
A mother tongue spoken by millions of Americans still gets no respect - nathan_long
http://the-magazine.org/12/aint-no-reason
======
novacole
As a black male I speak both, but it depends upon the person that I'm speaking
with. If I'm speaking with my professors or employers, obviously I use
standard English. With friends, depending on the importance of the
conversation I will most like speak a mixture between standard English and
AAEV. The thing is, all people who speak AAEV understand standard English, it
would be impossible not to. No child who grew up in a household that speaks
AAEV will be confused by the statement "I do not have any time for that", even
though in their home and in their neighborhood they hear it as "I ain't got no
time for that." This issue is that when entering elementary school, students
who grow up with AAEV simply use the dialect that they are used to. I will
venture to say that there is no (Adult) person who speaks AAEV that doesn't
know proper English. Some simply speak primarily in AAEV because everyone else
in their inner-circle does. Others do so as an act of rebellion against the
larger white society. Speaking standard English is seen as "Acting White"
(assimilation), which is deeply frowned upon in certain circles.

------
Jun8
When my Historical Linguistics professor mentioned that determination of
dialect/language difference is mostly political I was amazed and argued with
him for half an hour and still wasn't convinced after that. I thought there
should be a way wherein a linguist can collect and then analyze corpora, then
scientifically discover and label dialects, isoglosses, languages, etc. Later,
I learned that although there are tools for doing this analysis, the resulting
labeling is mostly based on political/ideological distinctions.

The common examples of the difficulties in determining language vs a dialect
are: the "dialects" of Chinese; Macedonian vs Bulgarian; Swedish vs Norwegian
vs Danish: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect>.

I think most linguists would consider AAEV to be a dialect of English.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> determination of dialect/language difference is mostly political

I heard that expressed as " _A language is a dialect with an army and navy_ "

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy)

I found it quite true when you look at cases like Dutch vs. Afrikaans or
Swedish vs Norwegian vs Danish. Declaring your dialect a "language" can be a
tool of nationalism.

~~~
dyno12345
As counterexample I would still call American English and Brazilian Portuguese
dialects, even though they have armies and navies. I'm not sure if I would
call Afrikaans a dialect.

~~~
Daishiman
Americans self-identify with English just as much as Brazilians identify
themselves with Portuguese. This issue arises when this is not the case.

~~~
dyno12345
I can think examples of any combination of "has army/not", "is
language/dialect". Mutual intelligibility doesn't even matter either way.

has army, is dialect: Schweizerdeutch, American English, Brazilian Portuguese

has army, is language: Norwegian (v. Danish)

no army, is language: Yiddish, Afrikaans

no army, is dialect: Frisian

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Good examples, but "Afrikaans has no army" is debatable and IMHO misleading.
It doesn't share an army with Dutch. And in the formative period from the Boer
wars (1880, 1899) to 1994 I would say that it did have an army in absolute
terms.

~~~
dyno12345
I had thought that English was more dominant in South Africa than Afrikaans,
but I guess it's actually the other way around.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
As usage of the two languages go, I put it nearer 50%-50% (with slightly more
Afrikaans).

As political power went until 1994, _all_ heads of state and of the army (and
as far as I remember, all holders of other top positions) were Afrikaners.

------
brown9-2
This is only barely related, but I read something a few weeks ago that I think
those interested in this topic would also find interesting:

A few years ago, researchers discovered that schoolchildren in Baltimore had
invented a new _gender-neutral singular pronoun_ :
<http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-yo-pronoun.aspx>

~~~
pacaro
An interesting article, thank you.

"Yo" seems to feel more natural than the usual Spivak options.

I was mildly amused at the "pause/unpause" word pair mentioned in the article,
I had always assumed that the pair was "pause/resume"...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd say there are "pause/unpause" and "pause/resume". The former details that
resuming is by releasing the pause state, eg repeatedly pressing on a pause
button. For "pause/resume" the resumption can be achieved by pressing play,
for example, rather than by unpausing.

It's analogous to "mute/unmute" and "mute/resume[sound]" where the unmute is
by pressing the "mute" button, ie releaseing the mute state, whilst the
resumption of sound can be achieved by pressing a volume up or down button.

------
tomku
I can understand the argument for supporting AAVE in schools, but at the same
time, I strongly feel that this kind of split is exactly what leads to less
diversity and more segregation in the long run. In an ideal world, we'd all be
neutral about which dialect we hear and speak whichever we're more used to
ourselves. In the real world, it just gives people another data point by which
to divide the rest of their world into "us" and "them".

