Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts

In addition to helping decipher their Lil Wayne albums, the Justice Department is seeking Ebonics experts to help monitor, translate and transcribe wire tapped conversations. The DEA wants to fill nine full time positions. From the article: "A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a 'DEA Sensitive' security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of 'telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media.'”

Comments

Qualifications?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that Playa Degree in Ebonics at Fo' Shizzle U would come in handy!

That's not the professional term

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Linguists say "African-American Vernacular English".

What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?

Re:That's not the professional term

[morphotomy]

Lil' wayne can hardly be called a group.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

It says said group does not want to be assimilated and would instead prefer retaining certain unique cultural and linguistic elements.

Re:That's not the professional term

[WiglyWorm]

s3r10usLY, t3h 1MPl1c4T10NS 0f 4 Su8CUltur3 D3V3L0p1N' 1t's 0wN l4n9U493 R S3R10USLY d1sTur81n'. truLy 4M3r1c4 h4S F41L3d tH3Z3 c1T1Z3ns.

Re:That's not the professional term

[at_slashdot]

"it's developing an incompatible dialect" -- this is not a recent development, I interpret "it's developing" as "now", while actually the A-A vernacular has been developing for centuries with most of its characteristic features probably established long time ago.

Re:That's not the professional term

[dkleinsc]

So-called "Standard English" and AAVE are mutually comprehensible languages, and always have been. Even in Airplane!, where they're deliberately exaggerating the differences for comic effect, you can understand the meaning of "My momma no raise no dummies, I dug her rap!" perfectly well.

Another way of thinking about it: which is easier for your average Standard English speaker to understand: AAVE or a cell phone contract?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

> What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?

Probably not what you think.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?

Not "is developing", "has developed".

And it says nothing at all... separated groups will develop separate dialects. The issue of "dialect" even to the point of unintelligibility has been a pervasive issue throughout Europe in the modern age. America (all of it) is so new, that separate unintelligible dialects are rare due to everyone having such a recent base language to develop from.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

AFAIK, this kind of thing happens all over the place. Pidgin in Hawaii, Creole in Louisiana...most localities have slang, dialects and accents that can be terribly confusing for outsiders. I'd bet even with the "African-American Vernacular English" you've got slang variations between regions.

Part of the problem here is that speaking proper english is often seen as "selling out", and any attempts to crawl out of poverty or to get educated are harshly treated by peers. With groups that consider their suffering a badge of pride, and dissuade others from escaping the cycles of poverty and violence often associated with those groups, it's really difficult to make any headway. It may not be politically correct to mention, but a lot of the damage done in impoverished communities is self inflicted.

Re:That's not the professional term

[jedidiah]

> It says said group does not want to be assimilated and would instead prefer retaining certain unique cultural and linguistic elements.

Meanwhile, the Vietnamese are buying up their neighborhood.

Re:That's not the professional term

[ISoldat53]

Do they have a name for NASCARonics? I can't understand a thing they say.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

"Proper english" is a misnomer. The proper way to say it is, "Speaking English in the dialect of power is often seen as 'selling out'."

There is nothing more "proper" or "correct" about Standard American English as opposed to AAVE. Both have their own (ofttimes overlapping) rules of grammar and vocabulary.

Re:That's not the professional term

[AltairDusk]

The sad thing here is I read and understood that sentence on the first try...

Re:That's not the professional term

[hedwards]

Indeed, however some of the dialects down south are less comprehensible. Cajuns have their own language which is a challenge to say the least for people that aren't familiar with it. But even the relatively easy to understand AAVE does have disadvantages and does carry with it a limitation on gainful employment in some sectors, unless the individual is able to use standard English or whatever dialect the local well to do use.

Re:That's not the professional term

[HelioWalton]

Is it a bad sign that I read that just as easily as English?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Flea of Pain]

No! It's a good thing! Now all we need is a comfy government job translating teh interwebs!

Re:That's not the professional term

[BassMan449]

I hope not because otherwise all of /. is officially a lost cause.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

We cain't hep it if da lizzle be confoundin' tha govinizzle

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it the dialect of majority if you want propriety.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. leetspeak is just character substitution with letters or numbers that look like the original word. It is still English as we know it and just requires the mental gymnastics to realize the substitute characters.

Re:That's not the professional term

[DevConcepts]

The professional name is "Redneck", translator is here. http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/
Also translates to Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, Pig Latin, or Hacker.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

No! It's a good thing! Now all we need is a comfy government job translating teh interwebs!

*ahem* "intarwebs"... you get a D.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Mongoose Disciple]

Well, look at it this way:

Is it possible for most English speakers to follow most of it, figuring out words they don't know from context cues, etc.? Sure, I think it is.

Is it also possible to lose possibly important nuances in the process? I think that's the case, too. For example, a hooptie is a car but there's also a fair amount of connotation to that choice of word.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anomalyx]

Ever notice how "professional terms" just get really long and add hyphens everywhere? I just call it the "black accent" and leave it at that. And since I know someone's thinking it, no that's not being racist. Racism implies that I implied something derogatory towards them. I haven't. Don't mind the people; the accent is just difficult to understand, just like any other strong accent.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Call it the dialect of majority if you want propriety.

Afrikaans was not the "language of the majority" in South Africa, yet it remained the "language of power".

I spoke correctly, and used the pedantically correct term.

Re:That's not the professional term

[sconeu]

intartubes, plz

Re:That's not the professional term

[blair1q]

The sadder thing is I thought it was rot13, and mentally translated it, and still understood it.

Re:That's not the professional term

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

the only word I stumbled on was "tH3Z3" for some reason. I kept trying to read-ahead as "it's"

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

intartubes, plz

Both are accepted varieties, however it is plainly clear to all scholars of the topic that "intar-" is the proper first component of the word. "webz" and "tubez" are highly variable.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if I was reading a screenplay / written transcript, but the combination of the accent and the speed makes it incomprehensible. It's just like if you're not fluent in a foreign language -- you might be able to understand it but only if the speaker speaks very slowly and enunciates.

Re:That's not the professional term

[raddan]

I think it is rather remarkable that the United States and much of Canada share mostly-comprehensible dialects of the same language. If you look at the same land area anywhere else in the world, you don't have as much homogeneity as we have here. Even China has two main dialects (although their written language has the curious property of being readable by everyone).

But it's not surprising to me that dialects develop. I think, after the black-white school-integration era, people realized that there was more to "assimilation" than simply mixing people together. When you take a group of people who had been culturally isolated so long, through slavery, you're going to get a different set of shared values, even when you make efforts to put them on a level playing field (legally speaking, anyway).

Whether black people and white people in this country are growing more or less isolated, I don't know. I don't think it "says" anything in particular about our society. Cultures form and disappear. It would be nice if everyone could be friends, or at least civil, but that's not the way people work.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Ever notice how "professional terms" just get really long and add hyphens everywhere? I just call it the "black accent" and leave it at that. And since I know someone's thinking it, no that's not being racist. Racism implies that I implied something derogatory towards them. I haven't. Don't mind the people; the accent is just difficult to understand, just like any other strong accent.

Ok, accepting your definition of "racism", it's not racist. It's still factually wrong though.

AAVE has different mood, tenses, and aspects on its verbs, some of which are not expressible in Standard American English.

It is a "dialect", not an "accent". An accent is a different way of pronouncing words. For instance, the British speak a different dialect of English from Americans, but if a British person were to say a sentence with American word choice, they would still pronounce it in a British Accent.

Likewise, one can pronounce Standard American English with an AAVE accent, but "they ain't be doin' that."

Re:That's not the professional term

[Comrade Ogilvy]

What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?

I get your drift, but by putting this this way, you are making it sound worse than it is. This is not a new development but simply a practical step in coping with the world as it actually exists (and has for some time).

Law enforcement having a few experts on hand to check that a transcription is actually accurate is a very good thing.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Kjella]

Another way of thinking about it: which is easier for your average Standard English speaker to understand: AAVE or a cell phone contract?

Given that most people I know have never understood the contract much beyond "how much must I pay, how long am I stuck with you and what would I have to pay to get out early?" I don't think you made a good point.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

I only missed the the 'a', silly txt speak is slowing handicapping my 1337 speak

Re:That's not the professional term

[oodaloop]

Blagosphere FTW

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and the Amish need to GTFO and start their own country somewhere where it's still 1600. And the Welsh and Scots need to GTFO of the UK, and the Quebecois need to GTFO of Canada. (Wait, they want that already, and Canada won't let them.) And white folks need to GTFO out of America since they won't assimilate the native cultures. Basically, everybody needs to GTFO out of everywhere.. And maybe live in orbiting space bubbles or some shit.

  I have a song for you! Everybody, sing along!

  o/~ YOU ARE! AN IDIOT! o/~

Re:That's not the professional term

[WiglyWorm]

Not really. leetspeak is just character substitution with letters or numbers that look like the original word. It is still English as we know it and just requires the mental gymnastics to realize the substitute characters.

10 years ago, I'd have agreed with you. However, leetspeak has invented new words - perversions of standard english words in the same vein as ebonics - acronyms, and entire phrases to its vocabulary list. N00b, pwnd (i always pronounce this with a hard P, don't you?), kekeke, pr0n, h4x0r, sUx0r...

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Next thing you know the deaf will figure out how to communicate, END OF THE WORLD I SAY...

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

We're all doomed!

Re:That's not the professional term

[ElectricTurtle]

This. I think South Park provided the best insight when Chef was telling Mr. Garrison about how black people kept adjusting their vocabulary based on when white people starting imitating it.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

You're spot on about the craziness of the lack of dialectal differences in the US/Canada area. However, China only has "dialects" because of the aphorism "a dialect is a language with an army and a navy."

China has two main "dialects": Mandarin and Cantonese. These two "dialects" are mutually unintelligible, and significantly different from each other when compared to the Scandinavian "langauges".

"Jeg er snowgirl" (Norwegian) vs. "Jag är snowgirl" (Swedish) vs. "Jeg er snowgirl". (Danish)

The reason why the Chinese writing system is mutually comprehensible between Mandarin and Cantonese, is because they both share a similar grammatical system, and words are represented by "ideographs" containing distinct morphological units.

If we expressed "I speak English" with ideographs, and indicated conjugation with "syntactigraphs", I could write the same thing the same way in English, German, Spanish, and French.

Re:That's not the professional term

[fiannaFailMan]

AFAIK, this kind of thing happens all over the place.

Blacks in the UK talk no differently than whites.

Re:That's not the professional term

[SwedishPenguin]

Same here. I had more difficulties with his poor grammars than the leet.

Re:That's not the professional term

[dkleinsc]

I'd say I just made my case - they have a much easier time understanding AAVE than legal language that is (theoretically at least) written in Standard English.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

I understand the semantic argument you're making, using the term "dialect of power" instead of "proper" in order to symmetrically oppose any positive connotations of "proper", but this kind of argument is the kind of intellectualism that actually keeps people from escaping the poverty and violence of "non-power" subcultures.

Both have their own (ofttimes overlapping) rules of grammar and vocabulary.

I would submit that Standard American English has clearly codified rules, and AAVE has merely observations of the language in action, at best. Since AAVE is something that is taught without little in the way of literacy (that is to say, it is a predominantly oral tradition), it is difficult to equate it to something like Standard American English.

There is nothing more "proper" or "correct" about Standard American English

But there is something much more useful about Standard American English - it is the key to education, employment, and as you so cleverly put it, "power". Now perhaps the escape of poverty is not "proper" or "correct", and I accept your critique of my use of the term "proper" - but surely you must agree that learning Standard American English is beneficial on a myriad number of levels, and those subcultures that denigrate learning it are inflicting harm upon themselves.

Re:That's not the professional term

[eleuthero]

f3e10hfYL, g3u 1ZCy1p4G10AF 0s 4 Fh8PHyghe3 Q3I3Y0c1A' 1g'f 0jA y4a9H493 E F3E10HFYL q1fGhe81a'. gehYl 4Z3e1p4 u4F S41Y3q gU3M3 p1G1M3af.

This made sense to you how?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Monkeedude1212]

What is it with this attitude towards people of differing languages?

Did you not see the XKCD comic where the guy is bitching about how if people don't want to learn English, they should leave the country, and then the girl behind him starts speaking Cherokee?

It's incredibly hypocritical to claim that YOU have any more heritage or culture than African Americans, after all, some of them are 3rd of 4th Generation, some Great Grandparents brought over by slave trades and such. Does that make them less of a citizen somehow, being born and raised in America when their ancestors were forced here?

Its one thing if "a certain group not assimilating" means a direct opposal of the laws and regulations in the country that was set forth by a democratic system. THEN you can tell those people to GTFO.

Its another thing entirely if "not assimilating" means they want to preserve their heritage or speak their own language or whatever. Last time I checked, not speaking American* in America was not a crime.

*PS, do you guys actually call it American? Don't get me wrong, its your call and everything, I'm not one to interfere with your culture and all. It just seems really cheesey, as if American is so different from all other Englishes that we couldn't possibly understand you.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Americano]

I think that's exactly the point he was trying to make - the characterization of AAVE & "Standard English" as "incompatible" dialects is probably a little overblown, when people are less likely to understand a contract written in "standard english" than they are to somebody speaking a vernacular form.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Then said group should GTFO

Oh, use of a web acronym -- that's an incompatible dialect. Now you need to STFU and GTFO.

Seriously, you're a fucking moron. Who gives a shit if not everybody speaks like you? Get over your self.

Re:That's not the professional term

[just fiddling around]

Creole has not developed in the USA. It's based on french, which was the "official" language of the black slaves imported from the Antilles, and various african languages.

In New Orleans, the Cadiens (now written "Cajun") descend from displaced french canadians and also evolved a distinct accent of french in their new english-dominated residence. It's still quite close to standard french by all means, but there are very discinctive regionalisms.

But I digress. I don't buy the "community cutting every head that strives to get ahead" argument. It's used on french canadians and the tough reality is that if two populations live separately, you develop regionalisms and accents. Of course the speed at which this phenomenon happens varies widely.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

It's not a black/white thing - it's a subculture thing. In the UK, don't you guys have regions where they speak in thick accents....Cockney? I'm not sure exactly what street slang and subcultures exist in the UK, but I would assume they do, even if they aren't aligned the same way as in the US.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

You rot13-id TWICE, idiot.

Re:That's not the professional term

[gstoddart]

Part of the problem here is that speaking proper english is often seen as "selling out", and any attempts to crawl out of poverty or to get educated are harshly treated by peers.

Well, part of the problem is that certain sub-dialects are intended to obfuscate the meaning.

Cockney Rhyming Slang evolved to make it difficult to for police and those not "in the know" to understand what was being said.

If you're not part of the group, you're not supposed to know WTF they're saying. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't hire someone to help you out with the finer points. :-P

Re:That's not the professional term

[maiki]

Who says the must assimilate culturally or linguistically as well as economically/politically/etc? That sounds a lot like the mentality of Soviet Russia's and Communist China's cultural revolutions? Are you suggesting we should demolish all China towns, little Italys (Italies?), etc?

It gives many people a source of pride and community to have their own linguistic and cultural norms. Consider even the difference between British, American, Australian, etc. Englishes. Or more minutely, the style of your grandparents and teenagers today, or even the difference between chatting with your buddies and asking your boss for a raise. Language variation exists for many reasons.

If you're interested, there's a whole wealth of literature available. Just search for "sociolinguistics".

Re:That's not the professional term

[robot256]

But this is a democracy, and in a democracy power is always held by the majority! Sure, maybe the majority is only 20% of the population, but they're still the majority of ...er ...important people? ;)

Re:That's not the professional term

[dynamic_cast]

Dre Got The Fuck Out.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

"Codified rules"? You mean the arbitrary laws that prescriptivists continue to attempt to impose on speakers despite all indications that these rules have no logical or meaningful basis?

Like double negatives, split infinitives, or dangling prepositions?

These "codified rules" are not actually a part of Standard American English. They are instead artificially imposed rules for a specific subset of language use.

But there is something much more useful about Standard American English - it is the key to education, employment, and as you so cleverly put it, "power". ... but surely you must agree that learning Standard American English is beneficial on a myriad number of levels, and those subcultures that denigrate learning it are inflicting harm upon themselves.

I wish I could take credit for it, but the linguistic term is "language of power" or "dialect of power". And I do agree with your assessment. An individual has a significantly better chance in life learning the language/dialect of power.

However, the moral assertions applied about subcultures that actively discourage learning the language of power is something best left to people who study ethics, and not individuals like me, who study language.

Clearly individuals are better off learning the language of power, but that should never justify the connotation that the language of power is "better". "More useful" perhaps, but I would categorically reject any depictions of an ethically or aesthetically superior position.

And "utility" has its own weights... knowing how to cook is far more useful than not knowing how to cook, yet few people actually learn it. Thus ethically considerations cannot be unequivocally implied from utility.

Demanding that a subculture learn SAE, is the same as demanding that every subculture of America be, or at least practice Christianity.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Entropius]

Explained in a picture:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/interblag.png

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

I speak a vernacular which we call "proper english;" it is the language of my ancestors which has developed over many millenia. Who the heck are you to tell me that my use of Proper English isn't proper?

Are you some kind of human dictionary? Are we supposed to accept your false claims of what is proper or not when you want to repress those very people?

On the one hand you say that someone labelling something as being "proper" is a misnomer, while in the same set of statements you claim to know what the "proper" way to say it is. Your "proper" 'speaking English in the dialect of power' *IS* the dialect of power: liberal elite power-speak.

In my vernacular, your vernacular is known as Politically-Correct Speak. We know it as the language of the liberal elite who hold positions of power in the state (or wanna-be elitists who are trying to suck up to that power elite) and who use it to try to confuse those people they're trying to control.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Millennium]

*PS, do you guys actually call it American? Don't get me wrong, its your call and everything, I'm not one to interfere with your culture and all. It just seems really cheesey, as if American is so different from all other Englishes that we couldn't possibly understand you.

The only time I've ever heard it called that was by Big Bird, and I suspect that this was intended to portray naivete as opposed to any actual jingoism or imperialism (which aren't exactly how Sesame Street rolls).

Re:That's not the professional term

[HAKdragon]

Tonight at 11....DOOOOOM!

Re:That's not the professional term

[linzeal]

Yeah, but do the Welsh? I read something recently that having a Welsh accent in the UK gets you something like 10-20% less money over a career, but having an American one gets you more than most Brits.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Mongoose Disciple]

I was with you until this point:

Demanding that a subculture learn SAE, is the same as demanding that every subculture of America be, or at least practice Christianity.

We do have freedom of religion enshrined in our Constitution; we don't have freedom of language included as far as I know. While I agree that demanding a subculture learn and always use SAE is unreasonable, here I think you've gone too far.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

It says said group does not want to be assimilated...

No, it says that said group has been sufficiently alienated by being penalized disproportionately in our courts with regards to drug enforcement policies, and retreats to certain unique culteral and linguistic elements.

Re:That's not the professional term

[chronosan]

Acadiens from Acadie (in English Acadians/Acadia)

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

I don't buy the "community cutting every head that strives to get ahead" argument

Well, YMMV, but often the first observable moments of peer pressure denigrating education are centered around use of Standard American English rather than local dialect. Some folks are able to camouflage their work on education by retaining their local dialect in public, and hiding their education level from their peers, but they still live with the knowledge that they are considered betrayers of their local culture. I've known quite a few folk who later regretted not pursuing education because of the negative social connotations in their subculture, and it's sad to see that kind of tragedy in action.

I'm not sure how this works out with french canadians (do they harass children who learn english?), but I do understand that the French are particularly persnickety about their language. It may be that french in canada is more associated with a region, but the AAVE in the US is generally more associated with a certain socio-economic class...or are french canadians generally poorer than english speaking canadians? My ignorance of Canada is quite vast...I mostly just consider it Northern Minnesota.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Saying "2+2=5" is proper mathematical syntax, however it is factually incorrect.

Saying that blacks don't speak properly is a factually incorrect statement.

Your insane ranting does nothing to change this.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is rather remarkable that the United States and much of Canada share mostly-comprehensible dialects of the same language.

Why? They were founded by essentially identical populations within the past 400 years, have had continuous interaction, and have enjoyed extremely high population mobility for at least the last 100 years. We probably were developing toward less mutual intelligibility up until the railroads went through, and there were certainly some major regional differences as recently as WW2, but with national TV/radio networks and Hollywood, there is a constant pull back to the center.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I was with you until this point:

Demanding that a subculture learn SAE, is the same as demanding that every subculture of America be, or at least practice Christianity.

We do have freedom of religion enshrined in our Constitution; we don't have freedom of language included as far as I know. While I agree that demanding a subculture learn and always use SAE is unreasonable, here I think you've gone too far.

Legally the analogy fails (but then all analogies eventually fail... just like cars.)

However my position was on of an ethical standpoint, rather than legal.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Byzantine]

Most of the non-standard features of AAVE are also present in Southern American English—it's just that they're there all the time in AAVE, while in SAE it might only be 30%, say, of utterances. At least one AAVE feature has even crossed over into SAE and other dialects (emphatic "been"). And those features of AAVE not present in SAE (aspectual "be," for example) are at least intelligible to SAE-speakers, given the successful interactions between speakers of AAVE and SAE that occur every day (some of them by me, an SAE-dialectal in central Mississippi). Hardly isolation.

That said, there are lots of reasons why stuff could and should be done for AAVE speakers, many (most?) of whom are fairly far down on the socioeconomic scale. Linguistic isolation just isn't one of those reasons.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

"Clearly individuals are better off learning the language of power, but that should never justify the connotation that the language of power is "better". "More useful" perhaps, but I would categorically reject any depictions of an ethically or aesthetically superior position.

Fair enough. I'd also go so far as to assert the inverse as well - we should categorically reject any depictions of SAE being ethically or aesthetically inferior.

Demanding that a subculture learn SAE, is the same as demanding that every subculture of America be, or at least practice Christianity.

Now, that's a stretch. It might be the same as demanding that every subculture of America learn about Christianity, Bible history, and the various sects and factions, but learning a language is not nearly the same thing as practicing a religion. Conflating the two doesn't help make your point.

I think the real ethical problem is when subcultures denigrate the attempts of their peers to rise above their current socioeconomic status with education, thereby denying social advancement where it is arguably the most needed.

