Should Public Skools recognize Ebonics?

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Black English Vernacular, "Lazy English.................."

To me, it seems the main hallmark of ebonics is incorrect/haphazard/slapdash verb conjugation............. especially pertaining to the verb "to be."

- Correct English

- To Be:

- I - am ........................................... - We - Are

- You - are ............................................ - You all - Are

- He, She, it - is ............................................ - They - Are

- Ebonics (different conjugations can be interchangable.)

- To Be:

- I - be, I - is .................................................. - We - is (sometimes be)

- You - be, you - is ........................................................ - You all - be (sometimes is)

- He, she, it, - be ......................................................... - They - is (sometimes be)

^ Noticeably, ebonics omits the absence of the conjugation "Are."

Other verb conjugations seem to interchange the verb in a slapstick manner. There is no real hard rule for verb conjugation, but the above is a rough estimate of frequency.

Ebonics also seems to be characterized by an overeliance on slang, unfinished and lazy sentences, and structural deficits. There is also a tendency to spell words as they are pronoucned.

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Some translations:

We go to school:........................... Wes be goin' to skool.

We work..................... We be workin' (as you can see, in the present progressive tense, the "Are" is changed to a 'be.").............. (for past tense, it would go from "We had been working," or "we were working," to "We was workin," or "we been workin'"

He is going to the store............................. He gonna go to da sto'.

He left out the front door..................... He done gone out da front do'.

can I ask you a question?............. Lemme ax you sumthin?

I agree with you....................... word up yo.

I will be driving an ambulance................. I's gonna be drivin an amboolance.

He is fixing to drink grape soda............... He finna drink grape soda.

Note the auxiliary verb "to have" is almost always dropped in the past tense.

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Lesson 2:

Double Negatives:

When you have any negative sentence in ebonics, any and all negatives negate the sentence. Double Negatives DO NOT cancel eachother out. In standard english, occasionally double negatives are intently used to create a positive sentence.

- I didn' go nowhere. - I did not go anywhere.

It is common to encounter triple, quadruple, or sometimes even 5x negatives in a single ebonics sentence.

- I don't know nothin about no robbery.......................... (he knows nothing about the robbery.)

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(Lesson 3)

The verb "To be" is sometimes overtly dropped.

- You are crazy....................... you crazy

- You're crazy..................... You crazy.

- Where are you?.................. where you at?

The Auxillary "Come."......... This is often used to express indignation or surprise as a verb.

- Don't dare try and mess with me............. Don't come gettin all up in my bis.

(Trippin) - A social error, faux pas.

- Don't be trippin.............. Don't be making visible public mistakes.

(Talk Smack) - To insult, usually behind one's back.

- Don't be coming talkin smack about me.

(Bippity Boppity show me the Zoppity) - I am excited, let me see......(usually pertaining to money i.e. 'green'.)

A defining feature of ebonics is a tendency to "not fiinish" words and sentences.

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So should teachers in blighted schools recognize this subdialect and permit their pupils to banter about in it, and scribe it for assignments?

Its important to give disadvantaged students as much support and encouragement as possible, and to let them "foster their own identity," so I say go for it.

I've been reading a book about this very subject called The Skin That We Speak. It's a tough question to answer. But there is no definitive idea of what qualifies as Standard English. The linguistic history of American English is especially hazy. Therefore, the book argues, that Ebonics could be seen as valid form of expression in terms of assessment.

I agree to an extent. I feel it is morally wrong to correct someone when they have a comfortable mode of communication. However, as a teacher, I do my best to model a more formal use of English. (I don't change my ways too much, but I can relate to the dialect having grown up in a predominantly black community.) The book changed my perspective, even though I am a stickler for accuracy in language. (Aspies of all people should understand - we should have the freedom to use our clinical vernacular, but it's often met with confusion... But I digress.)

People in everyday situations do not even use "correct" English so it is practically discriminatory to think less of the use of Ebonics. Not to mention (but to mention anyway), this type of language is deeply linked to identity and culture... What the book proposes as an alternative to completely adopting a new language, is to develop a skill in 'code-switching'. This is when people use two or three different types of English to accommodate whatever situation. For example, formal language should be used in a job interview. More informal language around friends. Somewhere in between for elders in your family.