~~~
Hairy_Sandwich
>I can understand the argument for supporting AAVE in schools

I can't. Schools are supposed to teach you the official language and all the
skills you need to succeed in society. AAVE won't help you (or be useful) at
work, or in academia, unless you are studying AAVE as your job.

I agree that it will be divisive in the long run, I think you are right that
encouraging AAVE to continue and legitimizing it and calling it a language is
the wrong way to go.

Was the cockney English slang of 1800's England a language? I think most would
say no, it was simply the bad English of the uneducated. I think AAVE is
simply modern America's cockney slang.

~~~
JoelSutherland
I don't think you read the article.

"Schools should recognize the legitimacy of AAVE as a language for their
students, and teach those students to recognize when and how to switch between
AAVE and American English as appropriate. But most schools don’t do that. They
simply teach students that the way they speak is wrong. Don’t talk this way;
talk our way.

Wheeler says we’re still not doing right by children who grow up with AAVE.
“The consequences are that students are being terribly misassessed in our
schools. Teachers think that black kids are making mistakes, when really
they’re re-creating what they hear and learn at home,” Wheeler says. “They’re
counting as mistakes things that are patterns and rule-based, so [the students
are] being placed in lower reading groups.”"

The point of recognizing AAVE is not to teach it as a replacement language.
It's to treat it similarly to Spanish for example. By recognizing where kids
are coming from, the system will better be able to direct them to where they
need to be.

~~~
dsfasfasf
Seriously, you are equating AAVE with Spanish. AAVE is how people of poorer
means speak or with less education speak, even if it's not politically correct
to say it. Spanish is an actual language hundreds of years old and spoken by
multiple nations. By your logic you might as well recognize English slang as
an actual language.

-Edit: So for those arguing that AAVE is a dialect, then If I add a few rules to any other language does that mean I've just invented a new language. That is what AAVE is, it is just English with a few additional rules that some people of low socioeconomic mean have learned (reinforced through bad education). Hardly what I would call a new language. Maybe in 500 years if the people speaking it become isolated, right now is just bad English.

In spanish there are people with low socioeconomic means that will also talk a
bit different. Even with their own rules for some things. You do not call that
a new language to spare their feelings. You call them uneducated and rightly
so or else when will they learn if they are not ever corrected? Being
politically correct just to spare the feelings of some people is not doing
anybody any good.

I know is insensitive but by trying to be too nice problems never get solved.

~~~
greggman
Some cultures consider non standard dialects just that, "non standard". They
don't deride people who speak them as poor or less educated.

For example consider Japan. Nearly every region in Japan has its own dialect.
Everyone learns, for lack of a better way to say it, "standard Japanese" which
is the kind used by news broadcasters. But, to their friends and family in
their hometown they speak their local dialect which is often not
understandable by people outside their region.

They know when to speak standard Japanese (for example a job interview) and
when it's okay to speak the dialect.

The article is suggesting that AAVE should be considered a dialect and treated
the same way. That seems reasonable to me given it's the same in many other
countries. It also means respect for the culture of AAVE instead of contempt
which seems like a good thing to me. So many people speak it. Why is their
culture any less valid than another?

~~~
auctiontheory
I think that "is the culture that speaks AAVE a valid culture?" is a
vanishingly insignificant question compared to the critical real-life problem
of providing black inner-city kids the education and communication skills
necessary to make it in today's world.

