Ebonics is misunderstood

To be a pedant, actually, there is not only Slavic influence on Eastern Yiddish, but also significant Romance influence on Yiddish in general (which is something people often overlook with respect to Yiddish).

Ebonics is a lazy illiterate form of English. Anyone who says it isn't is being illiterate themselves.

Here are some of the reasons why it's lazy:

They have difficulty pronouncing final consonant clusters and so what the do is drop the second member of each final cluster:

i.e.

test - tes

tests - tesses

desk - des

mist - miss

wasp - woss

left - lef

land - lan

told - toll

send - sen

How illiterate that is.

They also seem to have trouble pronouncing certain words correctly

i.e.

toilet - tawlet

ask - aks

strength - strenth

length - lenth

The real Mxsmanic writes better English you.

According to this:
http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Yiddish/English/yiddish.html

"Its [Yiddish] vocabulary is basically German, but it has been enlarged by borrowings from Hebrew, Slavic, Romance languages, and English."

The real Mxsmanic writes better English than you (and me).

Mxsmanic, you can fuck off and die for all I care.

As for "aks", that's actually a retained historical form, with the form "ask" being actually newer than it.

As for those words you listed above, hell, I myself pronounce them in ways similar to those when speaking in a connected fashion, for example, when not speaking formally:

"test" : /tEs/ --> [t_hEs] (formally /tEst/ --> [t_hEst_}])
"mist" : /mIs/ --> [mIs] (formally /mIst/ --> [mIst_}])
"left" : /lEf/ --> [5Ef] (formally /lEft/ --> [5Eft_}])
"land" : /l{n/ --> [5{~:n] (formally /l{nd/ --> [5{~:nd])
"told" : /tol/ --> [t_ho:5] (formally /told/ --> [t_ho:5d])
"send" : /sEn/ --> [sE~:n] (formally /sEnd/ --> [sE~:nd])

Those kinds of things are in no fashion whatsoever limited to AAVE, and considering the fashion that you use the term "illiterate", which indicates that you have little knowledge of the practical relationship between spoken and written language, and are thinking more in terms of preexisting bias against AAVE than anything else.

Travis,

The average length of your sentences is about 50 words. You make very little sense at the best of times. Whenever I see your posts I avoid them because the content per 100 word ratio is simply too low. Before commenting on language issues learn to write in a way that is concise and informative to the reader.

I salute Mxsmanic as a lone voice of reason. If Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice spoke Eubonic they would not be where they are, and would certainly not be respected in the world. It does not matter what the langauge is. There is a standard form. It is not the "joual of Quebec, it is not cockney, it is not Hillbilly English with all the "ain't never " and it is not Eubonics. Language well spoken is art, whether English, Chinese, French or any other language. That is what most people in most languages aspire to and appreciate. All of the justifications for poor language that I read on this forum are a negaton of the pursuit of excellence and beauty, typical of post-modern destruction of culture.

<<All of the justifications for poor language that I read on this forum are a negaton of the pursuit of excellence and beauty, typical of post-modern destruction of culture.>>

Bullshit. English began as a "poor", bastardized language. If you lived in the 1200's then you would have considered English neither excellent nor beautiful.

Very blunt... but you have a point about Travis's writing. As for my opinion on Ebonics, I don't like it, but I don't see how you can define "proper" English objectively.

My post was directed towards Steve K.

Steve K, and if I judged people on my personal subjective judgement of their speech patterns, I probably wouldn't have the best of opinions of mein Führer; of course, I still don't have the best of opinions of him, but that's another story. But anyways, ideas of being "well-spoken" and like are outdated, from the day of things like Pygmalion and the Latin grammarians and like, and are better left to the past, to be replaced by modern scientific linguistic viewpoints, which do not consider ideas like "poor language".

Or, to put it a little more succinctly, the quicker we consign prescriptive grammar to the history books, the better.

Steve K wrote, "If Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice spoke Eubonic they would not be where they are, and would certainly not be respected in the world."

How do you know for a fact Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice don't speak Ebonics? Just because they address their audience (who are probably ignorant of Ebonics) in formal English doesn't mean they speak in such a way in their personal lives. What implication to their careers could the language they speak at home possibly have?

I live in an English speaking country but I normally speak a different language at home. It's effectively pidgin because of the influence of English. It hasn't prevented me from excelling at my career. What makes you think I can't justify the vernacular I speak?

Define "proper English".

Fred, I agree completely; what one speaks at home is in no sense necessarily what they speak at work, and just because certain speech forms may be deprecated at work doesn't mean that individuals who speak such should change what forms they use at home.

this thread is growing ridiculous. Ebonics won't fae away; it's a dialect of a people. It will still be spoken by many people that aren't moving up economically, but also it is still retained in occasional use by many upwardly mobile black communities, like my father's family for example. I grew up aware of ebonics, although i was educated in SAE and spoke that primarily, I am also quite able to code switch to this linguistic form. I find many of the opinions expressed here to be largely ignorant and dismissive of those that speak a certain dialect form. And seriously, stop attacking Travis when all he does is speak with a bit more education and authority than most.