Re:That's not the professional term

[fiannaFailMan]

It's not a black/white thing - it's a subculture thing. In the UK, don't you guys have regions where they speak in thick accents....Cockney? I'm not sure exactly what street slang and subcultures exist in the UK, but I would assume they do, even if they aren't aligned the same way as in the US.

Accents vary from city to city and town to town, sometimes 30 miles seeing a huge change in dialect, particularly near coastal cities where there were outside influences historically. For example (and this is my theory) Newcastle's accent is heavily influenced by Scandinavia since that part of what is now England was once ruled by the Danes.

The point I'm making is that accents in the UK vary by region, not by ethnic group. A black person living in Newcastle will have the same 'geordie' accent as whites in the same city. I black man living in Liverpool will have a 'scouse' accent just like a white scouser.

Re:That's not the professional term

[FoolishOwl]

Linguists say "African-American Vernacular English".

What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?

They're fully integrated already. African-Americans already understand standard US English.

This point I heard made at an academic conference on Ebonics, when it was a political issue in Oakland public schools. That is, everyone knows that to fully learn a language, you have to spend time immersed in it -- that to really learn French, for example, you go live in France for a while. But, nobody can possibly be more immersed in standard US English than African-American kids in US cities, where almost all print and broadcast media is in standard US English.

This is a classic colonialist scenario. The intent of the colonizer is to emphasize that their own language is superior, by rejecting the colonized language. The colonized are required to learn the colonizer's language, and the colonizer makes it a point of pride to not understand the colonized language. The ironic result is that the colonized can communicate without the colonizer understanding. The use of a dialect (where the dialect picks up elements from other languages, such as languages that the colonized used before becoming colonized) is a variant of this.

The fact that the Justice Department needs to hire translators is evidence that it is an effective strategy.

Re:That's not the professional term

[fiannaFailMan]

Yeah, but do the Welsh? I read something recently that having a Welsh accent in the UK gets you something like 10-20% less money over a career, but having an American one gets you more than most Brits.

You might be right, I remember seeing studies suggesting that strong regional accents can be a disadvantage, although it depends on the accent. A Scottish accent will probably do no harm at all, for example.

I'd imagine the Welsh would be better educated though, considering so many of them are bilingual.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Fair enough. I'd also go so far as to assert the inverse as well - we should categorically reject any depictions of SAE being ethically or aesthetically inferior.

With you on this one. Sure it tends to appear "bland" to those who have been exposed to it their whole lives, but then vanilla is an actually really cool new flavor to those who have never tasted it before.

Now, that's a stretch. It might be the same as demanding that every subculture of America learn about Christianity, Bible history, and the various sects and factions, but learning a language is not nearly the same thing as practicing a religion. Conflating the two doesn't help make your point.

Conflating "believing" with "practicing" is also not a good idea. See: Crypto-Judaism.

I think the real ethical problem is when subcultures denigrate the attempts of their peers to rise above their current socioeconomic status with education, thereby denying social advancement where it is arguably the most needed.

You are certainly allowed to have your opinions on what is ethically better.

I'm also certainly allowed to take the position that the more ethical choice is to stop expecting SAE to be spoken by everyone, and adapt to fit AAVE in without their change. After all, the only thing making SAE more useful is that AAVE is rejected.

Re:That's not the professional term

[shoehornjob]

Then said group should GTFO

I agree. Everyone who came to live in this country regardless of ethnicity has learned to speak english and done their best to fit in. Our immigration policy is so fucked up ATM. Fuck it, I'm moving to Arizona.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Bzzzt...wrong answer. The rules of syntax are only proper in that given language, not in other languages. "2+2=5" is neither semantically nor syntactically correct in a language like Lisp.

In any given vernacular, who gets to define what's correct? In a given vernacular, who get's to decide what the syntactic rules are? The fact is that it is done by convention. What conventions we adopt define what is "proper;" the elite that we accept as "The Ruling Powers" define the conventions and vernacular.

So, for you to claim to know what is the proper convention is just exactly the same thing you're decrying: it's only proper in your Politically Correct-speak vernacular.

Re:That's not the professional term

[shutdown -p now]

Quebecois need to GTFO of Canada. (Wait, they want that already, and Canada won't let them.)

Actually, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that, while Quebec cannot secede unilaterally, it is not inseparable, and should the majority in it vote for independence in a referendum, the federal government cannot deny them the right to secede outright, and shall negotiate the precise terms of separation with the Quebec government.

So all they need now is a successful referendum - and in the two they had so far, the majority was not in favor of separation, albeit by a margin of less than 1% in the most recent one.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Bzzzt...wrong answer. The rules of syntax are only proper in that given language, not in other languages. "2+2=5" is neither semantically nor syntactically correct in a language like Lisp.

I already qualified the language of discourse as "mathematics"... you know, that shit they write on the board in elementary school? I wasn't talking about LISP, and you know it.

[T]he elite that we accept as "The Ruling Powers" define the conventions and vernacular.

I'm glad you acknowledge your belief that an oligarchy is the way the world is run.

Re:That's not the professional term

[kahless62003]

Did you not see the XKCD comic where the guy is bitching about how if people don't want to learn English, they should leave the country, and then the girl behind him starts speaking Cherokee?

Nope. Where's the obligatory link? Ta.

Re:That's not the professional term

[shoehornjob]

It's incredibly hypocritical to claim that YOU have any more heritage or culture than African Americans

This has nothing to do with heritage or culture. Everyone should feel free to keep their cultural identity. In my opinion that's one of the things that makes America great. But when you move to another country to live you should make some attempt to learn to speak the language.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Attila Dimedici]

When you take a group of people who had been culturally isolated so long, through slavery...

There are many flaws with your statement. However, I will only address one part of it. Several aspects of African American culture that were believed to be corruptions and homogenizations of practices from Africa have recently (in the last twenty years) been traced back to Ireland and Scotland. One such example is the style of singing associated with African American Churches such as that portrayed in the Church scene in the movie Blues Brothers.

Re:That's not the professional term

[ComaVN]

I don't know, does his set have an invertible, associative operation that provides closure?

Re:That's not the professional term

[johnny cashed]

We do have freedom of religion enshrined in our Constitution; we don't have freedom of language included as far as I know.

The same freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution appears to enshrine freedom of speech. They don't specify a language, just speech and the press. I would presume that one can speak (or print) any language one chooses. Granted, there is no guarantee that anyone understands you.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

The point I'm making is that accents in the UK vary by region, not by ethnic group.

I think I see what you're saying - even the rich people in Liverpool speak with the same accent as the poor people.

In the US, it's not so much by ethnic group as it is socioeconomic status. "Gangsta" is popular across ethnicities, but generally limited to a certain socioeconomic class (rich rap stars being a notable exception).

Re:That's not the professional term

[drsquare]

What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?

Need to integrate? On the contrary, the main population don't want them to integrate. They build far-flung suburbs and gated communities at great cost to get away from having to integrate with them.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

> I already qualified the language of discourse as "mathematics"... you know, that shit they write on the board in elementary school?

What you qualified is irrelevant. Your qualification was for an example of the application of syntax to a WFF. That you showed a rule of syntax for a particular application of it is irrelevant to the general issue of application of all rules of syntax to all languages.

The discussion was on the general issues of what is or isn't proper in languages.

> I wasn't talking about LISP, and you know it.

No, we were talking about languages in general. Your demonstration of the ability to apply a rule of syntax to a specific language is irrelevant to the application of all rules of syntax and all conventions to all languages, or in defining what is or isn't proper in a particular language/vernacular.

The fact is that you were trying to prove that you're somehow more knowing of what is or isn't the proper way to say something. I pointed out that your rules only apply to your particular Politically-Correct speak. It is not proper in my own vernacular.

If you're going to pretend that you're the moral relativist with some kind of abstract realizations of the realities of language and ethics, you may want to examine your own vernaculars and authorities. The dictionary isn't an authority: it is a reflection of common usages and conventions.

I was also pointing out that you were also guilty of the very thing that you claimed wasn't proper (i.e. labeling something as proper). Additionally, I was pointing out that you also were speaking a particular vernacular which isn't globally recognized as "proper" to some of us.

Additionally, some of us can quite easily recognize that we're speaking vernaculars and that we adopt certain conventions. We can also choose to call our conventions "Proper." Those who don't adopt our conventions, by our own rules are not "proper."

> I'm glad you acknowledge your belief that an oligarchy is the way the world is run.

It is and it will always be that way even if you pretend that it isn't. You don't get rid of elite, you merely adopt different conventions. The language you speak surely wasn't invented by you; who were your oligarchs?

Re:That's not the professional term

[fiannaFailMan]

I think I see what you're saying - even the rich people in Liverpool speak with the same accent as the poor people.

If they're from Liverpool, yes the accent will be largely the same (in terms of the vowel sounds and general inflections), but the diction will be a bit better the higher up the ladder you go and the regional quirks of the accent will be toned down to the point where you'd need a trained ear to spot it.

I'd say region would be the biggest deciding factor in determining accents, followed by socio-economic status. But ethnic group would have little or no impact unless you're talking about first generation immigrants.

Re:That's not the professional term

[TheRon6]

Yeah, most of us speak l337 nowadays. Comic very related: http://megatokyo.com/strip/9

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a big difference with Black "Culture" in America and your examples is that this group is entirely artificial, put itself apart from "whitey" simply to defy integration. All the groups you mentioned have distinctive cultures that arose from fully established functioning societies. This culture could simply not survive if it had to establish it's own laws and societal constructs instead of suckling at the teat of wellfare and distributors of crime and violence. Example: compare blacks born in America versus blacks born in Africa versus blacks born in the Caribbean.

There is a whole generation of black adults that are collectively spitting in the faces of those who have sufferred and endured so much to ensure their freedom. A whole generation of black adults that calls anyone successful with their genotype as "Uncle Tom". A whole generation of black adults that glamorizes raping bitches, drinking fourties, and shooting their rivals above science and philosophy and the greater good.

Willfully ignoring this makes YOU the idiot.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

After all, the only thing making SAE more useful is that AAVE is rejected.

Now that's an interesting assertion. I'd posit further that if the roles were reversed, and it was AAVE that was "standard" and SAE that was lower socioeconomic class slang, you'd probably see the same issues with peer pressure and the denigration of education coming from the lower socioeconomic class.

I'm also certainly allowed to take the position that the more ethical choice is to stop expecting SAE to be spoken by everyone, and adapt to fit AAVE in without their change.

Except that there is utility to having a standard language, whatever the choice is. Having an unspecified and dynamic street slang "standardized" and adapted to will only create yet another dynamic street slang that is associated with socioeconomic class, as a way to show that someone is "genuine" and loyal to their class.

Although it might be fun to think about what the world would be like if we didn't judge people by their speaking or writing ability, the simple fact of the matter is that someone who isn't proficient in the standard language cannot perform in society the way someone who is, can. It may be more ethical to give someone a customer service job even though they can't speak the language, but will they be successful? We could further push the ethical bar by providing training materials for all customers so they can learn the slang of the non-standard customer service rep, but would that work?

In any case, as ethical as it may be to adopt and adapt to various forms of slang and dialect, I don't think it absolves the poor ethics of peer pressure denigrating education and keeping people from escaping the bonds of poverty and violence associated with socioeconomic class.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Schadrach]

So is Louisiana Creole a perfectly acceptable way to speak French then?

Of course, I'm from one of those places where we were more or less isolated for a good stretch of time and have our own dialect of English, but at least we can easily speak with those only familiar with SAE, since Appalachian English only varies from SAE by a few grammatical quirks (like having a distinct plural form of you) and a handful of lexical borrows from Scottish and Irish that tended to end up here. Supposedly it's easier for a speaker of AE to understand SAE than vice versa though, not sure why that would be the case.

Doesn't prevent the speech of my ancestors and that which we use in casual situations from being derided as a lesser form of speech, though. We just can't use the race card.

Re:That's not the professional term

[linuxrocks123]

Common languages promote efficiency, so the dominance of SAE in the United States is a good thing. The grammar might not be as beautiful as, say, Latin, but it is learnable, has a consistent, deterministic grammar, and is the overwhelmingly dominant language of the United States, the dominance of which has helped ensure unity despite the vast land area and diverse population of the country.

I would argue that it is ethical to promote integration. Encouraging minority languages and dialects only encourages factionalism and racial tension. It's much easier for everybody to get along when everybody can understand what is being said.

---linuxrocks123

Re:That's not the professional term

[losfromla]

c'mon, no one saw the humor? Mod this funny...

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Cajuns have their own language

Technically it is a creole, it's also called Creole but the term "creole" is a linguistic term referring to specific sort of blending of languages. There are other creoles in the world that are not named Creole. Without double-checking, I think that the jamaican patois is a creole as well as hawaiian pidgin. (which is another divergence between linguistic terms and common usage since 'pidgin' is has a specific linguistic meaning too). Or maybe not, it's been about 20 years since I paid attention to all that stuff.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

pwnd (i always pronounce this with a hard P, don't you?)

No, but then, I'm not a fan of ponies.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anomalyx]

Informative; thanks for pointing out the difference.
Well, the accent alone is what I encounter most (it's correct English, just with a heavy accent), and therefore what I really refer to, although with this distinction between an accent and dialect, I guess my post about accents has nothing to do with this story about dialects (although I could, in all truth, just replace the word "accent" with the word "dialect" in my post and it would still hold true for me)

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason your song works excellently set to the tune of "God Bless America".

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. You know, that strip appears familiar somehow...

Aha! Except for the language, perfect match!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymMBEwtRZOg

Re:That's not the professional term

[pentalive]

Now Class, As your exercise today you must restate this passage in 1337, in the following cliqe languages:

• Swedish Chef
• Ebonics
• Borg

If you have time, for extra credit, you can also include english.

Re:That's not the professional term

[losfromla]

cell phone contract is not written in standard english, it is written in legalese. Thus a poor example.

Re:That's not the professional term

[kwoff]

If Cantonese is a "main" dialect of Chinese, then Wu (Shanghainese) is too?

Re:That's not the professional term

[gilleain]

I don't know, does his set have an invertible, associative operation that provides closure?

Yes, the group is G = (?, L) where '?' is the operation 'Is that Lil' Wayne?' and L is the one-element set {Lil' Wayne}. He is his own identity.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Darinbob]

But there are similar linguistic differences and class distinction in the UK, and large class distinctions. Ie, proud to be working class and deeply embarrassed and scandalised by their brother who wears a tie and changed his accent to get a job.

Re:That's not the professional term

[losfromla]

so, one is to presume that you don't believe an oligarchy is the way the world is run? How come too you didn't bring your arguments in ebonics/aave? Did you feel they wouldn't have been well received if proposed in that dialect? Is it that you're just a fan but not a practitioner?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Cro Magnon]

I think it is rather remarkable that the United States and much of Canada share mostly-comprehensible dialects of the same language. If you look at the same land area anywhere else in the world, you don't have as much homogeneity as we have here.

Not really that surprising. The same group of people took over the US and most of Canada. The natives were at least as diverse lingustically as the rest of the world. Same for South America; except for Brazil & Hatii, everyone speaks Spanish.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part where we TOOK the land from them?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Scragglykat]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but did "Ebonics" come from Africa, or is it just some language created here in the US in some sort of rebellion against the English language? (and your answer better not be fo shizzle my nizzle) I mean, I'm not that old, but I do remember a time before Ebonics was really being spoken by a majority of minorities. I believe the closest thing to it when I was a kid was "Jive" and I'm pretty sure the two are not one. It would seem to me that what most refer to as Ebonics today, consists of a good majority of fabricated words, usually based on words from the English language, but often created out of some need to rhyme when one cannot think of a real word that fits.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Supposedly it's easier for a speaker of AE to understand SAE than vice versa though, not sure why that would be the case.

Movies, TV shows, and radio broadcasts are made in SAE. AE speakers are exposed to it all the time. The reverse is not true.

Most Americans have no difficulty whatsoever understanding RP ("BBC English") but falter badly with other UK accents (especially Scots), for the same reason.

Re:That's not the professional term

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Me too.

I don't know whether to be disturbed or not.

Re:That's not the professional term

[DesScorp]

It says said group does not want to be assimilated and would instead prefer retaining certain unique cultural and linguistic elements.

I think the truth is likely simpler than that. I think said group just didn't give a rats ass about learning proper English in school. I don't think it's a rebellion against assimilation as much as it's "F*ck this diagramming a sentence sh*t".

Re:That's not the professional term

[invid]

Since AAVE is its own established dialect, it would be a valid intellectual and aesthetic exercise to translate Hamlet into it. I would love to watch that play.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I figured you had meant "dialect", and read it into your post already. :)

Re:That's not the professional term

[atrocious cowpat]

Linguists say "African-American Vernacular English".
What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?

Ah -- a problem I've been trying to raise awareness to for ages: how to incorporate Linguists into our society, make them valuable and productive members, even. Sadly Linguists appear to be a bunch of stubborn bastards who relish in the esoteric obscurity and unfathomable tenebrity of their patois.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

So is Louisiana Creole a perfectly acceptable way to speak French then?

Tautologically, if it weren't they wouldn't speak that way. Of course, those speaking other dialects of French may disagree.

Doesn't prevent the speech of my ancestors and that which we use in casual situations from being derided as a lesser form of speech, though. We just can't use the race card.

And here we get to the crux of the whole issue. Because AAVE is so intertwined with race, there are a bunch of racial issues around it. Racists will disregard evidence and claim that the dialect doesn't deserve distinction, and others will hold it up as a uniquely black experience and part of their fundamental culture.

None of these arguments are made over AE, it's simply viewed as a nominal dialect... and if a law enforcement agency ever put out an add seeking people with expertise in Appalachian English, people would fleetingly go "oh, interesting" and never post it to slashdot.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Now that's an interesting assertion. I'd posit further that if the roles were reversed, and it was AAVE that was "standard" and SAE that was lower socioeconomic class slang, you'd probably see the same issues with peer pressure and the denigration of education coming from the lower socioeconomic class.

Exactly, and that's what the find all over the world when there is a language/dialect of power. Whatever qualities make the "inferior" language/dialect different are regarded as indicative of substandard intelligence. Even if it means that they are enunciating more clearly.

Although it might be fun to think about what the world would be like if we didn't judge people by their speaking or writing ability, the simple fact of the matter is that someone who isn't proficient in the standard language cannot perform in society the way someone who is, can.

I openly recognize that my ethical standard cannot be met in this world right now. However, despite your assertions of a benefit to a standard language, there are numerous nations in the world that demonstrate that multiple languages can be accommodated just fine.

Upheaval of the status quo in America to make it accept minority languages/dialects though, is entirely unlikely to succeed. I am still free to hold the assertion that doing so would be the best ethical choice.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is so NOT a Democracy, and I'm about to start screaming every time I hear IDIOTS say that it is, including national newscasters. It is a REPUBLIC. If the US was a Democracy, we citizens would vote for every issue, law, etc. Get it?

EVERYBODY- STOP CALLING THE USA A DEMOCRACY. It's a REPUBLIC.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

The thing you're missing about the jive-speakers is that they don't have a historical claim on their "language" or "culture". These things were created in the last few decades only, not some type of historical holdover. It's not like the Scots wanting to preserve Scots Gaelic and wearing kilts, things that go back many centuries or more.

Basically, it's a certain economic class of people trying to differentiate themselves. It would be like a bunch of southern rednecks making up their own version of English (even more different than Southern dialect), and whining about "preserving" their "historic culture" of driving big pick-up trucks and having tractor pulls, monster truck rallies, and "professional wrestling" events.

The black people in America aren't really even black; they (and a lot of the white people too) are mixed-race. A huge portion of the white American population has a black person in their family tree somewhere, and a lot have a Native American in there too. Black people are the same way; there's white people in most of their family trees, which is why many are so light-skinned compared to real Africans. Here in America, most of us are mutts (and this is a good thing, genetically speaking; purebred animals always have too many genetic problems).

Trying to "preserve" Ebonics is like trying to "preserve" Klingon, or argue about it from a historical viewpoint. There's nothing historical about Ebonics, it's just a collection of modern slang used by one socioeconomic group.

And no, we don't call our language American, but it is a different dialect, with different word usage, different spellings, different pronunciations, etc. There's many dialects of English: UK, American, Indian, South African, Australian, etc. They're all different from each other.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem here is that speaking proper english is often seen as "selling out", and any attempts to crawl out of poverty or to get educated are harshly treated by peers.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."
    - Robert A. Heinlein

Re:That's not the professional term

[TheRealMindChild]

I'd bet even with the "African-American Vernacular English" you've got slang variations between regions.

Absolutely. I come from the north-eastern united states and got used to what I call "Philidelphia Ebonics" now. Every movie or music you see tends to follow this dialect so I was ignorant to the fact that there were other slangs of AAVE. I moved to mid Florida a few years ago and have a hard time picking up on the AAVE slang. They have a creole undertone in their accent and use totally different words then their northern brethren. Let's just say it is drastic enough, if I end up talking to my stereotypical-poor-black-ghetto-style friend on the cell phone, it is practically unintelligible.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

It's just a made-up modern language (or dialect), not too different from Klingon. Yes, it's mainly a rebellion against the English language. It's not old at all, and has nothing to do with Africa.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

Like double negatives, split infinitives, or dangling prepositions?

Here, I must disagree.

There is certainly a logical reason for the prohibition of double negatives.

Take the following sentence. "I am tall."
Let's express that this way... I_am(tall) == true;

If we negate this "I am not tall.";
We get I_am(!tall) == true;

When we add a double negative to the situation "I ain't not tall."
We get !I_am(!tall) == true;
Which is the exact opposite of the intent of the speaker of the line.

"I ain't not tall." actually has the same meaning as "I am tall." but in the mind of the speaker, "I am not tall" and "I ain't not tall." have the same meaning.
Logically we have I_am(!tall) == !I_am(!tall) == true; which is completely nonsensical.