If you graduate from high school speaking only AAVE, you are in big trouble.
Students need to learn to speak standard English, whatever else they may or
may not speak. Distracting from this huge priority with intellectual arguments
about the validity of cultures does these kids a huge disservice.

~~~
kscaldef
You're arguing against a strawman. The article states that no one is
suggesting that students not learn Standard American English. The point it is
making is that it is more useful in teaching SAE to recognize that some
students arrive at school speaking a different dialect rather than with an
incorrect understanding of SAE, and that acknowledging that explicitly is more
productive than telling them never to speak their home language.

~~~
dsfasfasf
>>and that acknowledging that explicitly is more productive than telling them
never to speak their home language.

Home Language... Hahahahahahahahah. Seriously, you guys need to lower the BS.
It is no more a language then the Spanish Puerto Ricans speak (Some people
claim Puerto Ricans speak a dialect of Spanish. Seriously, what the hell? I've
had to argue with people that it is just a different accent and some of them
are simply mispronouncing some words because of the accent which they quickly
loose if they go international). I have a bridge to sell all of you.

~~~
Evbn
You sound far stupider than someone speaking Ebonics, and all else equal, I
would certainly hire an intelligent and peceptive Ebonics speaker and than
someone who displays muddled thinking in grammatical SE.

~~~
dsfasfasf
I know you are but what am I....?

------
tokenadult
Thanks for the submission. This is an interesting article about applied
linguistics for primary education in the United States. Approximately around
1900, the United States reached its peak period of receiving immigrants who
were not English-speaking when they arrived. Today, nearly all Americans speak
one variety or another of English, even though only about one-fourth of the
United States population consists of persons whose ancestors spoke English
before arrival in the United States. English has been assimilated by almost
all inhabitants of the United States precisely because it is the only language
that unites all those inhabitants. (Three of my four grandparents, all of whom
were born in the United States, spoke a language at home other than English.
My two maternal grandparents received the entirety of their schooling in
church-operated schools in the German language, one in Nebraska and one in
Colorado. But they spoke English just fine as adults, and that was the
language I communicated with them in both by direct conversation and by postal
letters. My Norwegian-speaking paternal grandmother went to college, majoring
in English, and relied on her knowledge of another Germanic language to help
her progress in reading Beowulf in the original Old English. I still have her
college edition of Beowulf at home.)

The worry in the United States today is about the primary education of young
people who grow up in cohesive communities of speakers of varieties of English
that differ from broadcast standard General American English. The cases of
African-American speakers and Hawaiian speakers of dialectal English are both
mentioned in the article. To me, as someone who studied linguistics in my
university studies, it seems a "no brainer" to meet elementary school pupils
on common ground and to make sure their teachers understand the home language
background of the pupils as the pupils are taught standard English in school.
(Everyone appears to be united in the cause of making sure school pupils learn
the standard national language, with the only serious dispute being about
means.) There are, alas, social disadvantages in the United States from having
nonstandard speech patterns

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123171>

even if those speech patterns are well accepted in some social subgroups here.
Just as my grandparents were free to use German or Norwegian to communicate
throughout their long lifetimes, let today's children speak however they like
in their private lives, but let's meanwhile provide all learners the
opportunity to learn the speech patterns that are most expedient to adopt
here.

~~~
Jun8
"There are, alas, social disadvantages in the United States from having
nonstandard speech patterns"

This is, of course, true not only in the US but in many other countries and
often popularized in plays, movies, etc., Eliza Doolittle. In German, where
people are quite possessive of their regional dialects, _Bayerisch_ speakers
are sometimes derided.

And it's not just nonstandard speech patterns, either. Unique names that flag
people to a certain minority group may also bring social disadvantages. This
is generally the case with the tradition of inventive/unique names among
African-Americas (<http://www.salon.com/2008/08/25/creative_black_names/> or
see the paper at
<http://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/qjecon/v119y2004i3p767-805.html>).

