Ebonics.

I'd like to clear up some preconceived notions about "ebonics" or the more scientific phrase, "African American Vernacular English," since it's sort of come up again. AAVE is not some degenerate lowbrow pidgin corruption of the English language. Linguists will tell you that it's as much a valid dialect as the Queen's English, "Long Island Lockjaw", and whatever dialect YOU happen to be speaking right now. AAVE is spoken by millions of Americans and has been for decades. It's speakers are not "thugs" who "waste my tax money on $500 sneakers they probably stole."

If you believe that people who speak dialect are uneducated and criminal, it's probably more because of your opinion of the people who speak it, rather than the dialect itself.

is it in the news again somehow?

A lot of "progressives" are agreeing with him.

What Cosby said has a long pedigree in the black community.

I know: Bushonics!

and recginize that axin a docta fo' a second opiniyun is a good idear, but ya aint likely ta take no advice from a docta that talks like dis...an you aint never gonna become a docta talkin like dis neither...know what I'm sayin yo?

Yup, in mah histary class, we learned dat "ebonics" can be traced from da white slave ownas in da south. Dey all used ta talk like dis', and deir' slaves inherited the dialect. I gots a feeling dat if mo' blacks who speak dis way knew dey were using the dialect of some southern white racists, dey would be eager to change fo' real..

I'm an English major and find regional dialects fascinating whether Cockney, Cajun, or from New Jersey. But all dialects are insulating and if you speak it exclusively, you are going to find yourself locked out of the mainstream, unless you are Donald Trump and use your New Yorkese as a sledgehammer.

.

Whereas accents are inflections of words.

AAVE is well known to have a regular and identifiable grammatical structre (as well as inflections). So, for example, when white folks make fun of "he be..." and "I be...." they think they are making fun of bad grammar, when in fact they are making fun of a legitimate grammatical usage within the AAVE dialect.

Dialects are variations of a traditional language. The rules for the language are those established within the traditional one - "High English" for lack for a better term. While a dialect may have its internal structures, the rules themselves are still being broken.

within AAVE, which is the only standard against which one should measure its quality. AAVE is just as functional in use as so called "Standard English" (a fairly recent occurence, in any case, and standardized only through power). What you don't want to face up to is that "Standard English" is itself a dialect, albeit one with more guns, as it were. It is not the first English, or the only English, and the only thing that sets it up as a standard is a system of power. It has a grammar (which most people ignore, BTW, in use), and AAVE hasd a grammar. AAVE's grammar may be "bad" in the context of SE, but that is an arbitrary comparison in any case. If you say "AAVE is bad grammar," you are making a statement not about language and its use, but about power (racism) and its application.

Cockney is also a popular dialect with its own usage rules. But if you wrote a letter to the Guardian in Cockney, they wouldn't publish it.

Frankly, I still think everyone should speak Latin.

I'll stick with the 30+ years of sociolinguistic research and leave you to your opinion.

Whether the letter would get published, by the way, has no bearing on whether it is a legitimate language in its own right. That is an operation of power, just as I said.

that the AAVE dialect has its own set of consistent grammatical rules and syntax. Unfortunately, try explaining that to generally ignorant people who think themselves "educated." In my experience, you don't get very far- and it's all the more frustrating when you're dealing with people who speak in the vernacular and use a lot of regional idioms.

Was it simply teaching African American Vernacular English as English, or was it a system that started at the AAVE to facilitate a move to common English?

I would disagree with the former and could see the advantage of the latter.

I'm not familiar with the specifics. My understanding was that all of the students spoke AAVE and many of the teachers were unable to understand them. Thus the students work was suffering. I believe the school board was interested in acquiring teachers who understood AAVE, and a scandal exploded that blew everything out of proportion.

If AAVE was considered more than just slang then the underfunded school district could get more money to help the teachers to understand the students and be better able to teach them standard English.

into English as a second language fund for students who spoke ebonics. That was the source of the uproar. English as a second language programs are not popular for immigrant children and when the Oakland school district said black students basically are the same as immigrant children when it comes to speaking English, the whole thing exploded.


http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-16/16oak.h16

The report also called for the board to "provide access to all services, current or planned, for limited-English-proficient students to limited-English-African-American-Language/Ebonics students" and to adopt a policy that "recognizes that African-American children speak a language other than English in the home."