The entire point of language is to give us the ability to share our thoughts with one another. Without rules (even arbitrary or sometimes capricious ones), it is no longer possible to do that.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the American nigger, to be distinguished from Africans or other black folks, does not possess anything a normal person would call a culture, and their ebonics is simply their way of trying to stay one step ahead of the police, it deserves nothing less than the treatment we gave the feathered niggers over their "languages and cultures". Forced education, severe whippings and the total destruction of all the BS that the savages called their "culture". For one thing, niggers are animals and need to be treated as such. They destroy and plunder, live like savages and act like retarded chimps on PCP. We would be doing the world a favor by exterminating them from the planet. At least though, in the USA, niggers usually know their place. Because unlike europe and canada, niggers in Ameria know their black asses will be killed, by the police, by the prison system and by the average white man who they piss off, with little or no repercussions. We kill on average 30 or 40 niggers a week across America. That is the police doing the killing. How many of them make even regional news? Very, very few. Most of the time, it is local police shot rufus watermelonhead to death when he refused lawful orders to be taken into custody. Niggers know the badge and gun of the police signify their imminent death if they fuck up. You see white folks running from the cops, fighting the cops, but rarely do you ever see a nigger doing either one. Because they know the cop will shoot them dead as the shit they smell like and get a medal for it probably.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I would not like to argue that "promoting integration" is not an ethical choice, but rather it is not the best ethical choice.

Encouraging minority languages and dialects only encourages factionalism and racial tension.

An assertion that fails to recognize the wide acceptance and recognition that minority languages have across Europe. There are some languages, whose speakers are seeking independence, like the Basque, and the Catalan but the speakers of Limburgish, Bayrisch, Welsh, Scots, and Gaulish are not.

It is apparent that a culture has separatist and divisive intent entirely apart from their own language.

In fact, the speakers of Moldovan do not even speak a different dialect from standard Romanian, yet invent from thin air, the idea that their language is different in order to spur divisive sentiment.

America (all of it) with its limited dialectal variation has difficult recognizing the expansive acceptance of dialects, and minority languages across Europe.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is, if the Quebecois Separatists did succeed in their referendum (which is increasingly unlikely since it's losing its popularity), the aboriginals (a.k.a. natives) which dominate the north three quarters of Quebec have stated that they will separate from Quebec and would likely request to remain in Canada as an aboriginally run province. The same laws that allow the Separatists to separate also allow all the part of Quebec that was not part of "Lower Canada" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Canada ) to separate from Quebec.

It would be a legal nightmare. And to top it off, large transfer payments are made to Quebec to promote french culture so that more Canadian tax dollars flow into Quebec than out. If Quebec separated, the payments would stop and Quebec would lose a large tax base. They'd lose their U.N. representation, their G8 representation, free trade access, and all the other benefits of being part of Canada. Naturally the Separatists claim that none of this would be lost, but anyone who believes such claims might want to contact my Nigerian Prince friend who has a huge sum of money that he needs your help to unload.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

so, one is to presume that you don't believe an oligarchy is the way the world is run?
How come too you didn't bring your arguments in ebonics/aave? Did you feel they wouldn't have been well received if proposed in that dialect? Is it that you're just a fan but not a practitioner?

I'm a student of language, and have studied AAVE some, yet I am no where near able to produce correct and grammatical AAVE.

Even if I were, I would be unlikely to post in AAVE, as we are not communicating in it on this forum. I am fluent in German, yet no one would ask me why I did not post in German...

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

In Northern Ireland a language was invented by a group seeking seperateness from the rest of the island.
Ulster Scots
Of course hard working academics had to be found to investigate the language.

cliques is the captcha

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

Demanding that a subculture learn SAE, is the same as demanding that every subculture of America be, or at least practice Christianity.

Wrong. I don't think many people are demanding that anyone learn SAE; they just don't want to hear any complaints when people who refuse to learn and speak SAE can't get a job, can't talk to anyone, etc.

If you want to speak your own weird language, then fine. Just don't complain about "racism" if no one will give you a job because they can't understand you.

Living in a society with others means being able to communicate with others. If you can't communicate, then you can't function as part of that society. If you can figure out how to (legally) live without communicating with anyone, then fine. But this generally isn't the case.

Re:That's not the professional term

[AK Marc]

*PS, do you guys actually call it American?

It's American English. Lazy results in shortcuts in language all the time (contractions and such) and "American" in reference to a language is an obvious and unambiguous shortcut for American English. I'm not arguing it's proper, but it is used. There really isn't any different between American English and the Queen's English, other than a few spelling choices (colour/color), some treatment of collective nouns (Microsoft is/are a software company), and word choice ("boot" and "trunk" can mean a container in either dialect, but primarily one is used for the rear storage in a car/auto in one dialect and the other in the other). I'd assert that the differences between proper American English and proper Queen's English are smaller than the English varieties spoken just on the island of Britain. And I'd further assert that the differences between that spoken in Boston and the Deep South is greater than American English and the Queen's English.

Its one thing if "a certain group not assimilating" means a direct opposal of the laws and regulations in the country that was set forth by a democratic system. THEN you can tell those people to GTFO. Its another thing entirely if "not assimilating" means they want to preserve their heritage or speak their own language or whatever. Last time I checked, not speaking American* in America was not a crime.

AAVE, or Ebonics if you prefer, is a recent invention. It was mostly invented to create a divide. Use of it is evidence of purposefully not assimilating. It is not retaining or paying homage to any past culture. So you tell me which category you'd put that in.

Oh, and I always find it amusing that more than half native English speakers in the world are in the USA, yet people still consider the Queen's English as the authoritative version, when they are a small and shrinking minority.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

I think you're an idiot. I have better things to do with my time than learn every subculture's language or dialect. If someone wants to speak with me, then they need to learn the standard, dominant language of the country.

Expecting customers to learn a new language to talk with store employees is the height of ridiculousness.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Omestes]

I wish I could take credit for it, but the linguistic term is "language of power" or "dialect of power".

For some strange reason, every time I hear terms like this I picture some silly Sociology class and a bunch of random "radical" students pointing their fingers and telling me that I, a white American guy, am the cause of all their problems (and conveniently ignoring the fact that my background is probably more wretched than theirs).

Poking around on Google proves this further, since I can't actually find a academic, operational, definition of these terms. The ony credible reference is a footnote on Wikipedia, quoting Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. II: A Thousand Plateaus., which is a book I wouldn't take to be an objective critique of much of anything. Granted I only read portions, but my previous experience with Deleuze and Guattari (I somehow manged to choke down Anti-oedipus, to zero effect except realizing that they try to hard to write like Heidegger, sans the intellectual backing, as if mere obscurity makes them relevant).

Clearly individuals are better off learning the language of power, but that should never justify the connotation that the language of power is "better". "More useful" perhaps, but I would categorically reject any depictions of an ethically or aesthetically superior position.

Ahh.. cultural relativism... I would say that "more useful" equals "better" in most circumstances. If you decided to wander around speaking only pig-latin, am I really expected to weigh that equally with someone who actually decided to work for some competence in communications?

Language is only about communications. A language that fails at this task (in the context in which it is used), is worse than a language that is more efficient at this task. Thus a language that communicates better is... well... better. Utility is all that really matters when it comes to language.

Demanding that a subculture learn SAE, is the same as demanding that every subculture of America be, or at least practice Christianity.

This may be true. But the subcultures who refuse to learn SAE shouldn't be allowed to complain about the consequences either. They refuse to learn to speak the language of the land, and thus the consequences are all theirs. It isn't my job (or anyones) to be required to learn every language spoken by every obscure social group either.

I live in a state with two languages (Arizona), and I don't speak a bit of Spanish, and have no desire to learn it. Do I get the right to feel outrage when I can't get decent service in establishments in the deeply Hispanic areas of my city because of my choice to take Latin and German instead of Spanish?

Re:That's not the professional term

[shutdown -p now]

Well, yes. The fact that Quebec is, economically at least, better off as part of Canada is pretty well-known. There's also a surprisingly - to me at least - large number of Canadians in other provinces who think that Canada would be better off without spending money and resources trying to appease Quebec (and letting it go if that's what it means).

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Your position here is the reason why prescriptivists assert that double negatives should not be used, however there is a thing called "negative concordance" in language.

Once a sentence is negative, one must use words that agree in negation with the negative.

What is the negative in "I do not have any books"? Right, it's the "not". But what about that "any" there? Would you really consider it grammatical to say "I have any books"? I really doubt it, because it's widely recognized as ungrammatical.

The word "any" in this statement may not be identified by prescriptivists as "negative", but it is a negative concordance.

Various other languages, in particular French use double and even more negatives all the time, and none of them see it in the logical interpretation that prescriptivists attempt to assert.

So, while your argument is logical, it is also specious, because there are hojillions of empirical counterexamples to its position.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

If you want to speak your own weird language, then fine. Just don't complain about "racism" if no one will give you a job because they can't understand you.

You most likely didn't choose to learn Standard American English. You picked it up from your parents. So, creating a situation where those who were raised in the dialect of power retain power, and those who were not raised in the dialect of power must go out of their way to learn the dialect of power, or be excluded, is wrong.

All people are lazy, and blacks are no less "lazy" than anyone else. The white person who inherits his father's business can hardly be described really as anything but "lazy" himself.

Disadvantaging someone politically and economically because of the circumstances of their birth, and upbringing is the very definition of irrational discrimination.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled [wikipedia.org] that, while Quebec cannot secede unilaterally, it is not inseparable, and should the majority in it vote for independence in a referendum, the federal government cannot deny them the right to secede outright, and shall negotiate the precise terms of separation with the Quebec government.

But if Quebec were to secede unilaterally, surely they wouldn't feel bound by what the supreme court of a foreign country (which Canada would then be, to them) says?

So if they wanted to, that ruling would be irrelevant; the only thing that'd matter would be who'd have more and bigger guns.

For historical reference, check out how Iceland became independent (again) of Denmark, for instance. It happened while Denmark was occupied with (well, by) the nazis, so they weren't in a position to do much about it, and I doubt they'd just have let the Icelanders go if they'd been asked. But they weren't being asked, and Iceland is independent now, and nobody would consider Iceland a part of Denmark anymore.

In the end, that's how history works. It's rarely about who's right, neither ethically nor legally; it's just about what you can and do get away with in practice.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Ahh.. cultural relativism... I would say that "more useful" equals "better" in most circumstances. If you decided to wander around speaking only pig-latin, am I really expected to weigh that equally with someone who actually decided to work for some competence in communications?

I'll use myself as a particular example here. I was raised by parents who speak a relatively high register of Standard American English. I don't have to try to use Standard American English correctly.

Should we automatically benefit people like me, who didn't even have to exert talent or effort to acquire a particular dialect, accent, or register just because of the circumstances of my birth and upbringing?

Pfff... I could be the laziest most worthless piece of shit in the world, but I would still speak the dialect of power used in the United States... because I was born and raised with an advantage.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

So what's your solution to all this "unfairness"? Make everyone learn everyone else's dialect?

Life isn't fair. Get over it. Having dozens of separate dialects and languages in one nation is impractical and unworkable.

It's funny how dumb liberals are always saying people need to "communicate with" each other and "understand" each other. But now you're saying we should all be speaking different languages! Which is it?

If you want to spend all your waking moments learning dozens of languages and dialects, feel free. I'd rather do more productive things with my time than try to keep up with ever-changing slang dialects.

Re:That's not the professional term

[sjames]

MOST of us call it English and have little difficulty understanding most other dialects of English. We do have some "educationally impaired" individuals who call it American. To be fair, they tend speak English so poorly that they might well simply have recognized that the language they speak bears only a passing resemblance to English and now wish to distinguish the two. :-)

Re:That's not the professional term

[shutdown -p now]

It's rarely about who's right, neither ethically nor legally; it's just about what you can and do get away with in practice.

Yes, of course. I was merely pointing out that, in this case, Canada had set the limits on what Quebec can "get away with in practice" in advance, and those limits actually include proper secession, so long as certain reasonable conditions - such as democratic consent of the majority of population of the province - are met (which is fairly generous compared to historical practice before that, if you ask me...).

I think that this legal precedent actually makes Canada a somewhat freer country than US on the whole, since US states cannot "escape" anything that other states can push onto them through the federal Constitution. So Americans generally have more rights now, but can have them taken away from them easier, with no effective remedy. IMO, the right to secede should be the #1 right of any truly free federation (before anything else, even the right to free speech).

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for that non information, professional linguist.

If Black English isn't a Language, Then Tell me, What is?

Re:That's not the professional term

[sjames]

True enough, but do you know anyone who insists on speaking leet for job interviews, court, and with their grandmother even after it has clearly caused a difficulty in communication?

Leet is merely a sort of slang.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Life isn't fair. Get over it. Having dozens of separate dialects and languages in one nation is impractical and unworkable.

So, the Netherlands is unworkable? The UK is unworkable?

Funny, I didn't get the memo.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

> Then said group should GTFO

You didn't assimilate particularly well into native american culture.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shit, I'm wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

However, despite your assertions of a benefit to a standard language, there are numerous nations in the world that demonstrate that multiple languages can be accommodated just fine.

I've always wondered about that - it seems that places where people either have pictograph based languages, or where they generally learn multiple and very unrelated dialects, are generally at a severe disadvantage to those places that have a single, standard language. All of the people from those countries who come to the US are generally the best and the brightest, and learning multiple languages or pictograph based languages doesn't seem to have thwarted them from their goals, but I can't help but think that the time spent trying to master a difficult set of pictographs, or learn a wide variety of languages, takes away from time you could spend mastering something else.

I haven't bothered to google scholar it, but I'd bet that standardized language correlates with at least some measures of economic and national success.

I am still free to hold the assertion that doing so would be the best ethical choice.

Well, depending on what other ethical choices you're entertaining :) It's better than a sharp stick in the eye, but it might not fare so well against choosing to give everyone a mansion, a pony and an ipod for free :)

Re:That's not the professional term

[losfromla]

why didn't you post in German? Maybe we didn't ask about German because you weren't going on and on about German. Why you so obsessed with Ebonics?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Your arguments seems to boil down to "it's not old enough to be worthy of preservation".

How exactly is a question of how many years something has existed relevant to historical significance?

I'm sure that the scots who made up Scots Gaelic as their language or decided to wear kilts one day didn't do it because they thought it would be a neat thing to be historical about a few hundred years in the future. It's was a way for them to differentiate themselves from their neighbours, just the same as your other examples.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

why didn't you post in German? Maybe we didn't ask about German because you weren't going on and on about German. Why you so obsessed with Ebonics?

Because it is so heavily discriminated against. Did we ask the Republicans why they were so obsessed with slaves while arguing about how slavery was wrong?

Re:That's not the professional term

[shaka]

But when you move to another country to live you should make some attempt to learn to speak the language.

That's all well. But this is, as the GP pointed out, about different subcultures in the same country, using different dialects.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

How long do our students have to spend learning proper spelling? Chinese is actually composed of a set of radicals, and a few "radicalless" forms, but mostly composed of the arrangement of radicals. In some ways, English can be just as arbitrary as the Chinese ideographs.

Languages if taught early do not interfere in the education or the limited time to study a language/etc. Recall, they don't need English-major level of knowledge in the languages, simply at most Freshman composition level of study.

Well, depending on what other ethical choices you're entertaining :) It's better than a sharp stick in the eye, but it might not fare so well against choosing to give everyone a mansion, a pony and an ipod for free :)

That stuff I see as clearly unethical... people don't need that stuff. ;)

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

I'm quite sure everyone in the UK speaks UK English, though I know Welsh and Gaelic are still spoken in certain pockets. However, you're not going to find anyone in London that speaks either of these languages, and the Welsh and Gaelic speakers also speak English.

Netherlands = Dutch. There might be some pockets of people speaking Frisian or whatever, but they don't expect the entire country to speak it to cater to them.

Almost every country has a single, dominant language of commerce and government. People who speak minority languages speak the main language in addition to their own.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Chris Mattern]

Demanding that a subculture learn SAE, is the same as demanding that every subculture of America be, or at least practice Christianity.

That statement is so utterly unconnected to reality that I don't even know where to start. Are you seriously stating that it is okay for a disadvantaged subculture refuse to put effort into being understood by the mainstream with which they must work in order to lift themselves out of poverty?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

No, the Scots didn't "make up" Gaelic. It evolved from other, earlier languages, just like almost all real languages in use today. And they didn't use it to be different from their neighbors, they used it because it was the language they had all along. The only reason they became a minority is because they were invaded by some imperialistic jerks who took over their land and sidelined their language and culture (who did the same to the Welsh and the Irish). I'm pretty sure Gaelic predates English, and wearing kilts predates the English invasion.

Why should something be "preserved" if it isn't historical, but just something some uneducated people made up on their own, and that is itself constantly changing? It's a fad.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

10 years ago, I'd have agreed with you. However, leetspeak has invented new words - perversions of standard english words in the same vein as ebonics - acronyms, and entire phrases to its vocabulary list.

The difference between a linguist and a layperson is that the layperson thinks a language is a bag of words, while the linguist thinks that a language is a system for assembling complex utterances from simpler parts.

How many words leetspeak has invented is completely irrelevant to whether it's a distinct language; the rules for putting those words into sentences are the same as they are in English in general. African American Vernacular English, on the other hand, has a grammar that, while mostly coinciding with Standard English, shows some remarkable differences. The most striking example is the tense and aspect system of AAVE, which has, for example, a grammaticalized habitual aspect that doesn't exist in the standard language (the be in He be workin' Tuesdays).

To use less linguistese, AAVE is a dialect with a different verbal conjugation system than Standard English, that can express distinctions that need circumlocutions in the standard. Leetspeak is just English written funny and with a bit of slang.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

central Mississippi

Anon because I've modded, usually known as demonlapin. Can't believe I've missed another local. Where are you? I'm in Jackson, as is seakip18.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the real difference is that leetspeak is a joke used primarily for a laugh among geeks. I'm quite able to comprehend it, yet my english is superb. Ebonics is used either because of ignorance or a desire to appear ignorant and blend in with those that are. It replaces english instead of supplementing it for a laugh.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Wyatt Earp]

My ancestors were here for at least 466 generations before any African slaves were brought to the Americas.

So yea, I have more heritage and culture in North America.

No, we call it English. American English is the de facto language of the United States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_english

Re:That's not the professional term

[AK Marc]

The dialects are recent. Until integration and such, there was no distinguishable difference between blacks and whites in language. If you travel to England and listen to an English born black person and white person, you will likely not be able to tell them apart. There is no accent or dialect difference between them. It was similar in the US at the turn of the 19th century.

It wasn't until there was better communication and integration where there was a backlash and "empowerment" through inventing a separate language. Much like young people invent words (or change existing words) to differentiate themselves from the other generations, the same has happened along racial lines in the US. It was unrelated to slavery. It was unrelated to their previous countries and developed long after their arrival and linguistic assimilation.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

Chinese is actually composed of a set of radicals, and a few "radicalless" forms, but mostly composed of the arrangement of radicals.

Yes, I'm familiar with that - Mandarin was my attempt at a second language :) Unfortunately, without a phonetic alphabet (which they do sortof have now with pinyin, albeit with ambiguity), literacy is a much harder challenge than in languages that have phonetic alphabets. Even when you know all the radicals, you simply cannot look at a new strange pictograph and know how it is supposed to be pronounced, or even what it is supposed to mean. This becomes even more challenging for mastering sciences and technology, which depend heavily on new words - deciding on a new pictogram is much more difficult than simply using a phonetic alphabet and sharing your new word with others.

Languages if taught early do not interfere in the education or the limited time to study a language/etc.

That might be true for spoken language, but I think literacy becomes much more difficult the more complex the alphabet, with pictograph literacy the hardest. When I hear about some of the guys from India at work, and the multiple languages they've had to master, with Sanskrit alphabets of a complexity I can only boggle at, I shudder in my boots.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Omestes]

Should we automatically benefit people like me, who didn't even have to exert talent or effort to acquire a particular dialect, accent, or register just because of the circumstances of my birth and upbringing?

Complicated question. My instant reaction is "of course not!", but with some thought I realize that the answer is more along the lines of "yes."

Of every society that ever existed there has been a group of people who gets default privilege. This might be a nasty fact, but I think it is an inevitable and necessary feature of a functioning society, which is why this particular mode is universal. A functioning society cannot accommodate everyone's unique social characteristics. A functioning society depends on communications. Communications and diversity (linguistic, mainly) are inversely correlated. Thus we must draw a line between the ability to easily communicate, and what level of diversity we want (which is also necessary to a healthy society). Thus there is going to be a balance, we must sacrifice a bit of public diversity for communications.

A single language of communications is VASTLY superior to multiple languages when looking at society as a functioning entity. As a result we have a single common language which gets preference. This isn't as bad as it sounds though, since basically all other groups have the ability to learn this language in order to better participate in society. So while you may have an initial advantage, the disadvantage of others is optional and a matter of choice.

This isn't tyrannical, since we're not talking of BANNING the language of others, but merely having a single language for public business.

Pfff... I could be the laziest most worthless piece of shit in the world, but I would still speak the dialect of power used in the United States... because I was born and raised with an advantage.

Advantage doesn't mean much in this context. Pretty much all of the people I know where were born here, regardless of their income bracket or original ethnicity speak Standard English well. I grew up in a very poor, mostly Hispanic, neighborhood, and pretty much all of the friends I had (from the demographics a good mix of white, black, and Hispanic) spoke compliant standard English. The only people who didn't speak it well were the (mostly Mexican) illegal, and very recent (mostly Eastern European) immigrants legal immigrants. Their children, on the other hand, mostly spoke good standard English (often better than most of the established people, since they took it more serious).

Also, AAVE isn't like Spanish, or Italian, or a real traditional language. Often parents of people who speak AAVE DON'T speak it, or anything resembling it. As I recounted earlier, and further down, in the suburb that my dad lived in, there was a black guy from the south who lacked even a high school diploma, who spoke very good English. He used to yell at his children for speaking AAVE, since they were trying to sound uneducated in spite of going to one of the best high schools in the area, and being solidly middle class. He hated the fact that he worked so hard to elevate himself, and his children were willfully trying to act stupid, despite the opportunity not to.

AAVE is a choice, so we shouldn't treat it the same as a genuine linguistic "disadvantage" (for lack of a better term). The people I knew who spoke only Spanish didn't have a choice, they grew up in a country that spoke Spanish, and in households where it was the only language spoken. Then they moved to a country where it is frowned upon. Most AAVE don't have this story. Their parents spoke the language of the land, and they decided to rebel against it for purely sociological reasons. This is a choice, and choices have consequences.