~~~
grannyg00se
"We find, however, no negative relationship between having a distinctively
Black name and later life outcomes after controlling for a child's
circumstances at birth."

~~~
omonra
But it's somewhat misleading. Do rich black people give their children
distinctively Black names? I actually looked up names that richest AA gave
their kids:

Michael Jordan - Marcus, Jeffrey, Jasmine

Byonce - Blue Ivy Carter

Sean Combs - Justin, Christian, Chance, Jessie, D'Lila

Robert Johnson - Paige & Brett

------
rootbear
One side of my family has roots in the Great Smoky Mountains part of
Appalachia. The English spoken there has its own rules and vocabulary. I have
a book, "The Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English", that my sister gave me and
it's fascinating. Speakers of this variation of English are often perceived as
uneducated, not unlike AAVE speakers. Some features of Smoky Mountain English,
like the double negative, are quite similar to AAVE.

I live in Maryland now and have visited Tangier Island and the English dialect
spoken there is yet another interesting story.

Sadly, the Southern accent I had from growing up in Huntsville, AL, is now all
but gone.

------
cvjones360
Speaking as an African-American male I can say I've spoken both for a long
time. When I’m around friends and family I speak AAVE and when I’m around
‘judgmental others’ and for business purposes I speak American English.

~~~
chimeracoder
I believe the scientific name for this is 'revertigo'[0] :
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n74O3GXRtbY>

([0]It's not really - it's a line from HIMYM - but the video clip is a good
depiction of it anyway, if you watch the whole thing).

~~~
spolsky
The scientific name for this is actually 'code switching'
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching>)

~~~
gchpaco
Code switching is actually when you wander between two or more languages in
the scope of a single conversation (which is downright weird to listen to if
you speak only one; girl I knew would wander between Russian and English
conversing with her mother and I would try like the devil to follow when she
started in Russian and eventually realize that it wasn't some weird English
words). Based on my own (small) experience with it in English and French it's
sometimes easier to find the word you're looking for in the other language;
this only happens to me when I'm trying to speak English in public after I've
been speaking French for a while tho. The grammar gets ... complicated.

~~~
joshrotenberg
Spanglish is an interesting example of this, and I hear it quite a bit:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanglish>

------
jennyjenjen
Thanks for sharing. This was a good read and I think a lot more people could
use to read it instead of just blindly commenting with rude remarks...

~~~
richardjordan
This was fascinating. Folks should leave their bigotries behind and read it,
rather than seeing the word ebonics and using it as an excuse for racist
comments.

------
mattsfrey
I think that it isn't well regarded as a language because at root it is simply
an adaption of another language (English). There's differing vernaculars
anywhere you go, depending on the culture and the demographic. There's no use
in regarding them each individually as "languages", they are termed correctly
as just being vernaculars. When I started working at a factory when I was 18,
I was suddenly bombarded with blue collar vernacular. By the time I was 21,
double negatives, particular "ain't got no.." were fairly ingrained in my
speech and I still talk like that in informal situations. I certainly wouldn't
advocate that becoming a nationally recognized language. AAVE is perpetuated
culturally but almost any AA you meet can speak formal English just fine,
being necessary for success outside of their cultural enclave. Making it a
separate language per se doesn't serve any real function and will really only
cause another level of division on a national level.

~~~
jlgreco
> _When I started working at a factory when I was 18, I was suddenly bombarded
> with blue collar vernacular. By the time I was 21, double negatives,
> particular "ain't got no.." were fairly ingrained in my speech and I still
> talk like that in informal situations._

To add to this, I have experienced similar. Years of working on farms/in food
processing plants has left my informal speech riddled with expletives. I
switch that on or off depending on the setting, but in situations that I am
comfortable in that are not professional settings (for example, my mothers
dinner table), it can slip through without me noticing.

------
mhartl
AAVE gets no respect because of the social status of those who speak it, not
because it's "ungrammatical". Of the stratified [1] dialects of American
English, it's a _basilect_ ; "standard" American English, spoken on TV and
taught in schools, is the _acrolect_. Pro tip: if you want to get ahead, learn
and speak the acrolect.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilect#Stratification>

------
EvanKelly
I've only lived in Hawaii for three years, but I've definitely gained an
appreciation for HCE (Hawaiian Creole English) or pidgin as it's more commonly
called.

There is lots of great linguistic research regarding pidgin done at University
of Hawaii, and the language itself provides a great historical context, as it
reflects the combined cultures of Hawaii (Anglo, Japanese, Hawaiian, Pacific
Islander, Portuguese, etc.) through vocabulary and intonation.

------
auctiontheory
The public schools are these kids' last and only hope to learn the
communications skills (aka standard English) they will need to make it to the
middle class. Don't ruin it for them.