FUNDING:

Following passage of the December resolution, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley made it clear that they would not qualify for federal bilingual-education funds.

"Elevating 'black English' to the status of a language is not the way to raise standards of achievement in our schools and for our students," Mr. Riley said late last month. "The use of federal bilingual-education funds for what has been called 'black English' or 'ebonics' is not permitted. The administration's policy is that 'ebonics' is a nonstandard form of English and not a foreign language."

if I recall correctly.

A lot of people, even well-meaning people, look upon what educated Americans speak as 'English' and AAVE as a 'dialect' of English.

Scientifically, Standard American English is as much a dialect of English as AAVE is--as is British English, Texan ("might could") English, Indian (subcontinental) English... Some of them are closer together than others, but none of them is the linguistically 'pure' form of the language--there's no such thing.

SAE is the standard dialect, however (though for social, not linguistic, reasons); the one way in which Cosby is right is that people who want to get ahead in the US will have to learn Standard American English. It's unfair to people who have a different native dialect, but probably difficult to remedy effectively.

But those who claim that non-standard dialects are somehow 'inferior' are buying into a lot of nonsense with some very unpleasant associations.

Years ago I worked on erasing my strong Southern accent and stopped using a regional Southern dialect. I did this because I knew that people think that the accent and using certain words or phrases that are Southern makes one stupid. Sad, but true.

I was successful in the this erasure and I believe that it has helped me in other areas of life to not have this accent or dialect come from my mouth. I'm sure a case can be made that I needed to keep it, but I'm not remorseful.

girl and a southern girl. A northern girl say "You Can" and a Southern girl says "You All Can" ~ Just kidding the world needs more humor.

And you have the situation in Northern Ontario and New Brunswick. Educators have been trying to push more French schooling while a lot of parents prefer to have the kids educated in English because of the advantages it provides. It might be nice to keep the French language alive if you're growing up in Timmins or Sudbury, but if you want to do something with your life besides mine work or the civil service you'd better learn English.

It has served us well over the 150 years in use. Its a combo of words and phrases enabling communication between us Locals.

i obviously have no idea how that word is supposed to be spelled...

... which is why, i suppose, i'm not a local...

;)

Actually, my own Pidgin is, I am told, rather grating on the ears of the true local; then again, I have only three and a half years under my belt, barely enough to qualify for the kama'aina discount at Outrigger Hotels. :-)

On the other hand, there's Constance Hale, former editor at Wired magazine and author of acclaimed books on (standard) English style, such as "Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767903080/103-9886317-5828640

Connie grew up in the (then) sugar mill town of Waialua on O'ahu's North Shore, speaking fluent Pidgin. In effect, standard English is a second language (or dialect) to her. I suspect that this experience has helped give Connie her finely tuned ear for the nuances of standard English that those of us who grew up speaking it would just take for granted.

Wot, you like learn Pidgin, too? :-)

A pigeon is a bird.

on dialects, the reality is that the business world for the most part agrees on a standard of speech, and people who are unable to adapt their speech and dialect are viewed as under-educated. I'm not saying that it should be that way, but it is reality.

As an example, some southern Germans speak some really generally unrecognizable local dialects at home and among friends, but at work, to coworkers, and at formal occasions a more "proper" German is spoken. It is the inability to adapt that is viewed as uneducated, not the use of dialect.