Another problem, to continue to ramble; where do we draw the line? If I am now expected to understand AAVE, then am I also expected to know Spanish, German, Italian, Creole, French Canadian, 4Chan slang, anything that anyone may somed

Re:That's not the professional term

[Wyatt Earp]

Guyana, French Guiana, Belize all call shenanigans on Spanish being spoken everywhere but Brazil and Haiti.

Re:That's not the professional term

[losfromla]

I didn't think Republicans were so obsessed with slaves but if they were I'd assume it was some sort of guilt by association to their forbears. Is that where you're coming from? I think it's discriminated against for the same reason that guys with their pants hanging below their ass are discriminated against in hiring decisions, cause it's just wrong. It's wrong for the same reason Cajun or hillbilly speak is wrong, it's just not proper English. If you disagree, feel free to bastardize the language at will too, rules shouldn't matter, right?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Nyeerrmm]

Two things that make it different here:

1. Race and socio-economic status are highly correlated in the US.
2. Lingering racism encourages solidarity.

So really, in my estimation AAVE is as much associated with poverty as race, but due to the racial tensions that still exist here the picture is muddied. Then again, I'm also a well-off white non-linguist so I'm not exactly qualified to say for sure.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

The same things are true about African-American Vernacular English. It probably has its roots in a pidgin created when Africans of many nations met in America, as slaves to the European colonists. I'm not sure what imperialistic jerks have to do with the discussion about the value of something being a legitimate culture to preserve, so I'm going to leave that out of the discussion (although I'm sure I could score a few easy points, what, with them having been slaves and all).

Those slaves didn't make it up to be "different" from their neighbours either. It's just the way they happened to learn to speak to not only their slave masters, but to each other. Remember, African-Americans weren't exactly a homogenous bunch to start with, all speaking the same language. Africa is a big place, with lots and lots of languages. English would be the only language they shared.

And even if that weren't true, it has been around for many decades now. Like it or not, no matter how dumb you think it might be, it's still history, just like the Second World War. Something being really dumb doesn't excuse it from being history.

Re:That's not the professional term

[mhajicek]

Or they could have a war of even more northern aggression.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

it says "chump doan one no hep, chump doan get no hep."

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, but Ebonics has not been around for decades, it's something new that coincides with rap music, "gangstaz", etc.

Words like "bling" have not been around since the 1800s.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Wrong. I don't think many people are demanding that anyone learn SAE; they just don't want to hear any complaints when people who refuse to learn and speak SAE can't get a job, can't talk to anyone, etc.

The problem with this claim is that right here in the discussion for this Slashdot article you're going to find, far more often than what you're saying here, claims that people who speak AAVE do so out of willful ignorance and that use of AAVE automatically marks a person negatively. Those folks are, effectively, demanding that African-Americans speak SAE all the time, or else be judged negatively. There's precious little allowance for the idea that AAVE might be the appropriate speech variety in many contexts, or that maybe one ought to not make such a big fucking deal of the fact that a bunch of underprivileged people in this country speak a dialect different than yours.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bling" might be fairly new word. What about "cool"? Look up the origins of that word if you like.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

or that maybe one ought to not make such a big fucking deal of the fact that a bunch of underprivileged people in this country speak a dialect different than yours.

If they don't speak the same language, they can't get a decent job. Then, they stay poor, and liberal whiners claim that these people are "underprivileged".

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. If you want to speak a different language from the de facto language of economy in your nation, then you can't complain when you don't get to take part in the economy and raise yourself out of poverty. The tools are all there: remember, public education is free in this country (in SAE of course).

The reason it's a "big deal" is because the AAVE-speakers (and their liberal apologists) are always complaining about being "marginalized", "underprivileged", etc. Well, they're doing it to themselves. And yes, AAVE speakers do it willfully. I've been around many black people who could switch automatically between "white English" and jive depending on who they were talking to. Again, public education is free in this country, and it's done in SAE.

I grew up in the South, where people speak their own dialect. Speaking with a Southern accent is NOT a route to success in anywhere outside the South (or in many places inside it), as most Southerners will tell you. As someone more interested in being successful rather than "preserving" some dialect, I learned to speak proper SAE growing up, and never bothered with any regional accents. The way people spoke on national TV was the way I learned to speak, and made sure I spoke. I never complained about this.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you realize you just used the "N-word" ?

Re:That's not the professional term

[oliverthered]

"customer service job",

Who would want one of those? I prefer drug dealing. Oh this that is a customer services job of sorts, Best start get me wurly wurly chocked up with black power.

Re:That's not the professional term

[mhelander]

Well, he did it twice, just to be sure.

Re:That's not the professional term

[evilmousse]

"the language" is not dead and unchanging, nor is america's great melting pot full of a completely uniform broth. there's chunks of different stuff swimming around in there.

I like Yiddish phrases like "oy veh", japanese ones like "ne?" ('don't you think?'), and gleefully subscribe to the connotations associated with the 'ebonics' versions of words with 'whiter' counterparts with identical denotations: bitch just isn't the same as beotch. I welcome useful and fun new words regardless to source, and i grant the language the freedom to fork and merge as groups invent and cease using words.

i will continue to enjoy such language quirks as a means for identifying the groups to which people wish to show inclusion to, for I don't speak identically to my boss as to friends as to children as to strangers etcetc. which dialect i choose is as much a part of the image i want to exude as the clothes i wear; as important as a tense/sad/happy soundtrack is to a movie scene.

ebonics is an american creation anyway, the words generally aren't african derived but still etymologically english-sourced in general, so the one not learning the language of their own country is YOU here.... unless you believe the dictionary angels bequeath new words from ivory towers.

Re:That's not the professional term

[mhelander]

What poor grammars?

Re:That's not the professional term

[invid]

Ah! Found it. http://hamlet.8m.com/

Re:That's not the professional term

[SwedishPenguin]

s3r10usLY, t3h 1MPl1c4T10NS 0f 4 Su8CUltur3 D3V3L0p1N' 1t's 0wN l4n9U493 R S3R10USLY d1sTur81n'. truLy 4M3r1c4 h4S F41L3d tH3Z3 c1T1Z3ns.

"Seriously, the implications of a subculture developin' it's own language r seriously disturbin'. Truly, America has failed theze citizens."
I count one gross misuse of the word "are" (along with abbreviating the word as R) and one misspelling of the word these. Granted, these may just be part of the leet "language", but it still trips me up alot more than the substitution of letters with numbers. But that's just me...

Re:That's not the professional term

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

If they don't speak the same language, they can't get a decent job. Then, they stay poor, and liberal whiners claim that these people are "underprivileged". Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. If you want to speak a different language from the de facto language of economy in your nation, then you can't complain when you don't get to take part in the economy and raise yourself out of poverty.

I have to refer you to this post I made a bit ago, and also to this one. Basically, your assumption that African-Americans don't speak the "same language" as the rest of the nation is an arbitrary rejection and stigmatization of a dialect that's really not very different from Standard English. The range of speech varieties that are "de facto" considered standard language is not a logically or linguistically preordained fact; it is pure social prejudice.

Spanish speakers, for example, routinely accept dialectal differences that are comparable to those between SAE and AAVE. The verbal tense-aspect systems of Spain and Latin America are different, yet in Spain they don't think that, say, García Márquez speaks and writes substandard Spanish because of it.

Re:That's not the professional term

[franki.macha]

Although I generally agree with your point, and Celtic languages such as Gaelic certainly predate the arrival of Angles and Saxons and the like. the kilt is apparently a relatively modern invention with a mere four or five hundred years of history.

I believe that the traditional dress of the Celtic people of Britain was trousers, which led to much mockery from the Romans, as real men obviously wear togas.

Re:That's not the professional term

[shoehornjob]

That's true and it's great to converse with your peers in whatever dialect you happen to speak. Just don't expect to be understood by someone who comes from a different backround. This is why english is the default language of air traffic controllers worldwide. source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_controller#Core_skills_of_a_controller

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

I believe that the traditional dress of the Celtic people of Britain was trousers, which led to much mockery from the Romans, as real men obviously wear togas.

While Wikipedia does confirm that the kilt only dates to the 16th century, that was a long time after the Romans retreated from the British Isles.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

You too huh?

Re:That's not the professional term

[terminallyCapricious]

YoU SaY iT pReTtY mUcH eVeRy TiMe We TaLk YeAh.

but uh, i don't have to...

uhhh see?

but i mean man this feels so motherfuckin unnatural and shit.

YoU jUsT gOt To Be GoInG wItH wHaT fEeLs RiGhT aT wHeRe YoUr HeArT's Up In, YoU kNoW?

bEsT fRiEnD.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

"These things were created in the last few decades only, not some type of historical holdover."

At some point... _EVERY_ "historical holdover" had a life of a "few decades". If you accept 100 years, it seems logical to accept 5 minutes. There is no line drawn (e.g. a "classic" car).

Perhaps you could approach the argument differently. I call it lazy-speak. Calling it a *cough* real *cough* language gives it a legit status and justifies its use/status.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, kekeke is actually a Korean colloquialism, better transliterated as: kk kk kk.
It's a an odd side effect of their alphabet/character system and electronic input methods that has allowed quite accurate description of a common giggle.

Re:That's not the professional term

[indiechild]

So I take it you speak Cherokee?

Re:That's not the professional term

[jc42]

*PS, do you guys actually call it American? Don't get me wrong, its your call and everything, I'm not one to interfere with your culture and all. It just seems really cheesey, as if American is so different from all other Englishes that we couldn't possibly understand you.

Suggestion: Go into any bookstore and find the case with all the dictionaries. Look for the "English" dictionaries. If you're in the US, you won't find many. The English dictionaries printed in the US mostly call themselves a "Dictionary of the American Language".

This isn't intended as a political action or anything, and it's not a claim that "American" is different from other dialects of English. It's just an acknowledgement of the fact that the English language contains lots of dialects. One of the major English dialects is General American, spoken by a majority of Americans. It contains many sub-dialects, of course, but they all have a long list of common features that distinguish them from other major English dialects.

American dictionary makers recognized long ago that English is a collection of dialects. They mostly agreed that "English" without modifiers really should mean a dialect primarily spoken in England. Again, this isn't a political or sociological stance; it's just acknowledging the linguistic facts in the collection of dialects known as "English".

Actually, it would be technically more accurate if they said "Dictionary of the General American dialect of English". There are several other major dialects of English spoken in North America. (Trivia question: What are the common names that linguists use for these other major dialects?)

There are yet other significant English dialects spoken in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The American publishers of dictionaries generally don't deal with those other English dialects, except in their etymological notes. But there are publishers in most of those countries that provide dictionaries for their dialects of English. Some of them just call their dialect "English", while others use more specific names for their dialects.

Re:That's not the professional term

[shiftless]

I think the real ethical problem is when subcultures denigrate the attempts of their peers to rise above their current socioeconomic status with education, thereby denying social advancement where it is arguably the most needed.

Have you ever even met a black person before? I'm from the south, I've been around plenty of then. Their "dialect" is not due to peers "denigrating attempts to rise above socioeconmic status" or any such nonsense. They speak their way the same reason I speak mine, because that's the environment I was raised up in and learned. The black community is just as proud of their achievers and success stories as any white person is, they just don't (as a whole) have as many opportunities easily available to them.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not see the XKCD comic where the guy is bitching about how if people don't want to learn English, they should leave the country, and then the girl behind him starts speaking Cherokee?

Meh. The Statute of Limitations has run out on that sorta thing. We moved in, pushed them (Indians- oh, excuse me "Native Americans" (what a bullshit name. their ancestors came here too, you know!)) away, corralled them, and basically took the continent. I mean, we took it. It's spoils of war. You don't see anyone else crying over land that was conquered hundreds of years ago, do you? get over it already. Sheesh.

Re:That's not the professional term

[jc42]

f3e10hfYL, g3u 1ZCy1p4G10AF 0s 4 Fh8PHyghe3 Q3I3Y0c1A' 1g'f 0jA y4a9H493 E F3E10HFYL q1fGhe81a'. gehYl 4Z3e1p4 u4F S41Y3q gU3M3 p1G1M3af.

This made sense to you how?

Easy; just a tap of a key "translated" it for me. Y'see, years ago I wrote me a little program that I call rot13, and I've set up a lot of programs to map a function key to invoke it on the current text. When I saw your message, I hit the function key, and your message got translated to:

s3r10usLY, t3h 1MPl1c4T10NS 0f 4 Su8CUltur3 D3V3L0p1N' 1t's 0wN l4n9U493 R S3R10USLY d1sTur81n'. truLy 4M3r1c4 h4S F41L3d tH3Z3 c1T1Z3ns.

Like many /. readers, I read this at close to full reading speed without skipping a beat.

We h4x0rz have ways to deal with people like you.

Note that I've also encoded this message by feeding it to rot13 twice. According to the DMCA, unauthorized decoding of this message is thus a federal crime which can get you a huge fine and several years in a federal pen. So if you admit to reading this message without my written authorization, you can be in a lot of trouble. ;-)

(And I wonder if speakers/writers of "Ebonics" could use the DMCA in a similar way to prevent people from trying to "decode" their speech? Others here have already made the argument that that dialect exists primarily to obscure the meaning of their words to people who know only a "standard" English dialect, so it should legally qualify as an "encryption" under the DMCA.)

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Kilts were invented for the sake of tourists and creating a fake historic image. This might have happened in the 1800s, but it still happened.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, no. According to Wikipedia, they came around in the 16th century. They didn't have tourism back then.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

What is the negative in "I do not have any books"? Right, it's the "not". But what about that "any" there? Would you really consider it grammatical to say "I have any books"? I really doubt it, because it's widely recognized as ungrammatical.

I'd argue that "do not" is the negative in this context. When you stripped it out, you said "I have any books" and not "I do have any books".

I'd label the any as an indefinite pronoun.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

That's utter bullshit, you don't know what you're even talking about. The African American vernacular as a separate dialect goes back at least to before the American civil war.

There's certainly modern slang added too it but you're clearly too pig-ignorant to consider that that isn't the entirety of the language.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Switzerland has done pretty well the last several centuries, despite four official languages, and a bajillion barely mutually-comprehensible dialects. Turns out that not having a stick up their arse about what dialect everyone could speak works out pretty well!

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

The only real difference between "Jive" and "Ebonics" is time. Jive was what later became Ebonics. They are both ways to describe the contemporary slang of a certain type of African Americans.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

...suckling at the teat of wellfare and distributors of crime and violence. ...

There is a whole generation of black adults that are collectively spitting in the faces of those who have sufferred and endured so much to ensure their freedom. ... raping bitches, drinking fourties, and shooting their rivals above science and philosophy and the greater good.

How did this racist diatribe get modded +4 informative?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, this kind of thing happens all over the place. Pidgin in Hawaii, Creole in Louisiana...most localities have slang, dialects and accents that can be terribly confusing for outsiders.

Too right cobber, a mob of seppo's came down from the big smoke for a captain cook. Mean as cats piss they were and had a few roo's loose in the top paddock.

One of the pom's started having a whinge, so I said "no wukkers, she'll be right" and it was about time for smoko so I went to the local bottle-o for a slab and had a ripsnorter of a time.

Re:That's not the professional term

[mhelander]

What's the gross misuse of "are"? It refers to "implications" which is plural. Abbreviating to "R" is of course just leet and not a grammar issue. And "these" is not misspelled since it's leet to use a "Z" to represent an "s".

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still developping in Europe, and most people don't care.
For example, in France, we have some regional dialect (in the Loire, or in the Nord) - or, in some case, distinct regional language (eg. in Bretagne, Pays Basque, Alsace, or Provence).
We sometimes have schools for kids were the regional dialect and french is used. There's place where the road signs are written in multiple languages (official & dialect).

The regional dialect are not comprehensible by non speaker, even those strongly based on the official language - that's what a couple centuries of divergence do.

And no one care. Because it's all down to cultural differences and heritage.

What matter is the will to live together in the same country. And that may be the problem in America.... (and not only on the AA side)
Oh, and the fact that everybody speak the official language in supplement to any other dialect, too.

Re:That's not the professional term

[blackest_k]

you make it sound like something new.
usually dialects and accents tend to be mostly confined to geographic area's rather than social groups but its always existed. It is part of a cultural identity and often is intended to keep outsiders out. Classic case cockney rhyming slang.

It is kind of a verbal encryption used in place of plain text, and most of us should be familiar with using some encryption in computer systems and why.

Most of us can fully understand regular English just some choose not to speak it unless it suits them.

I can speak Polish as a second language and most people wouldn't understand what I was saying. Thats not a problem If I want you to comprehend I will choose language and words you understand.

Re:That's not the professional term

[tehcyder]

pwnd (i always pronounce this with a hard P, don't you?)

You mean you exactly say this out loud to people? How the fuck do you pronounce it? pound? pooned? pwend?

Re:That's not the professional term

[tehcyder]

In my vernacular, your vernacular is known as Politically-Correct Speak. We know it as the language of the liberal elite who hold positions of power in the state (or wanna-be elitists who are trying to suck up to that power elite) and who use it to try to confuse those people they're trying to control.

In my vernacular you're a Complete Utter Nazi Twat.

Re:That's not the professional term

[theNAM666]

The way people spoke on national TV was the way I learned to speak, and made sure I spoke. I never complained about this.

Yassih, Uncle Tom.

And why exactly would it be that the South has an economy that's "less successful" than the rest of the US, hmm, Church Lady?

Re:That's not the professional term

[dave420]

Says the guy speaking English in America. England != America. You seem to be missing something rather important.

Re:That's not the professional term

[dave420]

Kilts date back to the 16th century. The English have been in Scotland since way before then. The resurgence in Kilts (in the 19th century) was indeed to protect national identity in response to foreign oppression. Also there was no "English invasion" - Scotland and England have always had a porous border, dating back to the Roman times (even with Hadrian's wall).

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

It says said group does not want to be assimilated and would instead prefer retaining certain unique cultural and linguistic elements.

But... but... don't they know resistance is futile?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

But... but... don't they know resistance is futile?

Yeah, I was told their biological and technological distinctiveness would be added to our own! What's going on here?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Go check out the origins of the party. The Whigs imploded over slavery. The Democrats split into northern and southern factions. And the Republicans were born.

Re:That's not the professional term

[AP31R0N]

Noob predates 1337. Pwned is just owned, not a new word.

Only kekeke isn't just an English word with a cute spelling.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, sure, if you strip out the sensible and logical parts with ellipses it's just plain racist. But, hey, don't let reading comprehension and logic get in the way. It sure is easier to call someone a racist than actually debate.

And to think GP posted as AC to avoid the karma backlash. Just goes to show what happens to those with the courage to say what others know is true but are afraid themselves to say...

Re:That's not the professional term

[Animaether]

So I take it you speak Cherokee?

You take it that...
1. shoehornjob -moved- to the United States
2. at the time of said moving, Cherokee was the official or defacto conversational and government communication language in the country.

I take it you couldn't be more mistaken.

The xkcd comic ( http://xkcd.com/84/ ) doesn't just point out a hypocrisy at first glance, but a false hypocrisy when you think about it as it tries to apply the logic retroactively even to those who did -not- emigrate to The U.S.

As for the actual issue at hand... it seems to me that the spread of Spanish languages through adoption from businesses and government alike to cater to the immigrants who do -not- learn English well enough will continue and an English/Hispanic dual language would emerge.

Compare that to most other nations that border another nation with a different language, and you won't see quite such a wide-spread adoption - such dual languages or bilingual use is often limited to a few tens of kilometers around the borders. I.e. retail businesses in Coevorden, NL are probably going to have signs out in Dutch -and- German. But in Hoogeveen, NL, some 30kms away? Forget about it.

Which is preferable and whether it really matters is another story :)

Re:That's not the professional term

[benedict]

So you're assuming that your dialect is "correct", and anyone else's is, a priori, a problem.

Re:That's not the professional term

[benedict]

Something tells me that Coward, above -- and it's quite apt in this case -- doesn't know any black people.

Re:That's not the professional term

[benedict]

Rap's been around for decades, too!

Not that I couldn't predict it, but the ignorance on display in this thread is mind-blowing. Especially from a group of people which likes to think it has exceptional intelligence and command of facts.

Re:That's not the professional term

[benedict]

Mod parent up!

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Indians are extinct you lose.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

But... but... don't they know resistance is futile?

Yeah, I was told their biological and technological distinctiveness would be added to our own! What's going on here?

Perhaps we gave up on that at the same time we decided their culture no longer needs to adapt to service us.

Re:That's not the professional term

[PitaBred]

It's not racist if it's true. It's like observing that a lot of people in Minnesota have Nordic customs. It's simply true, it's not racist.

Re:That's not the professional term

[canadian_right]

It was modded up because there ARE places in the USA where getting good grades will get you beaten up for being "white".

Re:That's not the professional term

[PitaBred]

I also didn't suckle at it's welfare teat.

Educated black people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Cosby abhor the ignorance that is Ebonics. Why in the fuck are you people defending it? Are you trying to keep the black man ignorant to make you feel better about yourselves?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

but I can't help but think that the time spent trying to master a difficult set of pictographs, or learn a wide variety of languages, takes away from time you could spend mastering something else.

Have you also wandered also how much time and effort takes to memorize the spelling and pronunciation of each word in English, and how severely disadvantaged are the English/American kids wrt. Italian or Turkish ones? (where any average kid can have a FULL command of reading/writing by first grade).

The only manner in which Chinese writing is more complicated than English is that is much harder to grep(1) for a word when you have only a vague idea of what letters/strokes it is made of ;-)

Re:That's not the professional term

[Kielistic]

Guyana nor Surinam speak Spanish. Your point mostly stands but there are other countries in South America that do not speak Spanish.

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

I am a black person.

Re:That's not the professional term

[WiglyWorm]

Or is noob the first l33t word?

Re:That's not the professional term

[theshowmecanuck]

Cajun to be clear, is not based on English. It is based on Acadian French. Acadia is a region in the province of New Brunswick in Canada. In one of the wars between the English and French in the 17th or 18th century, when Britain captured that region (of what is now Canada), they tried to ship all the resident Acadians to then French controlled Louisiana as a means to rid the area of French influence. It is doubtful whether they found all the French residents. In subsequent wars, France won and then lost the area again. This time the British left the people where they were. Cajun is a bastardization of Acadian. After hurricane Katrina, the Acadians in New Brunswick offered Louisiana Cajuns sanctuary which a number took up.

