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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.'”
There aren't enough mod points in the universe to mod down all the trolls that are going to be posting on this topic.
Oh, stewardess, I speak jive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhJDvI3gUO8
all those years of wigger training is finally going to pay off! YOU HEAR THAT MOM?!?!?!?!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
ENGLISH, motherfucker. DO YOU SPEAK IT?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
It says said group does not want to be assimilated and would instead prefer retaining certain unique cultural and linguistic elements.
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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?
I am officially gone from
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.
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
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
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:
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.
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?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
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 ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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.
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.