Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!dsinc!cppnews!cpp!aawest
From: aawest@CritPath.Org (Anthony West)
Subject: Re: Ebonics?
Message-ID: <E2uqAE.Aqp@CritPath.Org>
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 05:37:26 GMT
References: <01bbeec7$1dddd340$af8faec7@festus.inhouse.compuserve.com> <32bd5677.2990666@news.hal-pc.org>
Organization: Critical Path Project
Lines: 73

In article <32bd5677.2990666@news.hal-pc.org> remy@hal-pc.org (Karl Reinhardt) writes:
>On 20 Dec 1996 17:22:22 GMT, "M. Beadles" <103311.453@compuserve.com>
>wrote:
>
>>What is all this news I have been hearing in the United 
>>States about 'Ebonics'?  Apparently the term is used to 
>>describe what is sometimes known as Black English Ver-
>>nacular, from what I gather.  It has been reported that
>>English is being taught as a _second_ language to children
>>whose _first_ language is 'Ebonics'.
>>
>>Anybody have any insight into this rather...peculiar
>>report? Is Ebonics different enough from other
>>varieties of English that people are considering it 
>>a separate language, whose speakers need special in-
>>struction to learn English?  Or is this, as I suspect,
>>really more of a political thing?
>>
>>--M. Beadles
>>
>Well I am one
>linguist who is willing to say it is separate.  Just like Swiss-
>German is not the language called "German" by the rest of
>the world.  And in the Swiss-German speaking areas children 
>are taught "German".  The last time I was there S-G was used
>in first grade, and G was started in second.
>The difference is that virtually everybody speaks [a variety of]
>SW and G, with different roles assigned to each; thus S-G
>is not the language of the underbelly, but of everybody.  
>Most African Americans (or other assimilated Blacks) who
>function in middle class activities speak both.  Those who
>don't are llimited professionally and socially.
>
Black American English is clearly a dialect, not a
separate language. It is quite mutually comprehensible with
White Southern English, of which it is basically a variant.
It is largely mutually comprehensible with most other
dialects of English. "Dialect/language" status is a technical
red herring irrelevant to the real problem here.

In the United States, few immigrant groups continue to be
monolingual in their native speech variety after three
generations in a new region, regardless of whether it was
English or some other tongue. The grandchildren adopt
local dialects with at most only a faint hint of their
grandparents' origin.

But I constantly meet 3rd- or 4th-generation Black
Philadelphians who can *only* speak a thick Black Southern
dialect. Their practical communication with their white
neighbors is impaired; they cannot make simple inquiries
of strangers like "Do you have any jobs?" or "Where does
the bus stop?" without repeating themselves two or three
times.

It is time to recognize that a distinct speech variety
exists among many Afro-Americans that is not Standard
English. Standard English is something they need to
learn, if they and this country is to succeed. They can
hardly learn it if we don't begin in school by noting in
school that Standard English is structurally different
from "Ebonics," if you will call it that. At present,
not only do they not come to school speaking the same
speech as their neighbors - they don't even *leave*
school with mastery of the common tongue.

Pretending this isn't happening has not been a success.
Perhaps it's time we called a spade a spade,
linguistically and pedagogically.

-Tony West     aawest@critpath.org
Philadelphia