Re:That's not the professional term

[theshowmecanuck]

Sure, isolate yourself from the rest of the world, and don't 'snitch' when a crime occurs right in front of you. Two good practices to ensure people never have a chance out of poverty and crime. Keep it up... you're helping [/sarcasm]

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

Spanish speakers, for example, routinely accept dialectal differences that are comparable to those between SAE and AAVE.

They accept them because they evolved over a large ocean and many generations. Artificial "I wanna be different" dialects would probably be treated more derisively.

Re:That's not the professional term

[SwedishPenguin]

You're completely right now that I read it again. Perhaps I should abstain from further remarks about the grammars of a non-native language. :P

Re:That's not the professional term

[badkarmadayaccount]

It's even saddder that I didn't even notice it's leetspeak.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

So if there is "correct and grammatical" AAVE? Why isn't there "correct and grammatical" (or as some of us call it "proper") English?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

^^^ Posterboy for hypocrisy. ^^^

So let me get this straight:

1) A bunch of ppl hang out with each other, develop methods of speech that eventually become difficult for the uninitiated to understand.
2) Uninitiated ppl eavesdrop on these conversations and ask for help.

If it's you, your friends, a culture you're engaged in, it's just slang. Purely for fun.

If it's any1 else, it's indicative of all that's wrong with the world...

You defend a culture EXPLICITLY engaged in, defined by, and worships the following:
1) crime (hacking, piracy)
2) depravity (porn, guru)
3) abuse (trolling, harassment)
4) violence (games, irl video)

Condemn them both or stfu about all of it plz.

Re:That's not the professional term

[sjames]

Huh? All I said is that leet is merely slang. I made no value judgments, you brought that baggage with you.

Re:That's not the professional term

[vgerdj]

same here

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I'd argue that "do not" is the negative in this context. When you stripped it out, you said "I have any books" and not "I do have any books".

The "do" is a superfluous word added merely because that is how we grammatically insert the negative into a statement.

I'd label the any as an indefinite pronoun.

LK

Please look up "pronoun". The "any" here is most certainly not a pronoun, as grammar precludes all use of a pronoun in this position.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

A single language of communications is VASTLY superior to multiple languages when looking at society as a functioning entity.

This is a very common assertion and belief of Americans, and is highly related to our general denigration of minority languages in our area.

As a result we have a single common language which gets preference.

Correlation does not indicate causation. We always had a common language, because the people moving here had a consistent language. We also were colonized in a time when history had words and the advancement of language was stayed somewhat by people being exposed to not just their parents' and grandparents' speech, but also those of older generations.

The US and the Americas in general do not have a single language because it's more efficient... we have it, because we were colonized, and immigrated by such heavy monocultures.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I'm quite sure everyone in the UK speaks UK English, though I know Welsh and Gaelic are still spoken in certain pockets. However, you're not going to find anyone in London that speaks either of these languages, and the Welsh and Gaelic speakers also speak English.

There is also Scots, which has been declared a minority language (some would consider it a dialect).

And because it is spoken in those areas, it is accepted as a language of common use in those areas. We had the moral gumption to ride into New Mexico and demand that they become an English speaking state.

Netherlands = Dutch. There might be some pockets of people speaking Frisian or whatever, but they don't expect the entire country to speak it to cater to them.

In particular, I'm familiar with Limburgish. Each city marker in the land of Limburg has the Dutch name, and the Limburgish name of the city. Individuals are also guaranteed the right to speak Limburgish with an interpreter for access to government.

Almost every country has a single, dominant language of commerce and government. People who speak minority languages speak the main language in addition to their own.

Like Switzerland?

While many people do speak the language of power as well as their minority language, they are granted by law guarantees of access to government in their minority language.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

How can you see that it's only "wrong" because we say it is?

It's wrong for the same reason Cajun or hillbilly speak is wrong, it's just not proper English.

I think the point is, it's not English. It has its own rules, and grammar. And it therefore deserves recognition as a valid form of SPEECH.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Most new words are coined as compounds in Mandarin, rather than inventing entirely new words. Telephone for instance is "electric talk", rather than something brand new.

The same is true with proton, neutron, and electron.

That might be true for spoken language, but I think literacy becomes much more difficult the more complex the alphabet, with pictograph literacy the hardest.

Languages tend to work weird like this... the harder X becomes the easier Y becomes. For instance, abjads like Arabic and Hebrew don't record short vowels... you can literally entirely mispronounce a short vowel in Arabic, and no one thinks you're wrong... they just think you're talking weird.

Then you get into alphabets, where people start insisting that certain words be spellt a certain way, because that's how they've always been spellt, and we're not going to downgrade the vowel in this word, even though in speech, it is now simply a schwa, and there is no way for a speaker to tell if it's sepArate, or sepErate.. or really even sepirate, sepurate.

Each writing system has its own obstacles for mastery.

Oddly, while the French achieved cast literacy in the Vietnamese by switching them from ideographs to letters, they shifted the burden of literacy in those who only need recognize 10-20 characters ever, to mastering the entire spelling system.

Good in a literate society, bad in an illiterate society.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Omestes]

This is a very common assertion and belief of Americans, and is highly related to our general denigration of minority languages in our area.

This isn't a refutation. Also the "denigration of minority languages" doesn't imply a bad thing, and if it does it needs some backing facts as to why this could be bad.

Correlation does not indicate causation. We always had a common language, because the people moving here had a consistent language. We also were colonized in a time when history had words and the advancement of language was stayed somewhat by people being exposed to not just their parents' and grandparents' speech, but also those of older generations.

Correlation CAN indicate causation, it just doesn't necessarily always do so. There is a correlation between how many Cheetos I eat and my waistline, this correlation implies causation, and indeed shows it.

We really didn't have a single linguistic heritage. The US is formed of many different cultural territories (with individual linguistic traditions) that were gobbled up. The area in which I live was mainly Spanish speaking (and various native dialects) before the US gobbled it up. These areas could have, as in other cases, remained linguistically distinct.

There may a historical reason for our love of a single language (decreasingly so, now that about half of all official communications are in Spanish here), but this doesn't disprove that this tradition has remained in play for so long because of the ease of using a single language over multiple languages.

The origin can be caused by one thing, and the impetus by another.

Re:That's not the professional term

[losfromla]

I see, I didn't catch that you didn't think it was English. So you'd have it be treated as a separate language altogether? We'd have DMV forms written in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Ebonics?
You really think it has the legitimacy of an actual language? Does hillbilly or cajun get the same status in your book?
I was not aware that it had rules or grammar in actual use, always figured it was just a slang way of talking. Are you sure that these "rules" and "grammar" aren't just being applied by linguists to help yourselves make sense of something that doesn't?

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

The "do" is a superfluous word added merely because that is how we grammatically insert the negative into a statement.

You're sounding an awful lot like one of those prescriptivists now.

More on point, I reject your premise. "I have not books." is the most direct negation of "I have books".

Please look up "pronoun". The "any" here is most certainly not a pronoun, as grammar precludes all use of a pronoun in this position.

I'll save you the trouble of looking up the term "Indefinite Pronoun" for yourself.

Though I admit, you would have as arguable point if you were to claim that it's merely a quantifier or determiner.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[shiftless]

OK, have you ever been to the South, have any idea what the actual realities are down there? Apparently not.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Anonymous Coward]

True enough, but do you know anyone who insists on speaking leet for job interviews, court, and with their grandmother even after it has clearly caused a difficulty in communication?

The article isn't about job interviews, court testimony, or conversations with grandmothers. It's about translating secret recordings of private conversations. None of what you mentioned is in TFA. Now how about a 3rd poster for hypocrisy?

Re:That's not the professional term

[hsthompson69]

Is Tennessee South enough for you?

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

You're sounding an awful lot like one of those prescriptivists now.

No, I am a descriptivist. The superfluous "do" is inserted by consensus by speakers of Standard American English. It is simply what they do. If you think they don't, then ... you're denying reality.

More on point, I reject your premise. "I have not books." is the most direct negation of "I have books".

People do not say "I have not books". Second of all, the statement "I have no book" is parallel to the German: "Ich habe kein Buch". It is a possible version of expressing the statement "I don't have any books." However, SAE speakers do not say this.

You can't argue "this is how people speak" with "I think this is how it should be."

I'll save you the trouble of looking up the term "Indefinite Pronoun" [wikipedia.org] for yourself.

Do you understand that one word can have different uses? "Any" can be an indefinite pronoun, however, in the statement "I don't have any books" it is absolutely not a pronoun, if you are having trouble understanding this, please speak to a 9th grade English teacher... I don't have time to teach you remedial English.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

The origin can be caused by one thing, and the impetus by another.

This is exactly what I was trying to point you to. The reasons for us having such a limited linguistic culture, is because we have such a limited linguistic input.

BTW, I grew up in New Mexico, we were heavily Spanish speaking, and remained so throughout. About one person in four speaks Spanish in their home. Likely even more are fluent. However, when New Mexico went to become a state, the US Congress required them to switch their ruling language to English.

My grandmother was beaten in school for speaking Spanish.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I see, I didn't catch that you didn't think it was English.

Well, it's difficult to classify exactly what it is. It is a form of English, in the same way that English and German are both Germanic languages. Similarly, a Russian Blue is still a cat, but it's definitely not a Calico.

So you'd have it be treated as a separate language altogether? We'd have DMV forms written in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Ebonics?

"Languages are dialects with an army and a navy". It's difficult to draw the line between what is and is not a language. However, if a language/dialect is sufficiently different so as to make it difficult to properly fill out a DMV form, then yes, we should provide them in that dialect/language.

You really think it has the legitimacy of an actual language? Does hillbilly or cajun get the same status in your book?

"Legitimacy" is retarded sometimes. Depending on your opinion about the legitimacy of things, either only Taiwan or China exist. This legitimacy of only one China denies reality, where
de facto, there are two.

My opinions on the matter do not matter, de facto, AAVE presents difficulties of communication, and is sufficiently different enough to deserve consideration.

I was not aware that it had rules or grammar in actual use, always figured it was just a slang way of talking. Are you sure that these "rules" and "grammar" aren't just being applied by linguists to help yourselves make sense of something that doesn't?

Linguists are actually quite easily able to detect the lack of grammar and syntax. These are widely known as pigeons. AAVE is not simply "slang" or a "lazy way of speaking". In fact, it has some aspects of verbs that must be expressed in English with circumlocution.

Re:That's not the professional term

[losfromla]

I must say, snowgirl that I think you're being at least a little unfair in this debate. Every time I try to pin you down, you back off and qualify (in fact abandon) your responses. You stated it was a language, then waffled vigorously when pressed. You'd be slick if you were a politician, but this here debate ain't politics.

I will accept your assertion (as you've claimed some expertise and knowledge in the area) that linguists can detect lack of grammar and syntax, however, I'm not clear how some a manner of speaking having "some aspects of verbs that must be expressed in English with circumlocution" give credence to your argument that ebonics is not "slang" or "lazy english". I presume you meant pidgins when you stated "pigeons", no big deal, I'm sure you're keeping up multiple threads and are growing weary of it all.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

The superfluous "do" is inserted by consensus by speakers of Standard American English. It is simply what they do.

If it were superfluous, it wouldn't be standard practice.

People do not say "I have not books".

It's not currently fashionable to speak that way, but it's perfectly valid and some people still do say that.

"Any" can be an indefinite pronoun, however, in the statement "I don't have any books" it is absolutely not a pronoun

You are mistaken.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[Omestes]

This is exactly what I was trying to point you to. The reasons for us having such a limited linguistic culture, is because we have such a limited linguistic input.

Do we? You pointed out the huge amount of Spanish being spoken in New Mexican (And Arizonan, and Texan, and Californian) homes. We also have signifigant minority groups who imported their culture and languages over here. Last night I ate at an Indian restaurant, all of the staff, and half of the customers were chatting in some Indian dialect. My old neighborhood was largely Hispanic, and it was rare to hear English spoken, even in shops. There also was a signifigant (but dwindling) Korean population, their shops and restaurants had predominantly Korean signs, and you mostly heard Korean in their shops. In the 90's we received an influx of Bosnian (and other war-torn Eastern European groups), whp generally had a higher level of English competency, but mostly spoke their own languages at home, and in their restaurants and shops. And this is in a city not known for its non-Hispanic mutliculturalism (unlike cities like San Fransisco, New York, etc...).

I wouldn't say that non-English languages are that much threatened. Nor is there too much tyranny about it (these days, we have done our fair share of despicable things in the past, obviously).

Hell, go sit in your local court house (if you still live in the Southwest), the interpretors are the busiest people there.

If we were aiming of a linguistic mono-culture it isn't working, at least in this region.

Taking a longer view, having multiple (unrelated) languages in one culture is probably a very temporary affair, as in one or two generations. People move or get conquered, form ethnic enclaves, and finally their children or grandchildren become fully assimilated. I don't think this is fully a forceful thing, though at times it can be.

Fully assimilated isn't quite right. They generally maintain some characteristics of their origin culture, but these defuse out into the larger population and become a regional difference (see the Cajuns, for example).

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

If it were superfluous, it wouldn't be standard practice.

Certainly, because certainly people don't ever EVER do anything that might even be REMOTELY or POSSIBLY superfluous in their speech.

Wiktionary says superfluous means: "in excess of what is required or sufficient" Which, considering as you have noted people can say "I have no book." or "I haven't any books." Or whatever, then it is certainly the case that "do" is in excess, and not required or sufficient.

It's not currently fashionable to speak that way, but it's perfectly valid and some people still do say that.

Do you even read what I write? My statement was that double negatives are not logically invalid, because people can and do speak that way, in particular in most languages around the world.

You are mistaken.

Ok, let me give you a clear example here: The word "boil" can be an noun or a verb. When I say "I made a crab boil." I am not using "boil" as a verb, even though "boil" can be a verb. No less, when I say "I boiled the water." I am not using an intransitive verb, even though "The water boils." is using an intransitive verb. Each of those sentence are not using "boil" as a noun.

Now, a pronoun is something that occurs in place of a noun, namely, for a noun, or "pro-noun" like "justice pro-tempore". In the statement "I don't have any books", "any" does not occur in place of a noun. It occurs as a descriptor for a noun, which has a term, and it is not "pronoun", it's called an "adjective". Wiktionary specifically states this use is a Determiner, but certainly not a pronoun .

Now, again, if you're having difficulty understanding the fact that the "any" used in "I don't have any books" is not a pronoun then please talk with a 9th grade English teacher, because I don't want to teach you remedial English.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Taking a longer view, having multiple (unrelated) languages in one culture is probably a very temporary affair, as in one or two generations.

You're arguing two sides of the same argument... you're arguing that NM is full of minority speakers, yet this couldn't stick around for more than a generation or two, yet NM has been that way for a multitude of generations.

The US is actually working backwards, from a fairly mono-linguistic history towards a multi-linguistic culture accepting of minority languages.

Either way, this "one language is the most efficient and thus will come to be" idea is bogus... you argued that the origins of the US show this to be true, but the origins dispute this assertion. And our culture is becoming only more diverse, not less diverse.... so current trends indicate disagreement with your original position as well.

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I must say, snowgirl that I think you're being at least a little unfair in this debate. Every time I try to pin you down, you back off and qualify (in fact abandon) your responses. You stated it was a language, then waffled vigorously when pressed. You'd be slick if you were a politician, but this here debate ain't politics.

You attempted to pin some sort of validity, or "legitimacy" that only languages have, and dialects do not. I refuted such a statement, and noted that drawing a line between dialects and languages is difficult if not impossible.

Often times the only difference between the two is the legitimacy itself. Languages are recognized, and dialects are denigrated... there being no actual difference between the two groups than that.

I'm not clear how some a manner of speaking having "some aspects of verbs that must be expressed in English with circumlocution" give credence to your argument that ebonics is not "slang" or "lazy english".

Excuse me if you already know this, but verbs have a few things beyond just the "tense" that we recognize. They also have "mood" and "aspect". Aspect is used to indicate the continuity of an action, or habitual action. AAVE has more forms of "aspect" than English does, thus it requires speakers to acknowledge more information and distinction in their speech than SAE does.

I mean, you could just call "English" a lazy language in general... we have hardly any conjugation (three forms of a verb), we heavily use circumlocution and analytic speech rather than synthetic speech. We've dropped all case distinction in nouns, and retain case distinction in pronouns only for nominative and objective cases.

Do these "lazy" properties of English make even SAE "lazy" speech? Are we all lazy for killing off the subjunctive mood, or the "who/whom" distinction? Are we all lazy for dropping the distinction between cot/caught?

In fact, SAE retains more Victorian English qualities than British dialects... does that make British English lazy compared to SAE? Doesn't that fly in the face of American opinions about SAE verse British English? Of course British people speak a more refined and proper English... except that they actually annunciate less than we do.

AAVE/Ebonics, Cajun, and Appalachian all are considered "lazy" forms of speech because they're not the common way of speaking. We call the speakers lazy for "not learning how to speak properly", when they learned to speak the exact same way that we did... they just didn't have the "privilege" of learning the dialect that people have higher regard for.

Re:That's not the professional term

[jpkunst]

Each city marker in the land of Limburg has the Dutch name, and the Limburgish name of the city.

This isn't the case in Limburg. Were you thinking of Frisia?

Individuals are also guaranteed the right to speak Limburgish with an interpreter for access to government.

Not sure if this is true. However, if it is, it's purely symbolic. There are probably a few very elderly native Dutch people in the Netherlands who don't speak standard Dutch, but the numbers will be so small as to be negligable. And I'm sure all of them will at least understand standard Dutch.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Omestes]

My apologies, this argument has stretched on for a bit, and the format of /. isn't friendly to long debates.

As I seem to remember, you were arguing against requiring a common language (i.e. Standard English), and I was arguing for. At some point I argued that having a common language didn't hurt the general body of languages. The argument, as far as I can tell, never really touched on whether having several languages is bad, only that having one "master" language is good or bad.

Well, I suppose it is more complicated than that, since there was also the whole "morality", and "utility" thing that started the whole mess.

Recap done, moving right along.

I could see the US developing differing regional common languages. Such as most business in the Southwest and perhaps far Southeast taking place in Spanish due to population shifts. This, too, would be a normal development. The one problem, though, is that the the Southwest is more Balkanized than it should be. There are enclaves of purely Spanish speakers that have very little to no interaction with English speakers (At least in Phoenix, and parts of Tucson, my experience is limted outside of this). This keeps us from ever really having a mixed population. Where I live now, I could probably go a weeks without ever having a meaningful encounter with someone who speaks Spanish (suburbs). At my last house, it was a bit more mixed, but there still was a large degree of segregation* (both intentional and non).

Our cultures really don't mix that well out here.

Yes, this is true of other waves of immigration, but there is a couple important differences. The wave of Mexican, and other Latin American groups has been huge compared to previous waves. And do to this size they manage to get fully functioning communities that don't require much from the outside dominant culture. There are parts of Phoenix (and every other Southwestern) city that could be considered a small annex of Mexico. This is far beyond the scope of various other China-towns, Italian towns, etc...

The only hope is breaking this communities open, and having them mix freely with the bigger culture. This probably won't happen.

* Sad story. I lived right next to a small, poor, and completely Mexican (actually, more Yaqui Indians...) (probably mostly illegal) apartment complex. Thanks to Phoenix' bizarre demographic crazy-quilt, it was completely surrounded by affluent houses and apartments for young, art-trade, professionals. It was about as out of place as you can imagine. One night they were have a HUGE festival, and me and my girlfriend were very curious about what they were celebrating. We wandered over to ask someone sitting on the outskirts of the party, and they all pretty much fled uncomfortably from us. It was pretty depressing.

We did finally find a very nice woman who told us. Through her we managed to get a small crowed of very helpful people. It was the Feast of Saint Francis. She invited us to the big Festival of Mary, but she was pretty rare since everyone else avoided us. We didn't go, since it would a bit odd for two atheist, English-speaking, gringos to wander around.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

Certainly, because certainly people don't ever EVER do anything that might even be REMOTELY or POSSIBLY superfluous in their speech.

Sounding an awful low like one of those prescriptivists again...

You well know that language evolved. What we not consider Standard English is different than it was 100 years ago.

Do you even read what I write? My statement was that double negatives are not logically invalid, because people can and do speak that way, in particular in most languages around the world.

Of course I read what you wrote, it's still wrong. Double negatives, in addition to violating the standard rules of the language are logically reversed from their intended meaning.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

Sounding an awful low like one of those prescriptivists again...

God damn it, I'm not saying what people SHOULD be saying, I'm saying what they DO say.

Your position was that people don't ever use superfluous elements, and I pointed out via direct counter-example that people really do actually use superfluous elements to express extra emphasis. (Oh look! I DID IT AGAIN!!!)

Of course I read what you wrote, it's still wrong. Double negatives, in addition to violating the standard rules of the language are logically reversed from their intended meaning.

And your entire argument is counter-exampled by the speech of millions of people around the world. French being the most particularly available example. (In fact, nearly every negative French sentence is a double negative.)

As another example from the Wikipedia page on the topic:

The following are literal translations of grammatically correct Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian sentences: Niko nikada nigde nita nije uradio - Nobody never nowhere nothing did not do (nobody has ever done anything, anywhere); Nisam tamo nikad ila - I did not there never go (I have never been there).

If your statement is that double negatives are logically invalid, then such a statement must apply universally. My statement is that double negatives are not logically invalid, and thus may be applied. And the facts are on the side of, drum roll please.... ME!!! Because double negatives are in fact widely applied.

That I have to explain this shit to you is not surprising, though; since you don't even know how to properly identify parts of speech...

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

Your position was that people don't ever use superfluous elements,

No. Try reading for comprehension. My position is that it wouldn't have become the standard practice if it were superfluous.

"being more than is sufficient or required", more than required for what? If the answer is to communicate the speaker's intended point of view, then it is not.

If your statement is that double negatives are logically invalid, then such a statement must apply universally.

You're conflating issues. My position is that double negatives carry a logical meaning that is the opposite of the intent of the speaker.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

No. Try reading for comprehension. My position is that it wouldn't have become the standard practice if it were superfluous.