~~~
gecko
That's not what he's suggesting. Rather, he's suggesting that the schools
separate teaching how to communicate amongst themselves v. how to communicate
in a middle-class manner, and not label the former "wrong" and the latter
"right," but rather the former "personal" and the latter "formal." That's not
different from students of yore having to learn Latin to get along in college:
it wasn't that they were speaking English (or French, or German, or whatever)
poorly, but rather that Latin was required to get ahead in the world. Same
thing here.

------
jinushaun
I think ebonics if a load of crock, but as an aficionado of linguistics, I
don't understand the resistance to double negatives in "proper" English. The
"ain't got none" construct exists in many other languages. The double negative
reinforces each other, instead of canceling each other out.

~~~
eroded
As a programmer, double negatives make me reel with horror. I cannot parse an
English sentence with a double negative as being a single negative; it's
utterly illogical. At best, they're an unnecessary hindrance.

~~~
drivers99
A double negative is not double negation (in other languages), it's called
agreement[1]. Just like you have to have agreement between numbers in English
(It is / They are) you can also have languages that require/support agreement
in terms of negative/positive. Yes, it's redundant information, but all human
languages have a lot of extra information built into them at every level to
make them easier to use.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_%28linguistics%29>

~~~
meepmorp
My intuition is that double negation in English is usually accompanied by a
shift in stress to emphasize that the negation should be interpreted in the
"correct" way (i.e., as negating a previous negation) rather than as mere
agreement. I think English actually allows multiple negation with no
significant change in semantics in many dialects, possibly as the default
interpretation.

Be interesting to do a corpus study on this.

~~~
Evbn
How do you do a corpus study on _stress_? Audio/Video, I guess.

------
adventured
Why not white redneck english then? I've met numerous people in West Virginia,
Alabama, Georgia, etc. that speak as different a form of english as ebonics
represents. It's perfectly fine for the english language to spawn related
children, but the purpose of language is understanding / communication, and
it's ideal for the people of a country to be able to communicate in a standard
language to maximize efficiency (in trade, social interaction, you name it).
I'd argue it's ideal to navigate people that speak broken english (whether
they're caucasian, african american, hispanic, asian, whatever) back toward
speaking a more standardized version of it.

~~~
Cushman
Why not Spanish? You can't get here from there. If a child speaks a coherent
first language at home, you can't "navigate them back" to ASE, it will only
confuse them (and further reinforce your preconception that they are speaking
"broken" English). You need a teacher who speaks their first language fluently
to instruct them on the standard language, and when it is appropriate to use.

(And, as stated in the article, this is not a new nor should be a
controversial idea; it has been school board policy in Oakland for 17 years.)

