Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!cornellcs!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!portc01.blue.aol.com!portc02.blue.aol.com!howland.erols.net!feed1.news.erols.com!super.zippo.com!zdc!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.bc.net!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!aurora.cs.athabascau.ca!news.mag-net.com!freenet.unbc.edu!news.scn.org!scn.org!lilandbr
From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Ebonics not a new idea
Message-ID: <E4n4LG.HGF@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 00:12:52 GMT
Lines: 42


The following epigram and paragraph are quoted from _Black Jargon in 
White America_ by David Claerbaut, William B. Eerdmans Publishing 
Company, Grand Rapids, (c) 1972:

/He that travelleth into a city before he hath some entrance into the 
language, goeth to school, and not to travel./
				--Francis Bacon [facing title page]

...

	John Brock [a black teacher] had instructed me [a white student 
teacher] to fuse some English with the civics material.  He wanted the 
students to get an opportunity to apply specific English skills.  But, he 
continued, standard English should be taught as a foreign language to 
black students, as they have a nonstandard language of their own.
						[p. 20]

At least here in Seattle, judging from conversations among teenaged bus 
riders I have been intentionally eavesdropping on, black teenagers do 
*not* appear to *me* to be speaking "Ebonics"; the speech I hear them 
engaging in *among themselves* in a context where they might be expected 
to use whatever linguistic means they have at their disposal to avoid 
being understood by a white adult is *not* noticeably more deviant from 
standard English than what I hear coming from their white peers, except 
in phonology, and the phonological deviance is somewhat less distant from 
Seattle's brand of standard white English pronunciation than are many 
north(east)ern US varieties of white urban English.  My impression is 
that "Southern" features, especially in pronunciation, are somewhat more 
noticeable now in Seattle black teens' speech than they were when I was a 
kid attending an overwhelmingly (72%) African American junior high school 
here (1966-67), but not greatly so--and I think some of these 
"Southern"/"black" features have also gained acceptance in white kids' 
English here.  But maybe in Seattle all the Ebonics-speaking kids have 
*cars*. 

--
Liland Brajant ROS'           Aspergas mi per spermo de l' espero
P O Box 30091                    virginon de l' argxenta astro
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono       en la arom' de sxia sino cxasta
Tel. (206) 633-2434  	         dum farniento de l' vespero.   --Mihhalski
			
