In all honesty, Ebonics deserves to be recognized because of its history. It is a unique dialect currently spoken by a lot of people, and it has survived for centuries.
. It was really neat to take a look at Toni Morrison’s “five present tenses” and how the examples provided not only said that the subject was running, but that there was a certain quality or aspect to the subject’s running – and with limited use of adverbs! And how wild is it that two sentences can be identical, but stressing one word of one of the sentences can provide additional information that wasn’t known in the other (present tenses 4 and 5). By putting an accent on “BIN”, we know that not only has our subject been running, but he’s been running for quite a long time and he still is running.
I consider Ebonics to be a dialect because most other speakers of American English, or any other English, can understand or even catch on to it with relative ease.
I thought of many of my childhood friends when reading examples of the dialect. There is certainly benefit to having a grasp on standard English, for resumes and what not. But the dialect has been functioning without a problem for years (arguably?) It is also interesting to think about similarities between southern white accents and Ebonics, which makes sense but it is also ironic.
With further reading, I learned that Ebonics is not a slang as slang refers to new and short lived words. That was fascinating to me since I always thought words like “homie” and “chillin” were slangs. However, the assigned reading stated that “homie” and “chillin” are slangs but if you really think about it, it isn’t because it is still used to this day. Slangs are supposed to be short lived words.. So?
But African American English is legitimate—it is ordered; it has rules and slang and beauty of its own. We cannot pretend that we are being anything less than disrespectful when we ignore its validity and try to pretend that it is something to ‘correct’ in our students, though of course its need depends on the context of the situation. If the purpose of a linguist recording language is to preserve their unique perspective of the world, then we must loosen our grip on the so-called “Standard” English and try to appreciate its variations.
A lot of people talk about Ebonics as though it is a lesser dialect of American English. This essay has shown me that it is a completely separate, although similar, language. It has its own grammar rules and vocabulary. I was surprised to learn that it could not be classified as slang because slang words are classified as being small sets of new and unusual words. Ebonics, however, has its own vocabulary entirely. I think that a lot of Americans who do not use Ebonics see it as slang because the words are new and unusual to them. If someone hasn't been in the context to hear a word normally, they might assume the first time they hear it is because it is new. When in reality the word has been around for a while, just in different speech communities than that specific person. This happened with "Bae". Bae means "before anyone else", and is used to reference someone you adore. A lot of critics sprung up when this word started being used, saying that it wasn't new and they had been using it in their African American communities since the 80s.
I think that Rickford talks about Ebonics in a way that sounds kind of facetious at first. Overall, the article did make me think harder about the origins of Ebonics or slang words commonly used among African Americans. I feel that it is rather obvious of a point but the fact that Ebonics derived from slaves is something I never thought too hard about. When I hear someone speaking in a way that sounds like slang, I don’t think much of it, I just see it as their style or personality trait.
First, there was the question of whether or not Ebonics should be considered a language of its own. That sounded completely ridiculous to me, but then he gave the example of Norwegian and Swedish sounding so similar that the speakers from each language are able to easily understand the other. While, I still do not think that Ebonics should ever be considered its own language, I do now understand how it could be thought of that way. It is simply a different dialect of American English
Out of the three views of Ebonics that were discussed, I think I agree with the Creolist view the most. Reading this article made me feel like Ebonics is not quite a language but may be more than just a dialect, so I think it could be described as a pidgin. Because of the wording that is often used in Ebonics, it could be classified as “simplified” English; however there are words that are specific to this form of language.
One final bit of information that stood out was the theory that modern African American dialect has derived from a pigdin language that came from slaves being forced to integrate into a new cultures dominated by a new and unknown language. It made me wonder how many other modern dialects and languages were created out of fear, necessity and force.
I found the part about when to add a "s" or "z" to a word was very interesting. You don't think about how a word ends in a voiced or silent consonant effects the pronunciation. The change is minor, but there. And it was right about English teacher's never teaching over the subject. I had never really thought about this occurrence until reading the assignment.
I thought it was interesting to learn about Ebonics. I didn't even know it existed. I completely agree with Rickford when he said that it wasn't a "lazy language," like others think it is. It's just crazy that people think they have to right to make one language superior to another. Saying someone's language or dialect is "stupid" and "lazy" is like calling their heritage stupid and lazy - could even be a form of racism, but I'm not going to take it quite that far. All together, this article taught me a lot of things. It taught me be more open minded as well, because even though it's called "Ebonics", many different languages have adopted words and phrases that link back to Ebonics.
One final bit of information that stood out was the theory that modern African American dialect has derived from a pigdin language that came from slaves being forced to integrate into a new cultures dominated by a new and unknown language. It made me wonder how many other modern dialects and languages were created out of fear, necessity and force.
In all honesty, Ebonics deserves to be recognized because of its history. It is a unique dialect currently spoken by a lot of people, and it has survived for centuries.