Language doesn't work this way. The "pas" in the French sentence "Je n'est pas bête." is superfluous. As in, "Je est bête." is the positive sentence, and the "ne" is the negation. This simple negation is followed by nearly all of the Romance languages, French being the notable exception, that decided for arbitrary reasons, that one should say "pas" after the verb of a simple negative.

"being more than is sufficient or required", more than required for what? If the answer is to communicate the speaker's intended point of view, then it is not.

Let's look at some hypothetical English. The statement "*I believe in this not." could hypothetically be a valid English sentence, if English had decided to follow the rules of its Germanic heritage. However, English chose to use circumlocution in this case, and transform "I believe in this." to "I do believe in this." before applying negation, "I do not believe in this."

Being that English requires the use of a meaningless verb, which exists only to attach the negative to, makes it superfluous, as the negative alone could (but not does) suffices for communicating fully the meaning of their intent.

You're conflating issues. My position is that double negatives carry a logical meaning that is the opposite of the intent of the speaker.

The example sentence of: "Niko nikada nigde nita nije uradio" proves your position is not universally true. While it is literally translated: "Nobody never nowhere nothing did not do" Full of negation, the proper English meaning is a simple single negation.

Chaucer (you know, that world-wide well known English author?) used double negatives to mean a simple negation. Pink Floyd uses it in: "We don't need no education." and no one has difficulty understanding that this a simple negation.

Your assertion has a logical argument to it, and this is why prescriptivists believe that one should not use the double negative. However, plain empirical evidence proves de facto that they are wrong, and have misinterpreted data to fit their logical argument.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

This simple negation is followed by nearly all of the Romance languages, French being the notable exception, that decided for arbitrary reasons, that one should say "pas" after the verb of a simple negative.

I have only a working knowledge of French, I am in no position to opine about the structure of the language. In this case, I'll defer to your opinion.

However, English chose to use circumlocution in this case, and transform "I believe in this." to "I do believe in this." before applying negation, "I do not believe in this."

That's a relatively recent convention. It's still perfectly valid, though perhaps not popular, to say "I believe not in this." The 'Do' is not necessary.

While it is literally translated: "Nobody never nowhere nothing did not do" Full of negation, the proper English meaning is a simple single negation.

Bad example, for your position. That's 5 negatives. Logically, 5 negatives is the same as 1.

Chaucer (you know, that world-wide well known English author?) used double negatives to mean a simple negation.

I'm aware of Chaucer's existence, I have never read his work.

Pink Floyd uses it in: "We don't need no education." and no one has difficulty understanding that this a simple negation.

I guess you're missing the irony of that statement. "We don't need no education.", when clearly they do.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I have only a working knowledge of French, I am in no position to opine about the structure of the language. In this case, I'll defer to your opinion.

You also are in no position to be opining about the nature of double negatives either, because you clearly haven't studied any linguistics, yet you refuse to defer to my "opinion" on the matter in that case either.

I'm offering you the informed educated position, and you're rejecting it.

That's a relatively recent convention. It's still perfectly valid, though perhaps not popular, to say "I believe not in this." The 'Do' is not necessary.

So, you agree then, that the "do" is superfluous, because it is not necessary.

Bad example, for your position. That's 5 negatives. Logically, 5 negatives is the same as 1.

God, I knew you'd pull this shit. Fine: "Niko nigde nita nije uradio" Same sentence, minus the never... it's still a simple negative statement.

I guess you're missing the irony of that statement. "We don't need no education.", when clearly they do.

No, they don't "clearly" need education. They speak a perfectly grammatical language, they just don't hold up to your arbitrary decisions on how language should be spoken.

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

ou also are in no position to be opining about the nature of double negatives either, because you clearly haven't studied any linguistics, yet you refuse to defer to my "opinion" on the matter in that case either.

I'm not arguing a linguistic point. I'm arguing a logic point.

So, you agree then, that the "do" is superfluous, because it is not necessary.

It's unnecessary for that particular subject-verb arrangement.

God, I knew you'd pull this shit.

Yet you still argued the point that you knew I'd dispute?

No, they don't "clearly" need education. They speak a perfectly grammatical language, they just don't hold up to your arbitrary decisions on how language should be spoken.

The logical meaning of the words is the exact opposite of the speaker's intent.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

I'm not arguing a linguistic point. I'm arguing a logic point.

The logical meaning of the words is the exact opposite of the speaker's intent.

The speakers who use this completely disagree with you. Particularly, the people who speak a language where use of every possible negative is absolutely required in every negative sentence.

Your logic is not automatically correct just because it appears sound. This is the very definition of "specious". You cannot accept that your argument LOOKS correct, to the range of evaluating it and the determination that via direct empirical evidence your argument is wrong.

It's unnecessary for that particular subject-verb arrangement.

Again, so you're now agreeing with me that it is "superfluous". The only reason SAE speakers do this is because of convention.

Yet you still argued the point that you knew I'd dispute?

Because it does not dismiss my argument. Again, remove any one of the negations in the sentence, and the sentence is still a single simple negation.

You're just being an argumentative asshole!

Re:That's not the professional term

[Lord Kano]

You're just being an argumentative asshole!

The one being argumentative is you. BTW, I can call names too, you cunt.

LK

Re:That's not the professional term

[snowgirl]

You're just being an argumentative asshole!

The one being argumentative is you. BTW, I can call names too, you cunt.

LK

You openly admit that you do not have the background necessary to address my comments about French.

You however fail to recognize the lack of background necessary to actually address the validity of the double negative.

Logically, there is no reason to assume that there are three generations of electron. Logically, there is no reason why photons could be their own antiparticle. But empirical evidence tells us that these things are true.

In the same way, double negatives are used widely in all manner of languages all around the world. Your assertion about the "logical nature" of negatives within a sentence must therefore be inaccurate and flawed in some way, as it directly contradicts evidence.

I am being argumentative because the evidence supports my side, like Semmelweis, but unlike Semmelweis, my position is also affirmed by modern linguistic theories.

Your only argument in this matter is "this isn't the way I think it should work", which is a perfectly common sense notion, but completely unavailing, and like much of common science in science, wrong. It is for the reason of defending this empirically false position that you attain not just "argumentative" but "argumentative asshole".

Not enough mod points...

[strokerace]

There aren't enough mod points in the universe to mod down all the trolls that are going to be posting on this topic.

Re:Not enough mod points...

[longhairedgnome]

I used my last mod point to mod you "Informative." Oh SHI--zzel.

Re:Not enough mod points...

[at_slashdot]

There aren't enough mod points in the universe to mod down all the trolls that are going to be posting on this topic.

Of course there are, for example I'd like to see your post moded down as troll, flamebait or offtopic.

Re:Not enough mod points...

[porkThreeWays]

The story should have just been "do you agree/disagree with ebonics? Discuss."

The Wire

[amundb]

Has already done it.

Airplane!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, stewardess, I speak jive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhJDvI3gUO8

Re:Airplane!

[Kiaser Zohsay]

We've come a long way since then. These days, the stewardesses can speak ebonics with needing any help translating.

awesome!

[larry bagina]

all those years of wigger training is finally going to pay off! YOU HEAR THAT MOM?!?!?!?!

Re:awesome!

[L4t3r4lu5]

I think you mean "You be hearin' me, biatch?!"

Re:awesome!

[sharkey]

See, cracka need mo' schoolin', dig? Shit.

Re:awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, Larry Vagina.

Perhaps they can get the Barbara Billingsly charac

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they can get the Barbara Billingsly character from "Airplane!" " I speak jive!"

Wow...

[Zantac69]

I mean...really. Wow.

Ebonics is not like "jive" from the 70s. Anyone who really listens can understand it - its just a butchering of southern USA english.

Re:Wow...

[Amouth]

No it isn't "southern" - i'm not sure what it is but i know southern and it isn't this.

Re:Wow...

[hedwards]

It's derived from the dialects of the south, but that doesn't mean that it's likely to bear much of a resemblance. I mean after all, down south for a really long time there were limitations on education, employment and just general mixing of the races. Suggesting that a linguistic grouping would be derived in a straightforward way is ignorant. If you don't believe me, try comparing the dialects of Korean between the speakers from the North and the speakers from the South and you'd get the picture.

Re:Wow...

[rickb928]

"its just a butchering of southern USA english"

If that were true, the Justice Department would need translators to watch Paula Deen.

You cannot make this stuff up. Not even Colbert can make this stuff up.

Re:Wow...

[fiannaFailMan]

Anyone who really listens can understand it - its just a butchering of southern USA english.

Au contraire, I watched a movie called American Pimp, much of which was in Ebonics, and I could barely understand a word of it.

Just because you can understand it doesn't mean everyone else can.

Re:Wow...

[istartedi]

OK, then answer me this: "Wurzee d'ten cen a'"

That was the first pass. I had to ask her to repeat it several times, and she knew I was having a hard time with her speech. Her final, phrasing, the one I got due to the additional supplied context and knowing that I was near a jail, was this:

"Wurazee d'tensun cennah at. Ma boyfrien' in there".

Bear in mind, this was an interraction with a woman in public who wanted me to understand her and it was extremely difficult. On a wiretap recording I would have been totally SOL.

Re:Wow...

[losfromla]

yeah, I'll do that. Hmm, would I have to know Korean written or spoken to carry out this simple and illustrative task? That would be a bit of a problem...

Re:Wow...

[CityZen]

There's much more to understanding what people say than just understanding the literal meaning of what they said. If you really want to understand somebody, you must also understand all the connotations for the wording they chose, as well as know about different possible wordings and be able to guess why they didn't use those. You must also be able to pick up on intonation and be able to pick up on sarcasm, humor, and various other expressive emotions. It's often critical to know when someone is being serious and when they're kidding.

Were are living in the Onion

[cosm]

What it do pimpinz? We be keepin it real in dis bitch. All yo' base iz belong to us, go tell that homie. Be real, be ez /.ers

Similarly, this just in. Looks like the administration is taking a page out of the Onion's book.

Ebonics experts

[DevConcepts]

Whats next... Spanglish experts?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanglish

Re:Ebonics experts

[hedwards]

It's been a need for sometime to have niche language experts. For instance the German English hybrid which common in Amish country, is difficult to understand without some understanding of the languages involved, and almost impossible to speak without knowing the specific rules. Not to mention the parts of the country where there's still holdover languages from times past before English became the more or less default language for everything.

Re:Ebonics experts

[Anonymous Coward]

For instance the German English hybrid which common in Amish country

Yet the DEA isn't hiring anyone to translate wiretaps in Amish country.

Re:Ebonics experts

[dgatwood]

I nearly spit orange juice on my keyboard.

Amish and wiretaps... that's a good one....

Re:Ebonics experts

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Spanglish is not a distinct language; it's a bunch of diverse Spanish-English bilingualism phenomena, which apply to different groups of people.

But yes, conceivably one might need experts to understand the meaning of some evidence produced by Spanish-English bilinguals. But those would probably be experts on the speech of a specific Hispanic subgroup, so that the guy who can help you descipher a Newyorican who switches between Spanish and English would be of little help with Mexican-Americans who did the same.

Couldn't help it...

[John Pfeiffer]

ENGLISH, motherfucker. DO YOU SPEAK IT?

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

Re:Couldn't help it...

[cosm]

Say 'what' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say what one more Goddamn time!

Re:Couldn't help it...

[amolapacificapaloma]

Whaaat?

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Anonymous Coward]

What??

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Que?

Re:Couldn't help it...

[RenoGeek]

NATIVE AMERICAN, motherfucker. SPEAK IT or get the FUCK out!

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Threni]

He axed you a question, blood.

Re:Couldn't help it...

[kahless62003]

nuqjatlh?

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Say 'what' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say what one more Goddamn time!

Huh?

Re:Couldn't help it...

[PPH]

Que?

Cómo se dice "fershizle" en Inglés?

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the expression used to describe you is "racist white trash" (culturally inept also comes to mind - but you probably don't know what that means). Now go back to your deep-woods barbecue and let the people with brains finish having a discussion.

Re:Couldn't help it...

[flaming error]

Because all targets of nonconsensual wiretaps should express themselves clearly for the sake of their eavesdroppers.

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the expression used to describe you is "racist white trash" (culturally inept also comes to mind - but you probably don't know what that means). I recommend you go back to your deep-woods barbecue and let the smart people finish having a conversation.

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Anonymous Coward]

what?...

Re:Couldn't help it...

[Omestes]

Fhtagn?

I'm curious...

[Mongoose Disciple]

First, how does the Justice Department, as part of their interviewing process, figure out if someone legitimately has this skill or is faking it? This can't be that far from being the linguistic equivalent of a non-technical company trying to hire a programmer or IT person with a particular kind of expertise. In the tech world those situations are dailywtf's waiting to happen -- it can't be much better in this one.

Second, if you had this expertise, how would you keep it current? Spend an hour a day riding public transportation in Oakland?

Re:I'm curious...

[PCM2]

First, how does the Justice Department, as part of their interviewing process, figure out if someone legitimately has this skill or is faking it?

Have them translate something. It's not like this skill does not exist already. You have an expert write up a dialogue (or get one from a wire tap) and then have applicants decipher it. If they're right, they're in.

Second, if you had this expertise, how would you keep it current? Spend an hour a day riding public transportation in Oakland?

Probably a little more than that, but essentially, yeah. You need to speak to the people in question on a regular basis. Social workers might be good candidates.

Re:I'm curious...

[retchdog]

A group of the moderately skilled can, through consensus and planning, quite efficiently evaluate an individual of higher skill. For example, psychometricians generally speaking aren't geniuses but their IQ tests are pretty good at detecting them.

Re:I'm curious...

[JamesP]

Shoe size?!

Just kidding... if they are looking for linguists they are probably going to base their skill assessment on actual research published by the candidate.

Re:I'm curious...

[Eristone]

Second, if you had this expertise, how would you keep it current? Spend an hour a day riding public transportation in Oakland?

Probably a little more than that, but essentially, yeah. You need to speak to the people in question on a regular basis. Social workers might be good candidates.

Black: Check.
Work Downtown Oakland: Check.
Ride Public Transport: Check.
For One Hour: (roundtrip) Check.
Ability to Translate: Sporadic at best. Happily references UrbanDictionary as needed.

With all do respect to some posters (and not the ones I'm replying to here) - skin pigmentation does not denote linguistic ability or accents.

Re:I'm curious...

[Eristone]

And it helps if I proofread these before I hit submit. s/do/due

[sigh]

Re:I'm curious...

[snowgirl]

Linguists have actually noted quite often how the naming of the dialect as "Black English Vernacular" or "AAVE" indicates a race, which does not indicate in any way except historically who speaks it.

There are plenty of white people who speak AAVE. We just haven't developed a better name for it, and we're kind of stuck with what it is already popularly known as.

The NAACP still means "colored people"... tradition is a powerful thing.

All of this just to say "most linguists wish there were a better term, but we can't agree on anything better".

Re:I'm curious...

[pckl300]

Second, if you had this expertise, how would you keep it current? Spend an hour a day riding public transportation in Oakland?

Urban Dictionary should suffice

Re:I'm curious...

[Mongoose Disciple]

For what it's worth, I picked "public transit commute through Oakland" because I learned a lot of slang that way a decade or so ago when I was rocking the BART. I sadly don't get out that way often enough anymore.

Re:I'm curious...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Urban Dictionary should suffice

Okay, but now how are you going to tell the terms/definitions on UrbanDictionary that people legitimately use from the ones that people just make up?

It's a fun site but dictionary.com it's not.

Re:I'm curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linguists have actually noted quite often how the naming of the dialect as "Black English Vernacular" or "AAVE" indicates a race, which does not indicate in any way except historically who speaks it.

Tell me about it. Half the time, I can't tell WTF my nephews are saying since they're part of a generation that speaks in that particular vernacular. :-P

The NAACP still means "colored people"... tradition is a powerful thing.

I'd forgotten about that one. In my life time, it has gone through black, negro, colored people, people of color, African-American and, I think back to black (and I'm not sure about the order).

For us melanin challenged, middle-age guys, it's awfully hard to keep track of what is currently a polite term, and what is bordering on a racial epithet. I'm not even sure it's consistent across most situations.

I refuse to use the 'N' word -- even among people who use it themselves. You go ahead, but a white guy over the age of 40 has no business using it unless he's seriously secure in WTF he's doing, and has well established precedent and context on his side.

Re:I'm curious...

[pckl300]

I thought the voting system on the site already took care of that.

Re:I'm curious...

[Mongoose Disciple]

A number of specious things manage to get voted up.

Or haven't you ever seen someone organize a campaign for that?

Re:I'm curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

With all do respect to some posters (and not the ones I'm replying to here) - skin pigmentation does not denote linguistic ability or accents.

With all DUE respect, you are ignoring the fact that most people who speak hood-talk are black. Not all, but most. The rest are referred to as "wiggers" and generally have trouble assimilating in hood-talk areas. So "black" is a reasonable criterion for the job. Having a cracker interpret hood-talk is like having a fatass telling you how to exercise - they may have studied it from the outside, but they can't possibly keep up.

Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[SlappyBastard]

Because, ya know, as a white dude I'd hate to lose my job translating negrospeak because I used the N-word.

Is it really that hard to understand negrospeak? Or are all the old guys who the DoJ just starting fossilize? Will this lead to black street gangs using Valley Girl Talk to throw the police off their trail?

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[longhairedgnome]

You would be more likely to lose your job if you were omitting words like that

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this lead to black street gangs using Valley Girl Talk to throw the police off their trail?

Like gag me with a spoon, k?

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[Anonymous Coward]

Racial vulgar slang aside. Doesn't it worry anyone how the war on terror spying has now picked American citizens as the new target, while the DOJ itself won't go after crime nor corruption hidden behind state secrets. The same people it targets pay for it. There won't be any justice until they go after the banksters and Senators for terrorizing the monetary system, or the CIA for bringing Afgan heroin into the USA.

All these agencies are failures, (when you consider the Constitution, and Civil Rights) but when you consider profit, theft, and power they are successful as hell.

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[bsDaemon]

As a white guy, you're probably more likely to get in trouble for referring to it as "negrospeak" in casual conversation. I'm pretty sure that's not a technical term... outside of Amos and Andy.

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[Zorque]

What a delightfully condescending post. "Negrospeak"? Seriously?

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[Abcd1234]

Is it really that hard to understand negrospeak

ROFL, wow... *please* tell me you're just trolling.

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did "negrospeak" get +3 interesting?

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[bsDaemon]

hey, dude... take it up with SlappyBastard

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[SlappyBastard]

Not quite trolling, but just sort of reflecting on the stupiditude of it all.

Re:Is there an N-word exemption by contract?

[slapout]

Not according to Harry Reid :-)

I say.

[Securityemo]

Robin Hood. this fin' might 'eaven and 'ell lead ter the bloody Cozzer's makin' less unfounded 'rrests. 'cause sometimes a Sexton Blake recipe is just a Sexton Blake recipe.

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Krahar]

Little Jacob in the game GTA IV is even worse.

Herein follow a few terms to help you get started

[MRe_nl]

on your merry way towards the ve-nak-u-lar

"Damn- that shit is DOPE".
That is a wonderful concept/object/action.
"Can't FADE that".
I am unable to comprehend or assimilate that concept at this time.
"Shante ain't havin' it".
This is not something that Shante will allow to occur.
"Homey- Boo was dropping PHAT beats".
Our friend Boo was playing some wonderful music.
"YO!- Let me GAFFLE that BLUNT"!
Might I be able to indulge in your marijuana cigarette?
"JIMMY was on and I was HITTIN' it"!
I had in my possession a condom, which was used in my engagement of sexual activity.

http://www.ebonics-translator.com/ebonics_101.php

Here is more information....

[Lumpy]

http://humor.beecy.net/misc/ebonics/

how many credit hours would that be? and I am wondering what the topic would be in Advanced Ebonics classes?

Re:Here is more information....

[Zeek40]

I'm pretty sure the 'Advanced Ebonics' classes would involve making up new nonsense words until one of them becomes popular, then repeating that word until most of society can recognize it as an 'idiot indicator'.

Re:Here is more information....

[uncanny]

That's a ginormous idea!!!

It might not be street...

[ddrichardson]

This comes to mind...

Re:It might not be street...

[blair1q]

LOL...izzle.

I don't see how this helps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Professional black criminals are smart enough to speak in code, so the only thing this hurts are stupid people who talk plainly about their illegal activities. Nevertheless, I suppose it can help understanding innocuous dialogue between the parties involved.

Wow. Pure flamebait.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the DEA has plenty of translators for a variety of languages and dialects. The only reason this is "news" is because it will create some passionate, if often irrelevant, debate.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

You made me smoke coffee from muh ma fuckin nostrils
ya'll is mad stupid.

http://joel.net/ebonics/translator.asp

HTML 'a' tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Read all about it:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_a.asp

AAVE is a fairly recent development

[kurisuto]

Actually, it appears that AAVE is a product of the Great Northern Migration of African-Americans in the early 20th century. Prior to that time, there was little to no distinction between the dialects of southern whites and southern blacks.

The pieces of evidence for this claim include:

• Phonograph recordings made in the 1930's of former slaves
• Diaries and letters written by semi-literate slaves and former slaves in the 19th century. Since the writers were semi-literate, the spelling is a better indication of the pronunciation than standard spelling would be.

• Something which linguists call "age grading". If you take speakers of AAVE today and compare younger speakers with older speakers, the younger speakers actually have a higher percentage occurrence of the distinctive features of AAVE. This suggests that AAVE is becoming increasingly distinct from standard American English over time.

There are other pieces of evidence as well, but those are some of the important ones.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[at_slashdot]

Informative response, thanks.

"This suggests that AAVE is becoming increasingly distinct from standard American English over time."

I wonder if this "age grading" doesn't just suggest that young people will eventually learn standard English better when they get to a certain age instead of the opposite conclusion, it's always hard to compare apples with oranges.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[at_slashdot]

"opposite conclusion" is not the right choice of words, I meant: instead of assuming that older people speech is a good indication of how they were speaking when they were young.

Also should have said "learn standard English better by the time they get to a certain age" -- English is not my first language, it plays tricks on me.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[kurisuto]

To answer your question about age grading, you have to look at a population at more than one point in time. In cases where this has been done (e.g. speakers of central American Spanish), what we find is that young adults have the highest percentage of the incoming feature (higher than both children and older adults). As those same young adults get older, their use of the incoming feature does decline some, but not down to the levels of the previous generation. The 40-year-olds today have a higher percentage of the incoming variant than the 40-year-olds twenty years ago.