But I draw the line at abandoning a culture for sake of assimilation.

to compete in the real world. Verbal skills are an important tool in the work place and even more important in landing a job. You are just advocating that these people be doomed to low paying jobs, because they're handicapped with poor communication skills.

the language i use at work is differnt from the language i use with my friends, which is different than the language i use when i visit family in texas.

when I'm home, I have a totally different dialect.

that people's language not be denigrated? DrWierd didn't say people should use it in courtrooms if they are lawyers or in the Senate if they are elected representatives--although it would be better than some of the shit I hear in the Senate--but that disparaging it is not helpful and ignores AAVE's history and legitimacy as a dialect.

because the boss couldn't understand a word the person was saying. These were good workers, but in my line of work a miscommunication could get someone killed. You are selling these people short and selling them down the road to poverty.

and it's also important to know your experience is not everyone's. you don't need to speak perfect english to pick up trash, for example. and, of course, not all people of any race speak standard english. gw bush is a case in point.

Of course Seaburb is presenting a false choice. It is not an either or, as you say, but a matter of - as I once heard an extremely eloquent sociolinguist say on this subject - playing the scales.

than i do with my friends. it's important to have to skills to do that. but...let's not pretend that everyone has to to that, even to get a job. gw bush didn't.

African Americans must develop a double consciousness in America. White folks need not.

and i agree with that wholeheartedly. from that perspective, cosby's comments were right on. too bad they were in front of people who didn't need to hear them...because they already know it too :D

And speaking German at home (and in public when I want to "whup some shit" on the people)?

Don't think that's been going on for at least 4 generations...

and it is hard to understand what they are saying. You can tell what town someone is from by the way they talk. Most of them sound pretty dumb and none of them are african american.
Then there is the whole southern part of Pa which has erased the words "to be" right out of their vocabulary. "This needs washed". "She wants fed". That just drives me out of my mind.
A bad accent is bad enough, bad dialect is killer.

I don't think it hurts anyone to speak what passes for cosmopolitian english. I don't see anything wrong with a particular dialect either as long as that is not all your kids hear and learn. It is not fair to little ones to pretend the world is not a very small place these days.

There wasn't much respect for "Long Island Lockjaw", or any other local dialect that skews the English language from its formal, proper dialect. I don't see why AAVE should be granted any special status.

is fun for me. i like to play with accents and words. i also tell boys screw the cussing, you pick up aint or got, everything in texas is got. i got no.........then i wash mouth out with soap. (teasing and we giggle. favorite song....aint gonna rain no mo)

this is my thing. i know it is hard enough to get jobs, i also know that peopled are judged by how they chose to speak. so like with everything, if we chose then we deal with the repercussion. but i dont think the changing of the language was bill cosby's concern

and I agree with you, of course, which is why I said it in the other thread!

The problem is that people like to have opinions about the vulgarity of certain communities without understanding, for example, that this is not only a linguistic/philological entity with a history and a set of rules, but also a cultural paradigm that has been used as a form of resistance.

but it's evolved so much didn't really think it was appropriate to call it the same dialect.

not to a --if not race alone--
then a specific group of people spread about within a larger population?

If it's not due to locale, then isn't it then a different language?
What are the real definitions concerning this debate?

Pardon grammar today - have huge headache but wanted to ask question

qualifies as isolation. of course, not all black people speak this dialect.

In linguistics, dialect refers to one of the subordinate forms or varieties of a language arising from peculiarities (which are sometimes local, but not always) of vocabulary, pronunciation, and idiom. (In relation to modern languages usually this refers to a variety of speech differing from the standard or literary ‘language’; a provincial method of speech.) Also in a wider sense, it is applied to a particular language in its relation to the family of languages to which it belongs.

IN terms of the "ebonics" debate, this refers to a set of rules, grammars, syntaxes, and pronunciation patterns dating back to at least the mid-18C (if one is to believe the literary records) and is associated largely with African Americans. Post-reconstruction, AAVE is most frequently associated with non-bourgeois people; in literature, Zora Neale Hurston and Charles Chesnutt used lots of AAVE (Hurston actively documented it as part of her anthropological research) in the early 20th century, as did Langston Hughes; Toni Morrison uses it today.

And, in fact, what linguists have shown is that many of the forms of AAVE are "local," to the extent that they can be traced back to language patterns in West Africa.

Huh?
Surely you're not telling me that, that even the CONTENTION is there
Are you?