I suggest Aspies read this book. It was enlightening to analyze and think about how I came to use words.

Last edited by lovecholie on 03 Dec 2010, 10:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

I be thinking 'bout dat.

ruveyn

It depends what you mean by "recognize."

Should schools recognize that this patois exists? Of course they should. Should it be taught as an aspect of the cultural community from which it arose? Of course it should. Should literature created in ebonics form part of the syllabus? Most assuredly. (Poetry has often been out ahead of language)

Should it be a language of instruction? That is a more difficult question. The purpose of public education is to equip students with the skills necessary to learn and function in a contemporary environment. Ebonics is certainly part of that environment. In so far as it creates a cultural community, it has value.

But instruction in ebonics cannot stand in the place of instruction in english.

Black English [not monolithic, and threatened like most variants of High Anglic by media pressure and mobility] is not lazy, shif''less English, but an example of how a nonisolated Creole mutates.

A legitimate subject for respectable study.

The Ebonics slant is wrongheaded pseudoscholarship, prpbably less ungenerously motivated than Rassenwissenschaft but just as much political terrorism toward scholarship; and the search for truth.

Whether it be appropriate in the US to recognize Black English, Gullah [similar in origin but quite different], Spanish, Hmong, Passamaquoddy or any other candidate as an official language of education beside or instead of Standard Media American English is a matter of public policy, not my pidgin and nobody asked me. They would not listen anyway.

Wrong Planeteers from the UK, what is the status of Welsh and Gaelic in education these days?

I think it is wrong to equate aboriginal languages (such as Welsh, Gaelic, Nuuchahnulth or Navajo) with contemporary cultural adaptations of english.

The use of aboriginal languages in education has different cultural imperatives. That is not to say that their historical existence makes them more legitimate (although there is certainly an argument to be made there), but the difference in policy drivers is and important distinction between them.

While I see [and to a certain extent sympathize with] your point it is NOT easy.

Linguistics has not decided and will not decide where the lines get drawn. Yes, Welsh and Navajo are languages clearly distinct from English, with communities using them though under increasing pressure to incorporate English elements. But what about Scots and English, French and Provencal, Spanish and Portuguese, and [to go further afield] Abenaki amd Passamaquoddy, Gujarati and the speech of the Parsee community? Erse and Scots Gaelic?

We do NOT have a metric - this language ends here and that one starts. That is left to the politicians [national boundaries often determine it] and the communities. Gullah - let's use that - is in fact further from NA Media English than Glaswegian is from Received British English. I don't think you can say separate education is merited if the languages are X degree different.

In parts of Africa where there are several languages per nation, often schools teach in - say - Lingala or Kikongo or Luba for the first 2-3 years, then shift over to instruction in the national language. I do not say it is ideal, but it works.

There is a balance. If you are Inuit, and want to do anything serious with your education, you need to have English or French or Danish or Russian. Segreated education all the way up does the Inuit a disservice.

BUT - I repeat - I am not the one to make the decisions.

The pedagogical evidence is actually unclear. There are studies that suggest that children educated in their own language and culture have stronger educational outcomes, but this is balanced off by studies that suggest that children educated in maintstream schools have stronger life chances. (Although this is not applicable to Inuit education in Canada, where Inuit communities have relatively few non-Inuit learners, except for the major centres like Iqaluit).

I do, by the way, know, even though I get sloppy speaking English, know that "an Inuit" is an Inuk.

Be that as it may, there was some interesting research in the Philippines, where with a pile of different languages the average educated person needed three languages - home language, Tagalog, English.

They tried different techniques in different schools, found out the best results came if you started with hime language and EARLY started teaching Tagalog and English SIMULTANEOUSLY, not sequentially.

Which is useful to know in eastern Canada, par exemple..

