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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: black a language??
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References: <597jte$k0h@mercury.mcs.net> <59efvc$rir@panix2.panix.com> <komisaru.36.000ED0ED@ucla.edu> <59n160$afu@news.bu.edu>
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 04:16:15 GMT
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In article <59n160$afu@news.bu.edu>, Charles Lieberman <calieber@bu.edu> wrote:
>In <komisaru.36.000ED0ED@ucla.edu> did Adam C. Komisaruk (komisaru@ucla.edu)
>decree:
>
>> The status of Black English as a language, rather than a slang or dialect,
>> has
>> been well-documented for years.  The point is not that Black English has 
>> endured or been "consistently used," although it has.  Rather, the point is 
>> that, like any other language, Black English has a logic, a grammar, an 
>> internal coherence.
>
>It's still a dialect.  And it is patronizing if not racist to sqay, "well, he
>speaks BEV, so he doesn't know English."  Does that mean my BEV-speaking black
>friends can put on their resumes that they know a foreign language?

	Is it equally patronising and racist to say "She speaks Gullah, so
she doesn't know English"?  (Even in cases when the woman in question is,
in fact, monolingual in Gullah?)  Is it unreasonable for fluent
Gullah-speakers (if there be any left) to put on their resumes knowledge
of a foreign language?
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