The idea is that language patterns and constructions of sounds emerge in the creolization process. West African dialects therefore effect the way speakers interact with SAE (Standard American English) and produce differences within the language. That is the "creole" conception of AAVE.

It's a legitimate question

People who come from a certain area, transplanted
a completely different language,
--made to use not a dialect but an entirely different language--
said language strictly used for at least 150 years duration
in the modern language usage evince a language pattern that they have not experienced
How else can that be explained?


I don't know, but my first thought was I'll bet it's a heck of a lot more nuture
--and contemporary nurture--
than nature.

THAT is how I took it.


I see what you're saying, I haven't read up on it so can't comment.
Lots of different languages came over though, from a huge land mass; and mixed up into different uh, is plantations the right word?

How long has the different language usage been exhibited? Since the very beginning? And then back to my question on locality and why certain language usage stuck and became nationwide while others didn't.

Gah, this subject is too fraught with Political Correctness overload -- say the wrong word (or socially, temporally non-approved word) & you're dead.

These are linguistic findings. You made an assumption; it was off base, but I can see how you'd misinterpret if you haven't been exposed to the literature or the concepts. At the same time, you can see how being relatively segregated during the formation of the creole language would cause that creole to stick even after dispersion? And, of course, regionalism has multiplied the strands of AAVE as well. The same phenomenon is evident in the Caribbean with a number of European/African creoles, as well as in South America with indigenous/European creoles. It is not particularly strange, in fact.

Where would you read that?

It is no surprise, however, that given the segregation of African American communities within the United States, that certain residual patterns would hold more steady - historically speaking. That is, if a creolization began fairly early, there's no reason to think that it wouldn't hold steady, or continue to influence the development of the language. The evidence of West African grammatical patterns is, as far as I remember, pretty strong.

I should have further qualified where the stars are (I'll try to italicize too but don't count on it):

People who come from a certain area, transplanted
a completely different language,
--made to use not a dialect but an entirely different language--
said language strictly used for at least 150 years duration
*while the original language(s) probably completely forgotten/out of usage within 2-3 generations*
in the modern language usage evince a language pattern that they have not experienced
How else can that be explained *except by genetics* ?


I see where I misunderstood you.

But the same wording/language/grammar usage **see postscript please** has stayed the same since the very beginning?
...which would have to be so if not genetic, correct?
Either it was 1) there from the linguistic beginning and stayed the same through all these years, 2) genetic, or 3) snatched out of thin air (& as such highly unlikely-to-impossible)
I believe would have to be the only choices -- or have I missed something yet again? :/

This subject (fraught as it is, see above post ;) is really quite interesting... would you happen know how long it is conjectured that the original, or birth-language **see postscript please** stayed within the ensuing generations? How homogenized within 'plantations' **see postscript please** the same 'birth' language was? How many languages in total came over?
Know of any good titles that address all this?
It seems in the recent (past century or so) european immigration the uh 'parent' language **see postscript please** seems to be out of the progeny's lexicon &/or knowledge, for the most part or majority, by the 3rd generation. That's the only comparison I can think of at the moment - is this time frame normal or comparable for people moving to a new society with a different language?

Postscript:
**for gods sake I hope you know what I'm trying to say as it feels I have to jump through coiled hoops of terminology to avoid being somehow inadvertently Politically Incorrect!
(I find myself laughing at my own exponential wording but then am worried that the admission of laughter -even self-directed- would be misinterpreted!)

The creolization was the development of a new language. When slaves were brought to the Western hemisphere, they had their own language patterns from a variety of West African languages (Yoruba, etc.). In order to learn the new languages (English, Portugese, French), they began fitting it into their own language patterns. That was the development of a new language, based on the conceptual patterns of the old language. As the new language was developed over the course of time, it was used, and use again, and used again, and used again. By this time, the users may have been several generations removed from Yoruba, etc., but they were not removed from the creolized language which their parents spoke, and which other people in their communities spoke. And so they used this language as well. The point is that this language was used for a number of purposes (not least being for strategic purposes of secrecy and resistance with respect to the dominant white class), but remained fairly segregated. Don't forget that most African Americans didn't receive formal schooling until fairly recently, and schools were only desegregated legally 50 years ago! So, why would you expect anything but a language community resembling the language communities that developed the creole language? Why would there have to be a genetic element; it is thoroughly explicable - if not obvious - socio-historically.

learning standard english is necessary and desirable. however, african american vernacular english is a dialect, not just "bad english" and ignorance. i don't care what that pompous ass cosby says.

