dialect - including, I fear, the hypercorrect academic English that had fellow high school students thinking I was a Brit - is that it is harder to get proficient in a lingo CLOSE to yours than in one markedly different.

So... its easier for american ghetto black teen to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese than for him to learn standard American English?

Or for me to learn mandarin chinese than for me to learn American ghetto speech, or that Hebrew woulb be easier for me than for me to learn London Cockney?

Not to be arguementitive, but is what you're saying?

To change subject slighty: thats funny about your teacher who said "Y'all".
Im all for eleveating "You'll" to standard acceptence because its needed!

Most European languages have both a single "you", and a plural "you".

Sometime in the Middle Ages the English language lost its plural "you". And Ive had confusing conversations caused by the impossibilty of specifying which kind of "you" I meant.

Two United States dialects independently reinvented this needed plural "you".

In the North (boston and Newyork) they say "yose" (as in "im tired of taking lip from the two of yose".) This originated with immigrants in the nineteeth centurey who assumed that you were supposed to pluralize "you" the same way you pluralize every other word in English because thats how it works in their native Italian or Polish or whatever-stick an "s" on the end.

Meanwhile in the South the native born Americans started sticking "all" on the end of "you". I think "ya'll" doesnt sound as brain dead as "yose"
So I think we all should adopt "ya'll" as the reinvented plural "you" for standard English!

It was actually the singular "thou" that fell out of use. "You" is technically the plural.

Not sure I could make the claim for Chinese - though that is partly because the way my mind is organized that kind of language, pretty much uninflected all donde through syntax and idiom is the hardest for ME to learn.

But to a large extent the principles holds. If you learn two languages of roughly equal complexity [I do not agree with my friend who has claimed all languages are of equal complexity, you will have a harder time with one thast is quite close to yours because you keep getting interference.

Strictly speaking yes "you" is the originally plural pronoun. We took older thou / thee and ye / you and smudged them into you / you. But the principle is the same - we gave up the contrast, no matter which one.

If you favor restoring the contrast, you should look at Frisian - nearest relative to English - at least some dialects of Frisian restored a set of dual pronouns - two of us, two of them, after the contrast available in older IndoEuropean had died out in Germanic.

I understand the desire to be inclusive, but I think that in this case it's really going to handicap the students.
Way to create an underclass

Is there a "correct" English?
In England they have what is known as "standard received" English which sounds a bit posh.

Does that mean that the people from Yorkshire and Wales and Scotland are somehow wrong.

What about the Cockneys with their rhyming slang which was meant to confuse outsiders?
Should that be accepted as a genuine dialect of English?

Here are some introductory lessons in Ebonics

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc91kkvl-Uc[/youtube]

Oh yeah.
Darn!
I knew that! Thanks for reminding me.

My theory is that "Thou" is the anglo saxon equivalent of "tu" ( informal singular You) in modern Spanish, and "you" is really "Usted" ( formal singular) which can be made plural in the form of "ustedes". Except our "usted" sounds the same in plural and in singular. We dropped the 'tu" word back in the 1600's - but not before creating the king james bible, shakespeare, and founding Quakerism.

On one hand we english speakers no longer have to worry about whether to address someone formally or informally, but on the other hand we cant specify whether we are addressing the one person standing up in the lecture hall or whether we are addressing the whole group.

Thats some good George Carlin.

Jay Leno had great sketch about a hazmat team storming a highschool that had just been infected by "the Ebonic Plague". Leno accidently tears his astronaut-like hazmat suit and exclaims "now Ive got it!' and starts speaking in jive talk.

Correct [we tell you] is correct for the community and situation.

Addressing the International Brotherhood of Elvis Personators in Rhyming Slang is incorrect / inappropriate. So is talking Gullah in a pub in Sidney.

There are in our Anglophone countries situations where the local posh or highbrow of business Koine is appropriate, often de rigueur. EVERYbody needs to operate at least three clearely different forms of the language. Other countries, other languages it is the same.

Rhyming Slang, Pig Latin, and similar constructs are technically not dialects - nor is linguistic technical jargon. There is a fine line, though. Pidgin English starts as an artificial interlingo. It becomes a Creole, independent language for a community. The field tends to distinguish between an English based Creole and an English dialect. Coming in serious contact with a mainline English speaking community, it assimilates - and can fall into line as a dialect [though we really have no good definitions.

The French use the word "Vous" which is both second-person-formal singular and second-person plural. And, they use the word "tu" as our linguistic ancestors used the word "thou".

I think you're missing my point completely. I believe in modeling a more formal use of English. I don't think it would be conducive to learning, if I were to hyper-correct a student in their native language without even addressing the essence of what they had to say. And I think that would be demoralizing.

Just imagine if someone always told an Aspie to "talk normal" or to not use big words and stop being analytical... instead of listening first to what had to be said in context. Or giving them the opportunity to rephrase and communicate efficiently. That would be an infuriating and counterproductive conversation. If correcting has to be done, it should be modeled soon after a misuse in language happens. In writing, I correct in moderation. It's a judgment call. Slippery slope. JMO.

Also, it is more likely to come across a person, more than a million actually, who use Ebonics than it is to meet someone who uses "babu" instead of "careful".

Not to be unkind, but Ebonics is just a bunch of people being too lazy to learn proper English.

Rather than elevate themselves with education, they want society to celebrate their ignorance and treat it as a good thing...then they wonder why they aren't getting jobs, getting promoted, living the "American dream," etc.

When Bill Cosby made a stink about this and got smeared by those who thought he was out of line...it just shows what kind of mentality you are dealing with.

No, we don't want the so-called language Ebonics recognized by schools or any other organization. There are far too many middle and upper middle class white kids walking around speaking Ebonics. If it were given recognition or taught it would only encourage white kids to speak this gibberish.
Let's go and teach 70s "jive turkey" or 30s "zoot suit" as a recognized dialect.

No, we don't want the so-called language Ebonics recognized by schools or any other organization. There are far too many middle and upper middle class white kids walking around speaking Ebonics. If it were given recognition or taught it would only encourage white kids to speak this gibberish.
Let's go and teach 70s "jive turkey" or 30s "zoot suit" as a recognized dialect.

The effect of Ebonics on White kids is something I hadnt even thought about.

For suburban Whites Ebonics is comparable in difficulty to Elizabethan English.

So if you forced White kids to study Ebonics in school they would embrace Ebonics with the same fervor that they now have for studying Shakespeare. Before you know it you would start hearing eboincs in White high school hallways as often as you now hear teens spout shakespearan sonnets.

In other words making the schools recognize ebonics might be the best way to make ebonics disappear!