"And seriously, stop attacking Travis when all he does is speak with a bit more education and authority than most."
I mean no offense to Travis, but I have to say his posts usually contain run-on sentences, and are sometimes unclear. Maybe it's rude to point it out, but you can't deny it.
Yes, I could be a bit more terse at times, I know, but I tend to prefer longer sentences with large quantities of qualification, and significant interrelationship marking, with relative and demonstrative pronouns, between things referred to in different clauses, and so on. Of course, yes, there are points where I probably could replace the use of "and" at a top level in a sentence with a semicolon or breaking said sentence in two, but at the same time, neither of those are exactly equivalent in the desired flow, as breaking said sentence in two implies two different ideas, and using a semicolon implies a separate idea following from the preceding one. While people complain about run-on sentences and like, at the same time, forcing unnecessary terseness is also not necessarily the most desirable of things, for it limits expressiveness and in particular requires one to limit one how qualifies things, and how one links related ideas together.
You're persisting with it...LOL, sorry but that's hilarious!
Okay, so now this discussion has become not about AAVE, but rather about the writing style which I use on here... yay.
Yeah, I guess so, because we figured we had debunked the attitude towards AAVE. :)
Is there one single Ebonics or various Afro-American dialects/sociolects/ethnolects/whatever-lects ?
"Actually Yiddish was also influenced by other European languages, but to a much lesser extent."
Actually, Yiddish could be considered as simply a particular German dialect of a certin group of people - in this case, Jews.
That's more or less the same relationship "Ebonics" has to English, folks.
"Ebonics is a lazy illiterate form of English. Anyone who says it isn't is being illiterate themselves."
More subjective tosh.
greg, well, I would assume it would have at least some variation from place to place, of course, but AAVE is just generally referred to as if it were one single whole, rather than as if it were a group of dialects, even though it, of course, probably is actually such.
Thanx Travis. Is it nonsense to think there's a Californian Ebonics as opposed to, say, New Jersey Ebonics ?
AAVE is not generally referred to as having specific subdivisions of any sort, even though there is almost certainly some variation within it. But in general, no, people don't refer to it in terms of there being, say, "Californian AAVE" versus "New Jersey AAVE", and it's generally more a dialect that is within particular social groups, than one that is linked to any specific locale or locales, like with the case of Yiddish (even though Yiddish did have an east/west division historically, even though its western form is now practically extinct).
Am I wrong in assuming there might be non-Black Anglophones speaking or using Ebonics ?
Some recent posts to this board under my name were not authored by me. Unfortunately there is no way to unambiguously link specific messages to specific authors, although my writing style is fairly consistent and easy to recognize over a large number of posts.
However, it is true that I consider Ebonics to be a very substandard form of English, to be avoided at all costs. If someone truly wishes to create the impression that he's an illiterate drop-out from the 'hood with a criminal record longer than his CV, then yes, Ebonics is probably a good choice of language. But if he wishes to join the mainstream and find some semblance of success and happiness in life, he needs to realize that Ebonics is not the path to these goals. Ebonics is the dialect of a tiny microcosm of society characterized by poverty, ignorance, stupidity, and misery. Why encourage anyone to embrace such an environment?
I do indeed tell it like I see it. I'm tired of political correctness. People who speak in Ebonics sound retarded to everyone else in the world. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be permitted to speak in any way they wish, I'm just pointing out how ridiculous they sound if they speak in such a substandard dialect. Pretending that they aren't making this impression won't make reality go away. If one person in a job interview speaks GAE, and another person in an interview with identical qualifications speaks Ebonics, chances are that the speaker of GAE will get the job. That's just the way it is.
I prefer to speak a variety of English that sounds normal and neutral to the greatest possible number of other English speakers. I prefer a variety that maximizes comprehension and communicative efficiency. Ebonics is not in that category; in fact, it's at the opposite extreme. Therefore I do not use Ebonics, and I strongly discourage others from using it, unless they fully understand the consequences and find those consequences desirable.
Above all, I do not suggest that others who disagree with me be silenced or censored, as some others here (notably Travis) seem to be suggesting. I attack Ebonics, not the people who support Ebonics. I discuss the issue, not the person with whom I disagree. My arguments are relevant to the topic; they are not personal attacks. And I fully support freedom of speech. Need I say more?
Mxsmanic : what you say about Ebonics being a substandard is valid on the condition you accept your attitude may be viewed by others as social-biased as it actually is.
Others may view my opinion in any way they wish. My opinion is fairly widespread, however. Nobody is taking Ebonics to the boardroom or the university.
Apart from the tremendously poor impression that Ebonics is likely to make on anyone other than a native speaker of the dialect, there is the problem that all such dialects have, namely, an extremely limited scope. Ebonics does not duplicate the flexibility of standard English. Ebonics (or AAVE, or whatever one wishes to call it) does not contain the entire English vocabulary, and it addresses only a very small fragment of human existence--the fragment that surrounds the handful of people who slipped into this substandard speech. Perhaps it suits them, but it is woefully inadequate for any other purpose; whereas standard English can rise to just about any occasion. The most standard and prestigious forms of languages tend also to be the most flexible, since they receive the greatest exposure and the most widespread use. Similarly, languages that are widely spoken tend to be more flexible than languages that are not, because they must address a wider variety of real-life situations. Thus, English has the largest vocabulary of any language, in part because it is the most widely spoken of any language.