Standard operating procedure in such countries (Japan, Germany, France, China, Italy) is to speak the dialect with the people in your family and neighborhood or when you're a public figure trying to emphasize your identity as a local, and to speak the standard language when you're communicating with people who are not part of your group.

The difference between standard English and AAVE is tiny compared to the difference between standard Japanese and Nagasaki Japanese or between standard German and the so-called Plattdeutsch dialects of the north or especially between standard Chinese and Cantonese. Yet people in all those areas realize that they have to speak the standard language of their country (perhaps with a regional accent) if they ever want to function outside their local area or outside the lower economic classes.

cosby's comments, aside.

who set a bad example for their children.

I heard some appalling stories when I worked with street kids, and in Portland, the street kids were over 90% white.

a lot of things :D it's sad that anti-intellectualism and mediocrity (as reflected in many things) seems to be valued by so many.

is that AAEV (or BEV, as I've always seen it in books and articles) is not a single dialect. Linguists often refer to a "continuum" between creole and standard American English (whatever that is). Different AAEV speakers occupy different places in the continuum.

Some of the criticism we're seeing here at DU stems from a seeming slide in the creole direction by a lot of young African Americans.

At least that's my take.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95sep/ets/labo.htm

thanks :D

about whether AAVE is creole or dialect. John Rickford, one of the most prominent scholars of AAVE, is a proponent of the creolization theory. Read about it here: http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAVE.html

On edit: Please note that this view, which is the standard one among linguists, really, is not that there is a "slide" toward creolization, but that AAVE is inherently creolized.

i will check out the article.

Serious question.

I had thought that *a* creole dialect usually arises among children of people using a pidgin dialect. It's confusing though, since we have a creole that happens to be called called Creole.

what it is), many young people lean more towards AAVE and less toward white English in their use, is what I think is being said.

I think the designation went from BEV (Labov's construction) to AAVE several years ago.

has Deleuze in his or her sig line.

Can't you make your point without turning this discussion into a race issue. Because this issue isn't about race, it's about ethnicities.

African American Vernacular English? Or that SAE (Standard American English) doesn't use the white bourgeoisie as its paradigm? How is that possible?

Are we to pretend that it is not about "race" as a construction or otherwise? It most certainly is about race.

That's a new.

I did not say that anyone was a racist, and you can check my post below to show that I even disagreed when somebody did say that. Second, I have no idea what Bill Cosby said, but yes, the question of AAVE is a race issue, whatever Bill Cosby might have said. Third, African Americans are just as capable of performing racism (that is, against other African Americans) as any other individual, since racism is a cultural production, and not an individual possession. That said, reasonable people can disagree on the specifics, but that doesn't make the tension between AAVE and Standard (i.e., white) American English any less a race issue, rather than this cowardly formation of an "ethnicity" issue, as if we don't have a big, glaring fucking RACE PROBLEM in this country. Don't be disingenuous.

If you didn't understand my original post I'll spell it out for you:

People who denigrate ebonics are racists.

I think that people who attack or otherwise demean AAVE are performing racism, which is much different than the person "being a racist."

Is not a racist someone who "performs racism?"

I don't think people ARE racists. It is not a phenomenon that is located in individuals, but rather a cultural systematic that works through individuals. So no. I don't make the immediate reduction of someone who performs racism to "racist." We all perform racisms at different times and to different degrees, is the point. I don't think that there's a degree that you pass where you become "a racist." It is still the culture of racism speaking through you.

What are people who make fun of the way Appalachians speak?

AAVE isn't a great language compared to standard English, but few are. English includes a MUCH larger vocabulary than many other perfectly respected languages.