~~~
pekk
You didn't answer the question. Why not Standard Redneck English? Is it not a
different language? Isn't its lack of status due to the lack of status of its
speakers? Other than race, how is this different?

~~~
Cushman
I suppose it wasn't clear; I don't see a difference, except that California is
more progressive linguistically than Kentucky.

------
pacaro
I think that English has a challenge because there is no defined "correct"
English, there is no clear distinction between dialect, accent, and formal
speech.

In some languages there is a clear and understood role for dialect, in those
countries it is understood that most people speak both a dialect and the
formal language. You choose the most appropriate mode for the context. More
importantly, there isn't a necessary judgement on hearing someone speaking
dialect that they "must be ignorant".

------
losvedir
Excellent article, uncharacteristically poor HN comments.

I only learned about AAVE in the last few years and it was eye opening. I
realized I do have a sort of instinctual prejudice against it, though. From
the article:

 _Many of us unfairly judge others based on how they speak. Kenneth the page,
on the late, great 30 Rock, spoke with a southern accent meant to exemplify
his yokel-ness. Maybe you think that British accents sound dignified, or that
the Minnesota accent on display in Fargo betrays its speakers’ intellectual
inferiority._

I'd like to snap out of this, and I thought a good way would be to watch
videos of articulate, smart, (preferably math/science-based discussion in
AAVE). This post talks about Feynman[0]:

 _Feynman’s accent, one of America’s more stigmatized, becomes a strength
rather than a weakness. It is a sad fact that we easily underestimate people
because of their accents._

but since my first exposure to that accent was Feynman videos, I've naturally
associated it with intellectualism. I'd like to have similar positive
connotations with AAVE. Anyone have any video suggestions?

[0] <http://dialectblog.com/2011/09/03/great-minds-accents/>

~~~
omonra
Could you share with us "videos of articulate, smart, (preferably
math/science-based discussion in AAVE)"?

Perhaps this is the missing link for us sceptics - we associate it with poor
uneducated individuals. Ie - by definition, if someone whose primary language
was AAVE wants to sound articulate and smart they will resort to SE?

~~~
losvedir
Well, that's just it. A native-AAVE speaker _will_ use SE when speaking to me,
even if their preferred dialect at home is AAVE, so I don't get exposed to it.
Think of this reporter [0].

However, I'm sure he's an intelligent men, and I'm sure when speaking
informally he'll fall back to AAVE. What I'd love to see is someone at, say,
PhD Math or Physics level speaking in AAVE, preferably about that subject.

I'm studying a bit of Arabic, and I see parallels. In Arabic, there's the
formal register, called Modern Standard Arabic. This is the dialect used in
the Quran and printed in newspapers and such. However, people don't routinely
speak in this register -- they speak in their local Gulf or Levantine or
Egyptian dialects, which are pretty different from each other and from MSA.
The pronunciation of letters is different, the vocabulary is different, hell,
in Egyptian the question word goes at the end of the sentence whereas in other
dialects it goes at the beginning.

They, too, think of their local dialects as "wrong" or "beneath" MSA, even
though it's the native tongue of themselves and everyone around them, and they
have to study for years to be comfortable with this somewhat artificial MSA
dialect.

It's not quite as regimented in English, because the dialects are more
similar, and because no one natively speaks the formal register, but the
principles are the same.

[0] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti1dHabjH3k> [1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ3dk6KAvQM&t=4m31s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ3dk6KAvQM&t=4m31s)

~~~
omonra
Thank you - I really liked the 1st video.

"A native-AAVE speaker will use SE when speaking to me, even if their
preferred dialect at home is AAVE, so I don't get exposed to it."

I actually wonder if two black guys who can speak AAVE but want to discuss
something intellectual (ie physics or literature) will resort to SE. My hunch
is that they would.

------
neeee
The huge black bar at the bottom is obnoxious.

~~~
duskwuff
$(".freepass").hide();

~~~
jdmaresco
$(".message").hide();

But it still doesn't give you the full article

------
hawkharris
I grew up using expressions that might fall under the umbrella of Ebonics.
However, I tend to avoid using them in work settings.

Friends who are also black have shared anecdotes about employers sounding put-
off during phone interviews.

Until this bias is addressed, young people should be aware that speaking
Ebonics can have negative professional consequences.

~~~
Evbn
So can having a black name or black skin. It is a bug in our society, and
acting white is a workaround, not a fix.