Hey Hey, what do you mean by that Phil? <.<

From a anthropologist's viewpoint, i'd rather ebonics be documented and conserved, do remember that it's not always the standard language that we speak that survives when a revolution comes, it's what the popular version is. :p (a fine example exists for the french language, which explains some of the differences between Quebec french and France's french)

Likewise, créole is pretty hard for us french people, but with some effort, we can make some bits out of it... (i mentionned in another topic having read a Louisiana black créole tale called "Lapin joue banjo", it was not that hard to understand that much, although some terms can be confusing for the french neophyte)

School shouldn't be public. Then the parents could decide.

And now that I actually read your original post, you have an extremely poor understanding of Ebonics.

They don't just throw a bunch of words in the air and see where they land, that's not how language works. Language is patterns. Whiteys (yourself included) often misuse the habitual be (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitual_be), for example. Other, well-recognized, languages have similar lexical constructs.

phil777 -

" créole is pretty hard for us french people, but with some effort, we can make some bits out of it... "

Sure should be able to - a slew of the Cajuns were relatives to my wife and likely you.

But separation and very different cultural / linguistic influences get in the way. I have to say when I was [thank God briefly - no offense but I cannot take the climate] in Texas it took me a while before I could understand a word.

Whenever I see lapin (French for rabbit/bunny), I think of Un Lapin.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/bunnyhunter

A valid form of expression? Sure. For assessment? No. The descriptive linguistic approach to language is not the proper approach for a school environment, where teaching necessitates a prescriptive approach.


"Morally wrong?" The whole point of teaching is to correct students when they do things incorrectly, whether or not they are comfortable with it. My preschool daughter is comfortable using "babu" instead of the word "careful" - we think she got it from a Thai caregiver - but it's not going to do her any favors to let her think she can keep using it forever and the rest of the English speaking world will adjust to understand it.

There is absolutely a standard form of English that will be most easily accepted and understood in professional environments. What's morally wrong is failing to teach both active and passive use of that standard to students, since that will handicap the children's educational and economic futures. By school age, you're likely to have to do some active correction to teach active use of standard English, even for students who have a perfect passive understanding of it. For younger kids, you may be able to correct gently, but failing to correct at all will hurt them later on.

I can't even count how many paths that leads me down.

Start with an anecdote, to break the ice.

I am in Texas, junior year high school and suffering except for Latin and my History and Geometry teachers who were wonderful. Thank you, Ms Nesmith, Ms Peebles.

I am in English class, otherwise known as the third circle of the Inferno. The teacher says to us [after explaining why we must NOT use deckle edged papr [I resolve to go get a supply]:

"Now, class, here in Texas we often say 'y'all', but that is incorrect English and we should not use it. Any questions?

Good - now, y'all turn to page 131....."

I swear this is not fiction.

Okay. Now I make one point reserving the other things I so desperately want to say to y'all:

I am strongly against Uniformitarianism in education. One size does NOT fit all, different minds have different needs and different life paths have different prerequisites.

As a descriptivist and comparativist, I abominate and repudiate the claim that only the prescriptive belongs in the language classroom. Prescriptive "education" does not build independent thinkers.

BUT ..... whether you or I or anyone else likes it or not, as we here are very aware, to survive even precariously in a country like the USA AS IT ACTUALLY IS TODAY, don't hold your breath for reform, you need - we hold this truth to be self-evident - an irreducible minimum of socialization. Aaarghh - this is painful. And in the real 21st century 2010, that means behaving so you will not be arrested or fired or beaten up; it means dressing so you will not be arrested or fired or beaten up; AND it means being able to read and write and comprehend and speak North American Media English well enough you do not get locked away or fired or beaten up.

I hate and despise it, I avoid all uniformitarian socialization as much as I can - but it is there.

That is why in pretty well all the places I know about, even where the first two or three years of schooling may be casrried out in the language of the community, they shift them over to the national - and often international - language quite early on.

So you will not hear the British ambassador to the UN addressng the General assembly in Scowse, nor the Tanzanian ambassador saying his piece in Swahili. And nobody is soon going to present a paper to the Societyy of Vertebrate Paleontology in Gullah.

I repeat - I do not like it, but that is the way it is. Now let's all practice making eye contact.