Variants in speech can serve as social markers which you use to identify yourself as a member of a group. As a guess, I imagine that the slight decline in use of the incoming variant as you get older has less to do with "learning standard English better", and more to do with it not being quite as important to sound cool as you get older. As a 40-year-old, you probably still wear clothes which identify you as a member of a certain group, but you probably don't dress in quite as trendy a way as you did when you were 20.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[at_slashdot]

Word!

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[Kjella]

I think language is as much choice as it is something that just happens. Like some people hide their dialect, others deliberately talk different to distance themselves from others. Most typically parents and children - I don't there's ever been any generation that haven't felt the need to invent their own sub-language but also other subcultures. I figure that during slavery and shortly after there was a want to prove that they were not dumb slaves, they could be as literate as their masters. That was the stick with which they were measured. Only later when they feel it is more "equal but distinct" and to assert their own identity do they create a dialect of their own. I wouldn't put too much weight on it being just the migration.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what about Uncle Tom's Cabin? Written by a white woman, in the mid 1800s, and the speech patterns of the blacks in the book are very, very similar to those of AAVE today. (Not gangsta crap, but the way black people talk to each other when whites aren't intended to be part of the audience.)

Older speakers of AAVE often associate it with being uneducated, and thus inferior; younger ones seem to view it as a way of distinguishing themselves, perhaps trying to show that they haven't forgotten their roots, and so don't think of it as a negative. White and black Southerners' language patterns certainly influence each other strongly, but a group of whites, a group of blacks, and a mixed group would each have slightly different speech patterns.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[Anonymous Coward]

Baloney - anyone who has a toddler knows that this "dialect" is simply English that has not been corrected by an adult. For example, it is natural for my toddler to say "I be going downstairs", "Who that", etc. Unless I correct him he would continue to speak that way until he was an adult.

You don't see educated blacks speaking this "dialect" and you often see poor whites do it as well, so it really has nothing to do with race.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not AAVE, it's NIGGERTALK.

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[losfromla]

I guess it depends on the toddler but I've never heard any toddler speak that way. Other errors but not the ones you proposed as a natural propensity. Perhaps you got a slow one?

Re:AAVE is a fairly recent development

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't see educated blacks speaking this "dialect" and you often see poor whites do it as well, so it really has nothing to do with race.

Unfortunately, I must disagree with you.

I've gotten into arguments on this very issue with other African Americans, notably this man, who is of the opinion that even though he has a doctorate, it's an expression of his cultural heritage to speak like he has a 6th grade education.

And to think...

[twebb72]

And to think. Shuckin' and jivin' used to be a way to avoid work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuckin%27_and_jivin%27

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Phrogman]

I got it eventually, at least most of the time, and I am a white Canadian living on the west coast :P

Loved The Wire by the way, some of the best TV I have ever seen.

Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[hessian]

This is an excellent development as it further legitimizes the idea that:

(a) African-Americans are a separate group that should not be assimilated;
(b) African-Americans have their own culture, values and heritage that is distinct from the majority;
(c) African-Americans are best treated as a self-governing cultural community within the political entity "USA".

In other words, it's a step forward for true African-American autonomy, and an implicit recognition of Pan-Nationalism.

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[Mongoose Disciple]

Respectfully, I think you're choosing to read a lot more into this story than is really there.

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[snowgirl]

a) They are a separate group, but being so does not mean that they "should not be assimilated".
b) They do have their own culture, values and heritage that is distinct from the majority... this is fact. Ignoring it, or refusing it does not make it less of a fact.
c) What what?

Ah crap, I'm arguing with a nut job conspiracist... :(

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[uncanny]

So, maybe African-Americans probably would like it if they were given their own facilities. Progress is here!

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[blair1q]

There's a Mr. Eminem here and he'd like to disagree with you that African-Americans are separate, have their own culture, or should be treated different.

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pan-nationalism"... nice euphemism for racial separatism.

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[ElectricTurtle]

Yeah the 1960s are over, dawg. The only thing left of black nationalism is Kwanzaa, and even that is a joke.

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[ElectricTurtle]

That was what Malcolm X advocated before his return from Mecca. Surprising though it may be in retrospect (if your exposure to black people is limited), there were many (and are still some) black people who prefer racial separation. I don't think it would help socially, but try reasoning with the militantly insular and see how far you get.

Re:Recognize the autonomy of African-Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I'm concerned, if they don't want to assimilate, then they don't belong here. Let them "assimilate" themselves into their own country, wherever that may be. And this applies to all cultures foreign to a country.

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Anonymous Coward]

http://noolmusic.com/youtube_live/airplane_jive_talking.php

Translation:

[twoallbeefpatties]

In other words, we have a dialect of English that is generally spoken in the inner-city areas that have a predominance of crime, and we need someone who understands this dialect to help us make sure that we understand what's being talked about when we intercept criminals speaking that way. You dig?

Re:Translation:

[snowgirl]

You need mod points. This is the clearest explanation I've read.

Re:Translation:

[Vegeta99]

To further clarify, and if you'd actually like to look up anything about it, people who aren't dipshit DEA agents, and have actually studied linguistics call it African American Vernacular English. "Ebonics" is just another way to say "Speakin' Jive", just a racist way of saying "black people don't talk right".

Re:Translation:

[snowgirl]

To further clarify, and if you'd actually like to look up anything about it, people who aren't dipshit DEA agents, and have actually studied linguistics call it African American Vernacular English. "Ebonics" is just another way to say "Speakin' Jive", just a racist way of saying "black people don't talk right".

To further clarify, and if you'd actually like to look up anything about it, people who aren't dipshit pet owners, and have actually studied biology call them felis catus. "Cat" is just another way to say blah blah blah...

The ignorant of a subject should not be punished for attempting to be sensitive, and understanding just because they used poor word choice.

Re:Translation:

[gstoddart]

You need mod points. This is the clearest explanation I've read.

But, truthfully, did anybody need to have this explained to them?

"Law enforcement agency seeks translators to decode wiretaps for language they don't speak. Background check required."

Other than the reference to Lil' Wayne, is TFS even ambiguous?

Re:Translation:

[snowgirl]

You need mod points. This is the clearest explanation I've read.

But, truthfully, did anybody need to have this explained to them?

"Law enforcement agency seeks translators to decode wiretaps for language they don't speak. Background check required."

Other than the reference to Lil' Wayne, is TFS even ambiguous?

Sadly some people don't understand that AAVE is not always intelligible to speakers of SAE.

TFS was totally clear and unambiguous to me as well, however I understand that no matter how clear or unambiguous you can make a statement, someone will come along and twist the meaning to infuriate their beliefs.

Re:Translation:

[gstoddart]

TFS was totally clear and unambiguous to me as well, however I understand that no matter how clear or unambiguous you can make a statement, someone will come along and twist the meaning to infuriate their beliefs.

Oh, you're wrong. That would never happen -- they're more likely to come along and twist the meaning to infuriate their beliefs than do that.

*grin* I kid, I kid.

Cheers

Re:Translation:

[Vegeta99]

I don't think the DEA is ever trying to be sensitive. The fact that they need to hire someone to understand what inner city blacks are saying speaks volumes on its own about how big a dipshits they are.

Re:Translation:

[ElllisD]

It's nothing, really. Except it allows terrorists & drug cartels to communicate undetected. There exist highly evolved methods of utilizing linguistics such that our predominantly conditioned methods of listening would hear one message, while someone with previous experience having been conditioned to hear 'between the lines' (for lack of a better term), or familiar with alternate definitions associated with commonly interpreted words or phrases, hears an entirely different message. By design bystanders will misinterpret what they're overhearing, all the while thinking they're understanding perfectly (if indeed they are paying even fragmented attention) because the words chosen do make sense in one context or another. It's the 'yet another' context that benefits from this obfuscation, allowing conversations to unfold with 'built-in' plausible deniability.

Re:Translation:

[Kielistic]

How is Ebonics any more racist of a term than "African American Vernacular English" both use skin colour to identify the dialect.
This constantly moving target of "not being racist" can be a little absurd. Perhaps "Ebonics" is the proper term in "Rich White Guy in Power Vernacular English" and you are just showing your prejudices by not accepting others' historical and cultural upbringing.

Re:Translation:

[Vegeta99]

I'm just saying it makes the DEA looks like a pack of wild morons, which is par for the course for them. The fact that they can't understand plain English and have to hire someone to do so just shows how racist they are.

Go take a look at why most people are in prison, and then take a look at the color of their skin. Here's a hint: It's non-violent drug offenses, and they're mostly black. Now, go take a look at the disparity between powder cocaine and crack cocaine mandatory sentencing. Powder cocaine is mostly a rich-guy vice, whereas you're more likely to find crack amongst the poor.

Anyway, as for your posit that maybe rich white guys call it ebonics, Noam Chomsky is pretty much the founding father of modern linguistics, and I think I'd put him squarely in the "rich white guy" category. Perhaps you don't understand just what it is a rich white guy means when he calls it ebonics?

Re:Translation:

[Kielistic]

African American Vernacular English (I wouldn't want to sound racist) is often unintelligible to someone not accustomed to hearing it. And that is part of its design. If it was "plain English" as you put it then it would not have a slang name (Ebonics) and it certainly would not have an "official" name. It is spoken much quicker than more standard English and contains a huge amount of slang terms only used within itself.
Not understanding a distinct dialect is in no way racist. Stop using that term as a catch-all insult for those you do not like; it weakens its meaning.

In this discussion I could not care less about prison sentencing. I only cared about why "Ebonics" is a more racist term than "[politically correct but absurdly nonsensical term for black person that resides in the United States of America] Vernacular English". Is it because one sounds more respectable to you? More academic? That's your prejudice not theirs.

I'm almost certain I know just what they mean when they say "Ebonics" as well. Probably something along the lines of: "Black punk talk. No wait I can't say that. What are they calling it these days? I think I've heard them say Ebonics on the news."

Wait'll they spy on geeks ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And have to bring in a Klingon translator.

Re:Wait'll they spy on geeks ...

[kahless62003]

Qu'vatlh! There goes my cunning plan.

Re:Wait'll they spy on geeks ...

[Tablizer]

And have to bring in a Klingon translator.

There's a half-truth to that:

http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/klingon.asp
   

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[object404]

Dah bredda deh mout ah massy eeh! Cho! Ah weh eem tink eem ah guh duh? Da bull bucka bucky massa bin trayn ta keep de bredren, down braa! Massive reespec, peace out niyamen

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Compaqt]

Just when you need it the most:

http://www.gizoogle.com/

For some reason it isn't working at the moment. (Are the North Koreans translating their Facebook page?)

African Americans - not people of African Decent

[AnonymousClown]

I know plenty of Africans (People from Nigeria and there about - real African Americans) and people of African decent (also with a history of slavery no less) who speak perfect English and are also highly educated - have Dr. as a title many times. If you call them "African Americans" they take it as an insult, btw. And then there are educated American blacks who speak perfectly.

It's more of a sub set of our black population that doesn't want to learn or get educated; which also happens to be the part of the population with the highest crime rate.

And I find it interesting, when I'm being spoken to in AAVE (*rolls eyes at the PCness*) and find the speech incomprehensible, usually I hear very clearly, "What, you don't understand English?" - they're fucking with the white boy.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

"JIMMY was on and I was HITTIN' it"!
I had in my possession a condom, which was used in my engagement of sexual activity.

Dude, this is Slashdot, such fictional sentences are useless to this population, most Slashdot users ain't gonna be gettin' jiggy with it, you dig? Word to your mother.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Gentlemen, I inquire; Who hath released the hounds?

I wonder if Barbara Billingsly is looking for work

[Anonymous Coward]

Attendant: Can I get you something?
Jiveman #2: S'mo fo butter layin' to the bone. Jackin' me up. Tightly.
Attendant: I'm sorry I don't understand.
Jiveman #1: Cutty say he cant hang.
Woman : Oh stewardess, I speak jive.
Attendant: Ohhhh, good.
Woman : He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.
Attendant: Would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine.
Woman : Jus' hang loose blooood. She goonna catch up on the`rebound a de medcide.
Jiveman #2: What it is big mamma, my mamma didn't raise no dummy, I dug her rap.
Woman : Cut me som' slac' jak! Chump don wan no help, chump don git no help. Jive ass dude don got no brains anyhow.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

on your merry way towards the ve-nak-u-lar

"Can't FADE that".

http://www.ebonics-translator.com/ebonics_101.php

I believe that actually means something more along the lines of...

You cannot cause this (object/action/idea) to become less (relevant/important/meaningful)!

Implying the meaning of "Fade"

(This taken from WordnetWeb.Princeton.edu)
become less clearly visible or distinguishable; disappear gradually or seemingly
lose freshness, vigor, or vitality

(hehe. lose freshness.)

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Anonymous Coward]

LJ doesnt talk ebonics. He's jamaican, he speaks what is called "Jamaican Patois". Badman is even worse, I can understand maybe a word in ever 10, or so.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

"YO!- Let me GAFFLE that BLUNT"!
Might I be able to indulge in your marijuana cigarette?

Why is it that every translator of AAVE to "standard English" uses verbose (and deprecated) expressions and not typical conversational English? The jovial nature of the original AAVE does not necessitate translations that always read like punchlines.

Amish wiretaps?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The Amish aren't really known for engaging in activities that warrant wire tapping. And do they have phones to tap in the first place?

Maybe they are using an illegal "secret ingredient" in that delicious Shoofly pie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoo_fly_pie . . . ?

Re:Amish wiretaps?

[russotto]

The Amish aren't really known for engaging in activities that warrant wire tapping. And do they have phones to tap in the first place?

You'd think so, but then you read stuff like this

Amish/Pagan drug ring (the Pagans are a motorcycle gang)

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[wjousts]

Actually, Little Jacob is impossible to understand even with subtitles.

Re:African Americans - not people of African Decen

[snowgirl]

It's more of a sub set of our black population that doesn't want to learn or get educated; which also happens to be the part of the population with the highest crime rate.

"Subset" is one word.

Now, the interesting thing here, is that people who are disadvantaged in life, regardless of will or desire, tend to have the highest crime rates. They're also the most likely to be least educated.

Funny how people attribute these disadvantaged as being "lazy" or lacking desire, when in reality, they're simply given a shitty hand to play.

Does this mean...

[clo1_2000]

I will see a PHD (Playa Hatin' Degree) in Ebonics show up in the spam email I get from "online" colleges?

First Test Question

[Naked Jaybird]

Translate this common phrase: Jeet?

Re:First Test Question

[Kredal]

Reply: Nope. Y'umpto?

Aight.

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Stenchwarrior]

I thought he was Rasta?

What

[SnarfQuest]

Is there really such a language as ebonics, or can any random grouping of black slang be thrown together and be called ebonics? Can any two "ebonics speakers" living across the country understand each other?

I cannot find out if "ebonics" as a real language exists, or if the name just gets slapped on any black-related slang. I.e. would it be called ebonics if a black guy used valley-girl slang? "Hey ho-me, like gag me with a spoon, bro!"

Re:What

[painandgreed]

Is there really such a language as ebonics, or can any random grouping of black slang be thrown together and be called ebonics?

From my understanding which is limited and probably out of date, ebonics is essentially west African language and grammar spoken with English words. When slaves were brought over, they continued to speak their native languages but with the English words they were expected to use. This is not just a rearrangement of words and use of different tenses, but other nuances also. A question may have different meanings (and thus have different answers) depending on who is the one speaking even though the wording is the same for all speakers, for example.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKfS3udCCx0&feature=related

And Swizerland is worse

[AlecC]

And those Swiss... Four incompatible languages in a country smaller than most US states. The place must be one big wasted ghetto.

I speak jive too!

[Anonymous Coward]

I speak jive too! - not really.

There are many cultures inside the USA. Even when some of them speak the same language, they have very different cultures. I didn't appreciate this until a fairly good friend who's mother has always been on welfare pointed it out. He has 2 masters degrees and is very well spoken. He is black. I'm just about as white as can be. The foods that we eat are vastly different, especially for breakfast and at holidays. I've never heard him speak jive or Ebonics, but he is definitely black inside too.

BTW, Snoop is my hero. I'm serious.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[gstoddart]

Gentlemen, I inquire; Who hath released the hounds?

Well, we know you won't be getting the job. :-P

speak proper english

[carigis]

what really cracks me up.. is that people cannot speak proper english, so we give it a name and call it a dialect. now thats being politically correct for you. I just call it being a moron. whats next an auto mechanic cannot fix cars so we just give it another term and call it a protected class.. then have auto mechanic hate crime laws.

Dilbert wiretapped in his Ebonian communications?

[kubitus]

I did not think Dilbert to be a drug dealer -

but now that you speak of it - I was always suspicious about Scott Adams

He must be on something - otherwise he couldn't know, what happens in our Agency!

Urban Dictionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they never heard of Urban Dictionary

Ten foot Pole....

[UseCase]

Normally I would be all over trying to persuade everyone else not to give in to this ignorance. I'm gonna let this one ride as I think its more entertaining to read the low score, low brow, flat out racist comments that are sure to flutter around this topic like moths to fire.

Ebonics Experts????

[Khyber]

They could've just hired me. Within my first year of moving to Memphis, I was fluent.

Correction in article

[British]

They are axing for help in translating....

Unofficial History of Ebonics

[Naked Jaybird]

In Oakland, CA, ebonics originated because some educators were making a point that language was evolving in some communities, and the education system must recognize that the common language young people are speaking is changing. The goal of these educators was to get the educational funding they need to teach these students English and English grammar, not to legitimatize yet another language the California educational system would have to support.

Re:Unofficial History of Ebonics

[EmagGeek]

Language was evolving? Doesn't evolution sort of imply improvement? I fail to see how Ebonics is an improvement over its base language.

Re:Unofficial History of Ebonics

[Naked Jaybird]

Evolution is defined as a 'process of change in a certain direction.' Whether its evolving for the better or worse is not the point being made.

Re:Unofficial History of Ebonics

[UseCase]

Most of black America thought the whole thing was ridiculous. I remember my parents sadly chuckling about the idiocy and self righteous nature of the educators suggesting that the slang of that area be given a name. A really racist name at that!! The fact that we are still talking about it in 2010 is even more ridiculous.

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[shoehornjob]

I don't think he was just speaking ebonics. He sounded a lot like a guy I used to work with who spoke Jamaican Patois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_Patois It's a subtle mix of the two maybe.

Obligitory Clip from Airplane!

[goofyspouse]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymMBEwtRZOg

Re:Obligitory Clip from Airplane!

[ELitwin]

I was going to suggest Barbara Billinsley apply for a job, but you beat me to it.

big l

[snugge]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzyaAuPh1lE
done!

Re:African Americans - not people of African Decen

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not disadvantaged, they are what they want to be. Africans come here with nothing and work their way up in our society. They consider African-Americans lazy - is this racism? African-Americans have everything and throw it away. Hell even Snoop Doggy Dogg, once he travelled the world a bit and saw how people lived, all of a sudden came to the realization that even when he was poor and "living in the hood" he had shoes on his feet, 3 squares a day, and a world of opportunity that people in the 3rd world only dream of. But as long as they have people like the above poster willing to make excuses for them, and a self-created culture that embraces and promotes ignorance and crime, they will remain a sub-culture that drags this nation down. They should just be honest and call it fool-speak or idiot-talk, instead we get this politically correct AAVE shit, which makes kids think it's OK if this is your only means of communication. Do not mistake people who willingly speak this way conversationally but are articulate and literate and know how to behave in context, with the misguided youth who are raised to speak hood-talk by their cultural idols and can not express themselves in any other way.

Re:African Americans - not people of African Decen

[snowgirl]

They should just be honest and call it fool-speak or idiot-talk

Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory at work.

Re:African Americans - not people of African Decen

[Anonymous Coward]

I have met many decent people of African descent myself.

In otherwords, they haven't been doing their job

[night_flyer]

If they had, they would have moles in these communities that would be well versed in this "dialect"

Correction for the Correction in article

[fuzznutz]

They be axing fo' help translatin'...

I HAS a Dream

[theshowmecanuck]

I saw this poster in 1999 on a fellow's cubical wall at a place where the company I worked for was putting in a software system, in Rhode Island. The blog where the picture is hosted from provides the text below the picture. It was commissioned by The National Head Start Association. For those that it matters to, the person who put up the poster was black. It was no surprise when I saw it for the first time, as I found previously that he placed a lot of emphasis on being able to communicate effectively with those around him.

Your politically correct stance does not help people. In order to overcome prejudices it is best to focus on our similarities with others rather than on our differences. Once that is done, the differences don't matter as much. We cannot focus on anything if we cannot communicate. It doesn't help communication when one community works so hard on creating a wholly new dialect, if not language, just so that they can be more different.

In case the site is not available, or for those that don't care to click, here is the text:

"I HAS A DREAM" written over the image of the man. Below the image was the following text:

"Does this bother you? It should. We've spent over 400 years fighting for the right to have a voice. Is this how we'll use it? More importantly, is this how we'll teach our children to use it? If we expect more of them, we must not throw our hands in the air and agree with those who say our children cannot be taught. By now, you've probably heard about Ebonics (aka black [sic] English). And if you think it's become a controversy because white America doesn't want us messing with their precious language, don't. White America couldn't care less what we do to segregate ourselves.

The fact is language is power. And we can't take that power away from our children with Ebonics. Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and all the others who paid the price of obtaining our voice with the currency of their lives embrace this? If you haven't used your voice lately, consider this an invitation."

("SPEAK OUT AGAINST EBONICS", The National Head Start Association, 1651 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, The New York Times, October 9, 1998, A19 [National Edition])

Re:I HAS a Dream

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. If you're a minority living among a majority, and you create a new language to separate yourself, you're only going to succeed in separating yourself from them even more. Then, you won't get any jobs and will be dirt-poor.

Balkanism is not a path to success.

Re:I HAS a Dream

[bwayne314]

And to make it worse, when you have kids, you are de-facto knocking them down a peg compared to everyone else because they will have no choice but to learn the same broken English you speak at home - a good school system helps, but if you happen to live in the ghetto then all the OTHER kids there will be speaking the same way an no teacher can completely override patterns speech patterns you pick up from everyone around you all the time in just 45 minutes per day.