ReplyDelete(Emily Callan)
. It was really neat to take a look at Toni Morrison’s “five present tenses” and how the examples provided not only said that the subject was running, but that there was a certain quality or aspect to the subject’s running – and with limited use of adverbs! And how wild is it that two sentences can be identical, but stressing one word of one of the sentences can provide additional information that wasn’t known in the other (present tenses 4 and 5). By putting an accent on “BIN”, we know that not only has our subject been running, but he’s been running for quite a long time and he still is running.
ReplyDeleteI consider Ebonics to be a dialect because most other speakers of American English, or any other English, can understand or even catch on to it with relative ease.
ReplyDeleteI thought of many of my childhood friends when reading examples of the dialect. There is certainly benefit to having a grasp on standard English, for resumes and what not. But the dialect has been functioning without a problem for years (arguably?) It is also interesting to think about similarities between southern white accents and Ebonics, which makes sense but it is also ironic.
ReplyDeleteWith further reading, I learned that Ebonics is not a slang as slang refers to new and short lived words. That was fascinating to me since I always thought words like “homie” and “chillin” were slangs. However, the assigned reading stated that “homie” and “chillin” are slangs but if you really think about it, it isn’t because it is still used to this day. Slangs are supposed to be short lived words.. So?
ReplyDeleteBut African American English is legitimate—it is ordered; it has rules and slang and beauty of its own. We cannot pretend that we are being anything less than disrespectful when we ignore its validity and try to pretend that it is something to ‘correct’ in our students, though of course its need depends on the context of the situation. If the purpose of a linguist recording language is to preserve their unique perspective of the world, then we must loosen our grip on the so-called “Standard” English and try to appreciate its variations.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people talk about Ebonics as though it is a lesser dialect of American English. This essay has shown me that it is a completely separate, although similar, language. It has its own grammar rules and vocabulary. I was surprised to learn that it could not be classified as slang because slang words are classified as being small sets of new and unusual words. Ebonics, however, has its own vocabulary entirely. I think that a lot of Americans who do not use Ebonics see it as slang because the words are new and unusual to them. If someone hasn't been in the context to hear a word normally, they might assume the first time they hear it is because it is new. When in reality the word has been around for a while, just in different speech communities than that specific person. This happened with "Bae". Bae means "before anyone else", and is used to reference someone you adore. A lot of critics sprung up when this word started being used, saying that it wasn't new and they had been using it in their African American communities since the 80s.
ReplyDeleteI think that Rickford talks about Ebonics in a way that sounds kind of facetious at first. Overall, the article did make me think harder about the origins of Ebonics or slang words commonly used among African Americans. I feel that it is rather obvious of a point but the fact that Ebonics derived from slaves is something I never thought too hard about. When I hear someone speaking in a way that sounds like slang, I don’t think much of it, I just see it as their style or personality trait.
ReplyDeleteFirst, there was the question of whether or not Ebonics should be considered a language of its own. That sounded completely ridiculous to me, but then he gave the example of Norwegian and Swedish sounding so similar that the speakers from each language are able to easily understand the other. While, I still do not think that Ebonics should ever be considered its own language, I do now understand how it could be thought of that way. It is simply a different dialect of American English
ReplyDeleteOut of the three views of Ebonics that were discussed, I think I agree with the Creolist view the most. Reading this article made me feel like Ebonics is not quite a language but may be more than just a dialect, so I think it could be described as a pidgin. Because of the wording that is often used in Ebonics, it could be classified as “simplified” English; however there are words that are specific to this form of language.
ReplyDeleteOne final bit of information that stood out was the theory that modern African American dialect has derived from a pigdin language that came from slaves being forced to integrate into a new cultures dominated by a new and unknown language. It made me wonder how many other modern dialects and languages were created out of fear, necessity and force.
ReplyDeleteI found the part about when to add a "s" or "z" to a word was very interesting. You don't think about how a word ends in a voiced or silent consonant effects the pronunciation. The change is minor, but there. And it was right about English teacher's never teaching over the subject. I had never really thought about this occurrence until reading the assignment.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting to learn about Ebonics. I didn't even know it existed. I completely agree with Rickford when he said that it wasn't a "lazy language," like others think it is. It's just crazy that people think they have to right to make one language superior to another. Saying someone's language or dialect is "stupid" and "lazy" is like calling their heritage stupid and lazy - could even be a form of racism, but I'm not going to take it quite that far. All together, this article taught me a lot of things. It taught me be more open minded as well, because even though it's called "Ebonics", many different languages have adopted words and phrases that link back to Ebonics.
ReplyDeleteOne final bit of information that stood out was the theory that modern African American dialect has derived from a pigdin language that came from slaves being forced to integrate into a new cultures dominated by a new and unknown language. It made me wonder how many other modern dialects and languages were created out of fear, necessity and force.
ReplyDelete