GENIUS FORUMS

Yeah, the problem isn't the existance of the non-standard form. It's that these kids aren't being taught standard English

Yep, if niggers want to be niggers then they pay the price.

Exclusion from wealthy society, becuase they just don't fit in well enough. Which in turn has the effect of enhancing their niggerness.

Niggerness is great as entertainment, but pretty worthless in a general business sense. Much of it is just rampant masculine emotionalism anyway, rather than a core cultural thing.

Philosophaster wrote:Spoken language is almost always "non-standard" and disobeys at least a few rules of grammar. There have always been dialects that make their speakers nearly incomprehensible to "outsiders" and words used in ways that only certain groups of people understand, and in that sense "Ebonics" is nothing unique.

Spoken language needs to be understandable enough so that people can communicate with each other, that's the point of language. Any of the dialects should be cleaned up enough to be understandable. No, it isn't unique, and I bet that's how multiple languages got started in the first place. As it is there are enough problems because everyone doesn't have one global language as a second language that we are all fluent in.

Trying to enforce "standards of spoken English" by using the classroom is a fool's errand. Most of the speaking kids do happens outside the classroom where there is no nagging teacher to get onto them. If this is indeed a "problem," it will not be solved by classroom nagging, but by cultural integration. When people can *afford* to speak in a way that is incomprehensible to those outside their normal social circle, then they *will.* Trying to cram "correct spoken English" into their head will have a negligible effect. People speak and write as well as they feel compelled to and no more, and being nagged a few times by a teacher is not very "compelling" at all, unless you want to suggest docking points off the grades of students for non-standard speech.

Concentrate on what you have some chance of controlling: writing. Most kids write very little outside of class.

Elizabeth Isabelle wrote:As it is there are enough problems because everyone doesn't have one global language as a second language that we are all fluent in.

Unless we learned it as children along with our native language we could never be quite as fluent in it - in other words we'd wind up thinking in our native, or dominant language and using this language only when necessary. Which means that instead of relying on an interpreter to go from Language A to B we'd all be going from A to Z and then Z to B adding an entire level of complication that just isn't necessary or in any way beneficial.

Plus as soon as you had any such thing, people would start making dialects of it. Frankly, people who don't remain in contact with eachother will start to speak differently than one another. It is completely inevitable.

-Rory

Rory wrote: Frankly, people who don't remain in contact with eachother will start to speak differently than one another. It is completely inevitable.

Exactly. Until the racial situation changes, the linguistic one will remain largely the same.

Jamesh wrote:Yeah, the problem isn't the existance of the non-standard form. It's that these kids aren't being taught standard English

Yep, if niggers want to be niggers then they pay the price.

Exclusion from wealthy society, becuase they just don't fit in well enough. Which in turn has the effect of enhancing their niggerness.

Niggerness is great as entertainment, but pretty worthless in a general business sense. Much of it is just rampant masculine emotionalism anyway, rather than a core cultural thing.

Well "white bread" how much choice does any child have of what circumstances they are born into? We can't blame the child for not learning what he didn't have an opportunity to learn.

Well "white bread" how much choice does any child have of what circumstances they are born into? We can't blame the child for not learning what he didn't have an opportunity to learn.

I don't think I was doing that, was I.

Blame is pointless, unless it is designed to prompt change, but at the same time full unquestioned acceptance of the emotional habits of others is potentially destructive.

Nowadays in the US, as opposed to the past where strong emotional actions were required, should blacks want to rise economically and socially above their present average levels, then they will need to learn to decrease emotional outbursts (known as culture), self pity and a lack of control over desires, to the level of the average white person. The difference between whities and blacks is not that great, but still it is a difference, so it produces conflict and personal hardship.

The emotional control difference between whities and east asians is far less significant. Sth Americans are in between. Arabs are worse, at present at least.

btw..I'm not suggesting that whites have much emotional control either, just talking about what I perceive as the differences from one group to another.

Ps - I love to use the word nigger, due to the fact that blacks don't realize how racist they are when they only allow others niggers to use it.

Jamesh wrote: Nowadays in the US, as opposed to the past where strong emotional actions were required, should blacks want to rise economically and socially above their present average levels, then they will need to learn to decrease emotional outbursts (known as culture), self pity and a lack of control over desires, to the level of the average white person. The difference between whities and blacks is not that great, but still it is a difference, so it produces conflict and personal hardship.

Understanding the differences and analyzing what is or is not acceptable behavior and why, based on logical reasoning reduces hardship and interpersonal conflict. Having a multicultural approach has a positive impact on companies by improving customer relations, expanding problem-solving skills for a variety of issues by expanding cultural paradigms to draw from, and expanding the pool of applicants to include people who may have talents not available in other applicants.

The emotional control difference between whities and east asians is far less significant. Sth Americans are in between. Arabs are worse, at present at least.

btw..I'm not suggesting that whites have much emotional control either, just talking about what I perceive as the differences from one group to another.

That's actually quite accurate - some cultures are more emotionally expressive than others The hispanic culture is another one that is very expressive.

Funny how more expressive cultures think people of less expressive cultures are stiff, stuck-up and oversensitive, and people from a more stoic culture find those of more expressive cultures uncivilized and oversensitive.

Ps - I love to use the word nigger, due to the fact that blacks don't realize how racist they are when they only allow others niggers to use it.

I've heard both sides of that argued. Some black people do see the inequity, and others call each other that to desensitize each other in case it is used against them by a white person.

Language is contexual to culture and purpose. Ebonics is perfectly fine within its cultural context, but useless outside it. The question for the individual is simply that of deciding what context, and therefore what language(s) they need to live.

Ebonics is a dialect; dialects exist because of cultural isolation. Whether this is a problem depends on how you want to live and to some extent how others seek to demand you live.

Esperanto died for the same reason that communism did.

If anyone truly believes that Bay Area originators of ebonics (teenagers in Oakland) intentionally use West African linguistic structures and words, then that implies that these same people have a clue where West Africa might be located. I seriously doubt it.

But I'm just racist cracka, yo!

Tharan wrote:If anyone truly believes that Bay Area originators of ebonics (teenagers in Oakland) intentionally use West African linguistic structures and words, then that implies that these same people have a clue where West Africa might be located. I seriously doubt it.

But I'm just racist cracka, yo!

I tried saying something like that a week ago to my professor he tried to tell me they were still using it since slave times. I had to bite my finger to make myself shut up. Then decided it was a better use of my time to stare through message boards during class time than actually listen.

-Rory

I heard there was a group of white kids in Kansas City slinging some rhyme and a (white) professor claimed they were actually speaking in the manner of ancient druid and celtic pagan chants.

I asked the kids about it and they said, "What's a druid, cuz? We just trying to get some play!" Full circle, baby.

But to be perfectly fair, there is some truth to what the professor said, but only in the reverse. I did a good bit of research on the Sierra Leonian civil war a coupe of years ago for another writing project I was doing, and one of interesting tidbits was the influence of hip hop culture on the (mostly) teenagers fighting the war, especially Tupac. Wall murals of Tupac, the Chronic weed symbol of Dr Dre fame, and other figures like Mike Tyson are commonplace.

Also, it should be noted that the West African countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia have there official state language as English. It is the common tongue and nearly everyone understands it, though not everyone uses it primarily. The ties to America, especially Liberia's history and founding, are long and deep. And Sierra Leone is an old European slave port, with America being it's biggest customer. Maybe that is what the proferssor is trying to tie together.