My school does a summer-long "science camp" for low-income high school minority students who are exceptionally bright, at the end of which the students present their project to a packed room of their peers and various faculty. The competition to get in is crazy - about 10 times more students apply than we have room for so we cherry-pick the cream of the crop, the best of the best; all of these kids are in the top 99.9th percentile of their peers intellectually, regardless of race.

Guess what's one of the biggest challenges some of the students have to overcome - being able to speak proper English and being able to communicate their project to everyone else effectively.

"Aks" instead of "ask"
"Sum-in" instead of "something"
"mah" instead of "my"

Re:I HAS a Dream

[Grishnakh]

And to make it worse, when you have kids, you are de-facto knocking them down a peg compared to everyone else because they will have no choice but to learn the same broken English you speak at home - a good school system helps, but if you happen to live in the ghetto then all the OTHER kids there will be speaking the same way

Exactly right.

My mom came from a rural Virginian family, but she taught herself proper SAE when she left home, and then when she raised me, I learned from her (and also from decent schools, as she made sure I went to good schools), and also from national TV.

Teaching your kids to learn a dialect educated people can't understand is a big disservice if you want them to get out of the ghetto.

Re:I HAS a Dream

[kalirion]

Reminds me of the Martin Luther King Jr episode of The Boondocks...

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Jiveman #1: Sheeeet, man, that whity mus' be messin' my old tely got to be runnin' col' upsihd down his head!

Golly, the government is tapping my communications. I think I should sue them for breach of my constitutional rights.

Jiveman #2: Hey Holm, I can dig it! You know he ain't gonna lay no mo' big rap upon you man! Yes, they are wrong for doing that.

Jiveman #1: I say hey sky, s'other say I won say I pray to J I get the same ol' same ol.

I knew a man in a similar predicament, and the government winded up being sorry. All their evidence was thrown out of court.

Jiveman #2: Knock yourself a pro slick. Gray matter back got perform' us' down I take TCBin, man'.

Don't be naive Arthur. They are not interested in evidence as much as raw information.

Jiveman #1: You know wha' they say: See a broad to get that bodiac lay'er down an' smack 'em yack 'em.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance!
Together: Col' got to be! Yo! How true!
Together: Sh010039et! Golly!

Orbiting Space Bubble FTW!

[pentalive]

I, for one, would love to live in an Orbiting Space Bubble!

As long as there are supply runs...

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

Cap, N trade Washington DC politics as seen by Ebonics user :

What Day be doin whiff dat Nigga after day be Done capped his ass ?
Be tradin his dead ass to or Foe what?

Director Spike Lee said it best....

[Anonymous Coward]

Director Spike Lee said it best, '...Ebonics be stupid.'

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Krahar]

That troll mod is simply itself trolling. It was a part of the damn series itself that the police people except one couldn't understand what people were saying on the wiretap, so that guy had to translate for everyone else and the viewers.

Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[wintermute1974]

The Québécois already voted 60% in favour of separation in 1995, but they lost the overall referendum because of "money and the ethnic vote" as Parizeau explained. I know he was vilified for that comment, but he was merely stating the facts.

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[shutdown -p now]

The Québécois already voted 60% in favour of separation in 1995

60% of francophones did. But anglophone residents of Quebec are also entitled to voice their opinion on independence of the province which has been their home for many years now. Why do you disregard their votes?

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[Grishnakh]

I wonder how the Anglophones are distributed within the province. For instance, if towns near the borders with other provinces have a higher concentration of Anglophones, then redrawing the provincial borders (to make Quebec smaller) would change the results of the election. This way, the Québécois would have their independence, while the Anglophones would still be part of English-speaking Canada.

Personally, I'm in favor of Quebec independence. However, that would really mess with Canada as a country, since Quebec is sorta in the middle of the country, with Ontario and others to the west, and NL, NS, and others to the east. But this could be solved by giving independence to all the provinces, and eliminating Canada altogether. Instead, NL, NB, and NS could join together with Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and form a new country. Similarly, British Columbia could join together with Oregon, Washington, northern California (north of and not including the Bay Area), perhaps part of Idaho, part of Alaska, and the Yukon, and form a separate country called Cascadia.

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[shutdown -p now]

I wonder how the Anglophones are distributed within the province. For instance, if towns near the borders with other provinces have a higher concentration of Anglophones, then redrawing the provincial borders (to make Quebec smaller) would change the results of the election.

It's more complicated than that. Most anglophones in the province reside in or around Montreal.

This way, the Québécois would have their independence, while the Anglophones would still be part of English-speaking Canada.

There are some English-supermajority settlements along ON/QC border, and one thing that Supreme Court also mentioned as a possibility is that, just as territorial integrity of Canada isn't absolute, neither would be the territorial integrity of Quebec should it decide to separate. I.e. if it comes to that, it might be that some areas would have to be exchanged between Quebec and Ontario to align border better along language boundaries as part of negotiations.

There's also a slight problem with having the capital in Ottawa, as it was quite intentionally chosen for its placement right on the border between the provinces...

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[Grishnakh]

There's also a slight problem with having the capital in Ottawa, as it was quite intentionally chosen for its placement right on the border between the provinces.

That could easily be solved with my plan of simply eliminating Canada as a nation altogether, and forming several new with parts of the USA.

Ontario, part of NY, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota could form a new country, then Manitoba, SK, Alberta, the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming could form a new country.

After separating wine country from California and giving it to Cascadia, the rest of California could be set free, and since they have the largest population in the US, we could give them responsibility for all the debt...

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[Wyatt Earp]

While Quebec gets a vote on leaving Canada, there is no leaving the United States.

So no new countries made out of the US and Canada.

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[Grishnakh]

The way the US is going, it's not going to be able to hold itself together much longer.

Saying "there is no leaving the United States" is like saying "there is no leaving the Roman Empire".

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[Wyatt Earp]

100-250 years. US survived the Civil War, Great Depression.

The same forces that destroyed the Soviet Union, Roman Empire, Eastern Empire won't wreck the US.

The US will lash out and do a run on North America before it collapses, that'll buy it another 20-75 years.

When it does collapse, it'll fall into city states bickering over resources, like Kaplan talked about. Oregon, Washington and BC won't unite, they'll fight over energy and water. Rather than a grand unification of Cascadia, you'll see the Vancouver-Portland-Eugene metroplex fighting with Seattle-Vancouver over control of the Columbia basin.

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Anarchy-Shattering-Dreams-Post/dp/037570759

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[dave420]

Do you think 100-250 years, or even 325 years is a long time? Ha! That's funny.

Re:Tangential comment: Quebec Separation

[Wyatt Earp]

For a modern nation-state, 325 years is a long time.

So if the United States goes another 200 years, that would give the US 423 years.

Nearly as long as the Roman Republic, nearly as long as the Western Roman Empire. Longer than the UK controlled India, longer than the Aztec Empire, longer than Spain controlled South America, longer than the Mongol Empire lasted.

Are You Jiving me?!

[Striikerr]

I think they should hire that woman from Airplane... "I speak Jive"
----->
Attendant: Can I get you something?
Jiveman #2: S'mo fo butter layin' to the bone. Jackin' me up. Tightly.
Attendant: I'm sorry I don't understand.
Jiveman #1: Cutty say he cant hang.
Woman : Oh stewardess, I speak jive.
Attendant: Ohhhh, good.
Woman : He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.
Attendant: Would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine.
Woman : Jus' hang loose blooood. She goonna catch up on the`rebound a de medcide.
Jiveman #2: What it is big mamma, my mamma didn't raise no dummy, I dug her rap.
Woman : Cut me som' slac' jak! Chump don wan no help, chump don git no help. Jive a$$ dude don got no brains anyhow.

Re:African Americans - not people of African Decen

[Cro Magnon]

When those people consider education to be a "white man thing", it goes beyond getting a shitty hand, and becomes creating the shit.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

1) "not having it" is pretty common in English, I wouldn't consider needing to translate that for anyone.

2) Boo isn't usually a name, it's slang coming from "beau", meaning "boyfriend".

Sooo....Separate but Equal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just making sure.

The Goverment Needed Help with a Translation

[Honest Tony]

This video is their number one priority,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw
Deciphering this video will help stop crime.

Stewardess I Speak Jive!

[vic-traill]

Oblig Ref. Warning Flash Ahead!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymMBEwtRZOg

It's not the words...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may understand individuals words, but when strung together, they mean something unbelievable. Take this ebonics phrase:

"Knock yourself a pro slick. Gray matter back got perform' us' down I take TCBin, man'."

which means in english:

"Don't be naive. Each of us faces a clear moral choice."

So now you understand why the DOJ needs translators. It's worse than Navajo.

Re:It's not the words...

[quinto2000]

I don't think that's real language--it's made up for the movie Airplane!

Do not run, we are your friends.

[Ikyaat]

Resistance is futile. you will be assimilated.

Re:African Americans - not people of African Decen

[Omestes]

In the neighborhood I used to live in, there was an older black guy down the road. He was a truck driver lacking even most of a high school education. He spoke standard English better than most of the other people on the block. His pre-teen children (just the boys, not the girl) spoke "AAVE", and you could hear him screaming at them from time to time to act educated, he hated the fact that he worked hard to get where he was (coming from a very poor southern background) and his children sounded like they strived to be an "underclass", or poor idiotic street thugs.

I have two points with this anecdote, not speaking AAVE isn't related to higher education or income. Second being that it isn't like standard English, where it is a language passed down generationally. Most speakers of AAVE don't have parents who speak AAVE. Its nothing more than a youth culture thing gone wrong, and now for some reason we're all supposed to ignore the fact that it is an invented language that has only existed for a generation, and is largely based on a single youth culture. If, in a generation, we decide that text-speak (ami rite?), and LOLcat are valid languages, and we're discriminatory for not speaking it. I for one welcome the future language of the upcoming 4Chan-Americans.

Disorder in the court

[sjames]

Dis isn't a venacular, Dis is a doiby!

You've got three mistakes here.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Creole has not developed in the USA. It's based on french, which was the "official" language of the black slaves imported from the Antilles, and various african languages.

You're misunderstanding the technical sense of the term "creole," which does not refer exclusively to French-language creoles like Haitian; there's also English-based creoles like Jamaican, or Portuguese-based ones like Papiamentu or Cape Verdean.

The other mistake you're making is that there are creole languages that are indigenous to the USA: Louisiana Creole (which is distinct from Cajun French) and Gullah.

In New Orleans, the Cadiens (now written "Cajun") descend from displaced french canadians and also evolved a distinct accent of french in their new english-dominated residence.

...and mistake #3 is that Cajuns ain't from New Orleans. They're from further out west. The languages of New Orleans prior to the arrival of English were French and Louisiana Creole.

Um, actually, it doesn't.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Who says the must assimilate culturally or linguistically as well as economically/politically/etc? That sounds a lot like the mentality of Soviet Russia's and Communist China's cultural revolutions?

Um, actually, it doesn't. Communists did not in general believe that ethnic minorities had to be assimilated to the majority culture. Soviet Russia and China had political divisions based on ethnicity, to give ethnic minorities more local power.

In practice, though, Russians and Han have been colonialistic towards their ethnic minority nations, though. The case of China's eastern regions is a good example--Tibet is formally an autonomous region that exists in order to provide self-rule for an ethnic minority, but well, that's not the best description of what's really going on there.

I should add...

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Marxists believe that the class struggle is the one truly important social struggle, and that struggles between nations are simply distractions from the class struggle. The proletariat of all of the world's nations should unite in the fight against capitalism. Nationalist warfare is just a way that the capitalist class pits worker against worker in order to advance their own interests.

That attitude toward national differences, however, can go in two directions: one that pushes for an end to national differences ("we should all speak the same language and have the same culture so that those things no longer divide us"), and one that respects them. Communist movements have tended to adopt the latter in theory, but often the first in practice.

Mutual comprehensibility means little

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

So-called "Standard English" and AAVE are mutually comprehensible languages, and always have been.

Mutual comprehensibility actually means next to nothing. It's a traditional criterion for distinguishing "language" from "dialect," but it's one that's never worked that, for reasons I can never understand, they just keep teaching in Linguistics 101 to people who then never take any other linguistics courses that would set them straight.

The problems:

• There are no firm criteria that allow you to decide that two people who speak different varieties are able to understand each other. Spanish and Portuguese speakers can often have non-trivial conversations with each other, if they do it slowly enough and are attentive to when the other one doesn't understand them. Does that make Spanish and Portuguese dialects of the same language?
• Two people's ability to understand each other is often asymmetric. For example, Portuguese speakers have the easier time understanding Spanish speakers than vice-versa.
• The supposed mutual intelligibility relationship is not transitive. It is common to find so-called "dialect continua," where you have three varieties A, B and C such that A and B are highly interintelligible, B and C are also so, yet A and C are not. The criterion doesn't let you decide what the language boundary should be in that case.
• Mutual intelligibility isn't a fact about the languages, because languages don't understand languages; people understand people. Whether a speaker of language A understands a speaker of language B isn't a function solely of the languages, but also of many other personal and social factors. For example, how much experience the speaker of A has with B, and also the willingness to make an effort to understand. If you're never willing to understand the speakers of a minority speech variety because you look down on them, you're not going to come to understand it, even if it's very similar to your own language.

Another way of thinking about it: which is easier for your average Standard English speaker to understand: AAVE or a cell phone contract?

Not that I endorse the idea that AAVE is a "separate language" (I don't believe the claim is well-defined at all!), but a cell phone contract is difficult to understand mostly because of (a) unfamiliar technical vocabulary, (b) extremely complex structures where it's easy to misunderstand the relationship between the parts. In the case of AAVE, most of the vocab would be familiar to standard English speakers; what's likely to completely go over your head is the tense-aspect subtleties of the dialect. The verbs in the cell phone contract, on the other hand, will work like Standard English verbs do.

Blago...

[zooblethorpe]

Blagojevich FTC

(for the conviction)

Cheers,

Begging the question.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

After all, the only thing making SAE more useful is that AAVE is rejected.

Common languages promote efficiency, so the dominance of SAE in the United States is a good thing.

The problem with that claim is that it subtly begs the question. It assumes that AAVE just can't be part of the "common language" of the nation. The rejection of AAVE is already built into that assumption.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize, of course, that by posting that link you just put 9 people out of a job if the DEA reads your comment, you insensitive clod!

Tax money keeping us safe from people having fun

[mykos]

Foreclosures are bad, school districts are laying off teachers, and small business startups are failing, but the USDJ will gladly spend the money appoint nine "experts" to figure out if someone's getting high or not.

You're confusing argot and dialect.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Well, part of the problem is that certain sub-dialects are intended to obfuscate the meaning. Cockney Rhyming Slang evolved to make it difficult to for police and those not "in the know" to understand what was being said.

This is a common mistake: you're confusing argot and dialect. People speak argots to obfuscate meaning to outsiders, as you say. That doesn't go for dialects, though--people speak dialects simply because that's the way their peers speak. Another way to put it: using weird made up words so outsiders don't understand you = argot; speaking with systematic Canadian raising = dialect.

It does happen often that some argots are tied narrowly to specific dialects, but they're strictly speaking separate things. Rhyming slang is very associated with Cockney dialect, but you can speak Cockney without using the rhyming slang, and you could use rhyming slang in Received Pronunciation.

Re:You're confusing argot and dialect.

[gstoddart]

Another way to put it: using weird made up words so outsiders don't understand you = argot; speaking with systematic Canadian raising [wikipedia.org] = dialect.

Ah, OK. Thanks for the info -- I've not heard the term argot before now.

Of course, now I need to go and see if I speak with a Canadian Raising or not, and figure out if my dipthong is showing -- I think that would be embarrassing. :-P

Oh, fun, creolistics

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

So is Louisiana Creole a perfectly acceptable way to speak French then?

Tautologically, if it weren't they wouldn't speak that way. Of course, those speaking other dialects of French may disagree.

Oh, fun, it's creolistics time now. Yeah, this is mostly nitpicking.

Louisiana Creole, at the basilectal level, is more similar to Haitian than to French, and is on these grounds considered a separate language--by linguists, but of course nobody ever listens to linguists. OTOH Louisiana Creole is more heavily decreolized than Haitian.

The language, however, exists in that typical creole social situation where the people in its community tend to define it negatively in relation to the lexifier--the creole is said to be a "badly spoken" version of the lexifier, except by a few mavericks who insist that it is an autonomous language--with political implications, usually. So creoles are, in practice, either considered as remarkably unacceptable ways of speaking their lexifiers, or as autonomous languages; a speech variety that's somewhere in between these situations would probably not get labeled as a "creole" in the first place.

Re:Oh, fun, creolistics

[snowgirl]

Insert dialect/language debate here.

Either way, speaking Louisiana Creole properly is the proper way to speak it.

hypocrite's history

[manaway]

It's incredibly hypocritical to claim that YOU have any more heritage or culture than African Americans

This has nothing to do with heritage or culture. Everyone should feel free to keep their cultural identity. In my opinion that's one of the things that makes America great. But when you move to another country to live you should make some attempt to learn to speak the language.

Indeed. Like for example the 15th century and later Europeans whom invaded the Americas and... Wait, they mostly didn't learn the local language but instead demanded the locals learn a foreign language. And look at what all that lead to. So maybe America is not such a great example, unless you ignore history and people. So maybe Americans could get used to more than one language, like, say, pretty much the whole rest of the world does.

bix nood

[YoshiDan]

muhfugga

Navaho code talkers,

[Anonymous Coward]

meet ebonics code talkers!

Re:Needed one when watching The Wire

[Klobbersaurus]

I didn't need the subtitles.... maybe i should apply

What's all this about Elbonian?

[grikdog]

I'm up to here in English. Maybe the Elbonian Embassy needs someone who can translate dilbertasian?

Why, slashdot, why?!

[deathbird]

Anything with the word "Ebonics" is just rage-bait for the ugliest little racist impulses. KILL IT WITH FIRE!

No, homie

[Anonymous Coward]

"There's certainly modern slang added too it but you're clearly too pig-ignorant to consider that that isn't the entirety of the language."

You so desperately want it to be significant that you're blinded by what you see. The ebonics used in 2010 has little, if anything, to do with the ebonics of 150 years ago; the only thing they have in common is the method of delivery. It's interesting to note that certain subcultures had a dialect of english, but it has never been the primary communications mechanism for that group within the united states.

It's like morse code. Interesting to note, but nobody says "we need to preserve this language", because everybody recognizes that something better and more efficient is available.

NIGGER

[Anonymous Coward]

N-word?

I think you mean NIGGER.

The Second Crime agianst Blacks

[AP31R0N]

White Crimes against Blacks:

1) Slavery
2) The War on Drugs
3) Ebonics

Toleration of Ebonics or AAVE if you must, is one of the worst crimes honkey have committed against blacks. Granted this crime is also self-inflicted, but white people aren't helping by patting black people on their widdle heads and saying "it's OK that you can't handle subject-verb agreement".

It's not OK. It is a huge disservice to blacks. We could make a huge step toward closing the gap between whites and blacks in socio-economic conditions by teaching blacks how to speak English. Ebonics feeds racists ammunition. While white liberals smugly pat themselves on the back, all the while guaranteeing that blacks will never catch up unless they are raised affluent white people like Obama. Well, most blacks don't have that opportunity.

"Ebonics" for DOJ

[Transaction7]

I can understand the DEA and Department of Justice needing people who can speak and translate “Ebonics,” or black slave English and its latest mutating manifestations, in order to understand communications intercepted in drug and other criminal investigations. It would sometimes also be useful if undercover agents working in certain black communities were fluent in “Ebonics.” I practiced juvenile and criminal law. Trust me on this one, most of the people who actually speak “Ebonics” are either in, recent graduates from, or will soon be inmates of, juvenile and adult prisons, making those among the most logical places to find such people. Speaking this “jive” is probably the surest guarantee that someone is or will soon be involved in crime and the criminal justice system. The fun problem here is going to be finding many people who are genuinely fluent in so-called “Ebonics” who either know or can be taught enough spoken and written actual English to be able to translate this “jive,” much of which is code used for criminal purposes, into English so it can be used by anyone on the other side. One additional problem is that there are an infinite number of varieties of this and some of them are not spoken and cannot be understood by anyone outside of one isolated neighborhood or, at best, locality. Now part of this was originally invented used by slaves to resist and evade restrictions on their free speech by their masters, or, later, restrictions in prisons or the like. “Bodiesburg,” was one of the terms invented in the infamous Tucker Prison Farm in Arkansas to talk about the murders and secret burials of prisoners by the guards and administration, as in “They say he escaped; I heard he went to Bodiesburg,” or, later, “You talk about Bodiesburg, you go there.,” for example. However, very few situations like that still exist. I have represented enough speakers of one or more versions of “Ebonics” in my law practice to have learned some things about it. One is that anyone who uses this as a primary language is not trying to talk to me, his lawyer, and not going to tell me the truth, nor is he a candidate for any manner of juvenile or adult probation. Jive-speakers don’t make it through diversion or probation programs even with black probation officers, etc. Sooner or later, they all cycle through the juvenile and adult prison systems. Then they make the same stupid mistakes and get caught again. My wife was a trained public school speech therapist. Rules in the education racket specifically prohibited correcting any speech problems in English that might be traceable to black slave English, “Ebonics,” “AAVE” or whatever some academic or politician decides to call it, or, for that matter, Spanish, which, of course, had exactly the same effect as the old laws against teaching slaves to read. Simon Legree would approve, but we don’t. I had one client, who was black, with a serious mouth deformity never treated because his mother pulled him out of school after the first day, who spoke only a private “language” understood only by him and his mother. When she died, he, then 41, was lost and existed by stealing and lived like a wild animal until he bounced back and forth between the criminal and mental health systems. President Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Anderson, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, or just about any black, or Hispanic or other, person you ever heard of doing anything with their life in America may be able to shift into the vernacular of a subculture for effect but made the effort to learn and use standard English. It’s no accident, but entirely natural and predictable, that the need of federal law enforcement agencies for translators of “Ebonics” etc. is to decipher and deal with criminals.

Re:Herein follow a few terms to help you get start

[Vertigo Acid]

Boo doesn't denote the name of a friend. It's an SO or lover