~~~
hawkharris
You're creating a false dichotomy between using Ebonics in the workplace and
"acting white."

------
tadhg
David Foster Wallace covered this really well; his spiel to his students on
this topic is included here:
[http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html...](http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html#backfromnote39)
(the whole essay is definitely worth reading).

------
pothibo
Second french example is not a double negation. As for the other french
examples, I'm ambivalent.

~~~
pothibo
"I ain’t never eat no sushi." Does this means you 'will never eat sushi?'

~~~
agscala
No, it means "I've never eaten sushi"

~~~
pothibo
Good to know, I don't know why, but it has a ring to it that made me believe
it was future tense.

~~~
theorique
That would be "ain't never gonna eat no sushi".

------
rayiner
When people ask how Bangladesh fought a war to separate from Pakistan just
because they spoke different languages, I want to point them to some of the
comments in this article to show how deeply language can be tied up with
prejudice, classism, power, etc.

------
brechin
Ahh... this brings me back to my college days (I also majored in Linguistics).

I wonder what the current feelings are about the benefits/drawbacks of
establishing an official US English dialect and/or declaring US English as
(one of the) official language(s) of the United State?

Thoughts?

------
joshrotenberg
Two unrelated (to this) but interesting linguistic things I've discovered
recently:

Boontling: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Boonville-s-quirky-
dia...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Boonville-s-quirky-dialect-
fading-away-4308006.php)

(Cockney) Rhyming Slang: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang>

Not necessarily on topic from a political standpoint, but both good
illustrations of how language forms and changes to suit the needs of those who
use it.

------
voxfrege
> No modern linguist embraces the term Ebonics.

Too bad. As a non native english speaker, I could intuitively understand what
it means. While "AAVE" doesn't tell nobody nothing.

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EamonLeonard
I'm not an expert, but find this fascinating. A somewhat related subject,
English as spoken in Ireland is referred to as Hiberno-English:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English>

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anateus
I see a mention of it below, but none in the article, and I wanted to
highlight that there is a term for this: Diglossia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia>

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fusiongyro
An interesting book on this topic is "Twice as Less," which deals with
manifestations of the mismatch between English and AAVE in math and science.

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latj
I know its not a mother tongue but a tiny part of me thought this was going to
be about Perl.

~~~
Evbn
If someone here would stand up and say the Perl is a valid computer language
but AAVE is not a valid human language, my head would explode.

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ComputerGuru
Is no one else seeing a paywall?

~~~
archagon
The Magazine used to be subscription only. Now you can read one free article
per month online: www.marco.org/2013/02/24/the-magazine-sharing

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Hermel
German?

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DannoHung
Theory: AAVE doesn't get respect because the vocabulary size in most AAVE
corpuses is smaller than common English corpuses.

~~~
dsfasfasf
No, it does not get respect because that is how people from a lower
socioeconomic level speak. And if you come from a higher socioeconomic level
you might not want to speak like that so as not to be confused from the lower
socioeconomic level because it can kill off many opportunities in the work
place or love relationships. Unfair? maybe, but this is how the real world
works.

~~~
omonra
To be fair, people who speak ebonics do not want to sound 'white'. So both
sides are doing this on purpose.

~~~
Evbn
And individuals get caught in the middle. No one acts independently.

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smallegan
I think in order for a language to gain any significant amount of respect it
needs to be used in commerce and more than just illegal commerce.

~~~
richardjordan
With a comment like that, either you didn't read the article or you just
brought your own bigotry to it and left with it in tact.

~~~
smallegan
I did read the article and was expounding upon footnote #1: "These are
sometimes pidgins or creoles, such as the Chinook Jargon of the Pacific
Northwest, and sometimes fully realized natively spoken languages, like
Swahili or French, that become the de facto tool for commerce or diplomacy in
larger areas." This ain't got nothin to do with bigotry and actually I don't
got nothing against no "Ebonics"/AAVE.