If a person denigrates AAVE as incapable of a full range of expression, that's silly. It's as rich as many other languages.

But if a person choses to consider AAVE speakers as de facto non-English speaking for purposes of hiring it seems reasonable enough... almost self-definitive.

A particular employer can't choose out of the generally racist culture that would prevent a purely AAVE speaker from being effective in a job. The point of language arts education for African Americans has thus been either assimilationist or dualist (i.e., maintaining cultural forms while learning the white cultural forms as well) for quite some time. Even if an employer were to hire an employee who couldn't communicate well in SAE, it would change little. Everybody knows this. It is, of course, evidence of the deep rift in our culture, and it is an effect of power first and foremost. There's nothing wrong with it being an effect of power per se (most - if not all - cultural phenomena are effects of power). It is racism, though. Oh, I know. Racism is just the bad stuff, the cross burnings and the lynching. Yeah. Much easier when racism is just the neo-Nazi's, and not the stuff that most of us consider "natural."

I can't catch it at times, so forgive me if I offend anyone.

I'm still not hiring someone who speaks Ebonics in an interview.

you wouldn't hire them?

but if it's accompanied by many others, combined with the candidates inability to speak formal English, then yes, I wouldn't hire them.

morphed into many candidates or are those just a couple examples of non-standard English?

and the response one can expect from someone who is foolishly solipsistic

A typo is only one of the errors. Strictly speaking, your post says that you wouldn't hire either the mistakes or the candidates, but in a community of speakers, the meaning is perfectly clear. In the community of AAVE speakers, the meaning of an utterance is also clear. And nobody has suggested that people use AAVE in the workplace; that is simply sophistry.

We all make errors when we speak or write, like sayin "them" when we really mean "him" or "her." Linguists are more interested in communucation than in perfection.

But it also depends on what type of job you're hiring them for. If it's a labor job where they don't interact with others, then there is nothing wrong with hiring someone who doesn't speak proper english.

I was thinking about the job I would be hiring someone for - computer programmer

A little regional "flair" in speaking is fine. But if you have to deal with the public - like my employees do - people better be able to understand what the hell you are saying.

hire spanish speaking employees. At this one place, I have ordered items from the menu and everytime, they screw up my order and I know it's because they don't understand what I'm saying.

I'd argue that most people - whether they are AAVE speakers or not - can understand what AAVE speakers are saying. Don't think that's the problem.

They understand too well, perhaps....

I think speaking eloquently and sounding intelligent matter. I think any kind of slang likes sophistication in formal settings.

I also think men should wear suits and ties to work.

I should be put on an iceburg and set off to sea.

However much you'd like to claim a false victim status.

However, when you say that AAVE isn't eloquent, you are performing racism. When you say that AAVE doesn't sound intelligent, you are performing racism. That doesn't mean that you are a racist. Just ignorant.

Eloquent and intelligent statements can be made in AAVE. That's a fact. So can dumb statements.

Dumb statements can be made in Standard (white) English. So can eloquent and intelligent ones. There is no correlation, except in the racial imagination.

If you think someone speaking AAVE sounds stupid simply because they are speaking that dialect/creole, then you are performing racism. It is as simple as that.

I am, however, also a fan of the stylish suit.

Axe is an implement for chopping. I don't use curse words or the California valley talk I grew up in at work. It's unprofessional.

If a job applicant said "Dude, I can do a bitchin' job for you man!", I would not hire him. He's either stupid, or not taling the job seriously enough.

Of course we're talking about a professional job. A person who says "ax" is perfectly qualified for work at Mc Donalds, but not at Nordstrom.

Cockney is a rich dialect. Speakers of that dialect are considered uneducated because that dialect is not the one taught in school. In fact, it is actively discouraged in school. So it's not absurd to assume a cockney talker is uneducated, having clearly not mastered on of the primary lessons of formal education... how to speak "proper" English.

