Re: Grammar

[mn13189@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU]

Poster: mn13189@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU


Oops.  I meant to add this to the tail end of my last posting, but the
messages got cut.  Sorry.

On Sat, 15 Mar 1997, Stephen Mumford wrote:
> "Ebonics", in my admidately narrow opinion, is in fact a dialect of
> English, but I would hardly call it a seperate language.  To me, a language
> does not ten years make.  When Ebonics has been around as a seperate,
> distinct form of communication for a hundred years, then I'll concede and
> say, sure, you may have yourself a seperate language there.

Actually, the roots of Ebonics go back much farther than ten years.  It's
earliest roots can be found in the pidgin spoken in West Africa among the
slave traders.  When slaves came over speaking this pidgin English, they
combined that with the language of teh south here in America.  There is a
language called Gullah that is spoken along the coast of SC in sme
isolated places that still is very reminiscent of this language.
Linguistically speaking, it is very easy to trace the development from
Gullah to a more modern Black English (or Ebonics).  So Black English has
been in America for as long as Blacks have.

> to take centuries.  Even the name, "Ebonics", show a particular slant
> towards Political Correctness (tm) and as such, further strengthens my
> feeling that this is something that has been artificially created where
> there shouldn't be.

Actually, this debate ha come up many times in the past few decades.
Ebonics is just the most recent name for the language (dialect, variety,
what-have-you), that has been suggested.
The big debate among linguists now is weather or not to classify Ebonics
as a dialect or as a language.  Those two terms are not as concrete as
they seem.  In the end, it won't be the linguists who determine anything,
but the people who speak the language themselves.
But it is important to realize that Ebonics is not "lazy talk" or "bad
English" (like so many people have tried to call Southern English as
well), but it does follow it's own rules of grammar and diction.  It's
just different, not degenerate.
If anyone is interested in persuing this topic further, I'd be happy to
share some more info with you privately.
Aye,
Eogan

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