One might as well say that not being able to read doesn't mean a person is uneducated. It doesn't mean that person is stupid or criminal, but it assuredly means they're uneducated.

and i'll call it a crock. where i'm from, we speak our own vernacular, have our own slang that has as much as a structure as 'ebonics'. IT'S NOT A LANGUAGE! by the very nature of the pc terminology for it, african american VERNACULAR english, it's a dialect of the english language. i wouldn't write an exam or speak to a potential employer or anything like that in 'trini'(unless i were making a joke with a fellow trini or attempting to explain a point), i'd speak the queen's english (what i suppose you'd call standard british english). and it's DEFINITELY not encouraged in the classroom. you're expected to learn, speak and write standard english for the purposes of your academic and professional life.

i'm sorry, but as a black person it IRKS me to see my american black brothers and sisters buy into this 'ebonics is a language' tripe. all it does is continue the cycle of ignorance and we allow it to be used as a tool to keep us down. it says to me 'we're comfortable knowing no better', it just ENRAGES me!

...are at a distinct disadvantage in getting into better schools and getting better jobs, thus I totally disagree with teaching that is is somehow on a par with standard English.

Why would you want to advance a dialect that will only keep people down?

And I know for a fact that there are a great many African-Americans who agree. I'm surprised you guy haven't started calling Bill Cosby a "Tom".

speakers. British Standard English is different from American Standard English as well, but no one thinks of it as 'low-class' for some reason.

Is this high-class vs. low-class?

Yank: Congress is in session. Our company is coming out with a new product line.
Brit: Parliament are in session. Our company are coming out with a new product line.

The Brits have the verb agree with the plural meaning of the subject; the Yanks have the verb agree with the singular form of the subject. Is one stupid and the other smart? If you think so, why?

Black kid: She can't come to the phone, she sick. (Immediate present tense, meaning that she is temporarily under the weather and you can call back later.) OR
She can't come to the phone, she be sick. (Ongoing present tense, meaning that she is not expected to get well any time soon, so don't bother calling back.)

White kid: She can't come to the phone, she's sick. (You can't tell how sick, because immediate and ongoing present tenses are not distinguished.)

So does this grammatical difference mean one is stupid and low-class, and the other is not? If you think so, why?

Just as Mel Gibson (ecch) and Russel Crowe have done to succeed here. And you totally glossed over the predominance of profanity in ebonics.

Theres's a new line of cell phones with posters all over town that say "CHIRP for that late-night BOOTY CALL".

That's just plain crass. As bad as the beer commercials are, they've brought advertising to a new low with this stuff. If not liking it makes me racist, fine I'm a racist.

But I'd much rather hang out with a group of blacks speaking decent English, than a bunch off "wiggers" speaking ebonics. It's ridiculous.

maybe you should look at the first post again. "CHIRP for a late night BOOTY CALL" and "the predominance of profanity" are not characteristics of what is called ebonics; they are standard variations in the English language. Ebonics signifies something specific, and it has nothing to do with "profanity" (btw, most profane words in English are good ol' Anglo-Saxon words! Not "ebonic" at all).

and a jargon. 'Gangsta' jargon is not a dialect, any more that the stuff in 'The Hackers' Dictionary' is a dialect. A jargon is a specialized subculture vocabulary; jargons do not have grammatical differences from their host languages or dialects. Black English Vernacular is a dialect, not at all the same as gangsta jargon.

BTW, the Oakland teachers looking for funding for Ebonics were doing so in order to spread their very successful program of TEACHING STANDARD ENGLISH to kids whose first language was Black English Vernacular. They found that starting off with respect for the kids' home language was a very good basis for getting them to accept learning American Standard English. Funny how that works.

The respect they recieve is directly related to the respect their speaking population recieves. The standard form is usually based on the form spoken by the group with the highest social status (originally northeastern white men). an illusory power if there ever was one. Any divergance from the standard form is looked down upon as inferior, incorrect or stupid (ironically a dialect spoken in the Ozarks is probably closer to proper Elizabethan English than the Standard form due to isolation).

Just a note, Britian has a greater divergance of dialects over a much smaller area, ex.
I widna laek ta bide in yun backaboot place.

Given America's history of racism (which compounds the problem) it's no shock that AAVE is looked down upon.