Sorry, but you are mistaken. Krunk is not ebonics, but slang. Ebonics isn't slang. There are a number of books, and resources which I can dig up if you are interested. Shoot me an e-mail. I had to study this extensively in teacher training so I am sure I can find a list of the resources I used. I'm definitely not an expert in linguistics, but I have progressed from no knowledge and believing Ebonics was slain to the truth which is that it has its own form. As people from West Africa were taken from their tribes and brought to the U.S. to serve as slaves. After a few rebellions by those who were enslaved, Slavers decided to seperate people from the same tribe as much as possible to hamper communication. Furthermore enslaved people were forbidden from learning the language of their new land. So we had groups of enslaved West Africans who weren't allowed to academic English, and didn't have a common language of their own. But the different West African dialects did have common language structure. Over time they took vocabulary from English, but applied their West African language structure to it. For instance the 'th' sound wasn't part of the West African dialect at the beginning of words. Instead of saying "help me with those" It becomes "Help me with 'doze". They are actually following an organized linguistic structure. It isn't English but it is an organized linguistic structure. That is the root of it. Add to that the way that humans learn language. At a very early age the primary care give(mom and dad) have already taught children the structure of the language. A child who has not yet started school might say, "He goed to sleep". They already understand that adding 'ed' makes something past tense. Went would be an irregular conjugation which has to be learned seperate from the standard structure. Studies have also shown that it takes three generations of a certain linguistic to make it permanent. Until the second half the most recent century African-Americans were denied an equal education. They didn't have the opportunity to learn academic English to model for their children in any large numbers. Furthermore once they were allowed to go to school, many people were under the same mitaken idea that you are, that they just speak slang and refuse to learn academic English. So we had capable learners who didn't get the best education for them because they were often misdiagnosed as lazy, special ed, etc. It still happens to this very day. Further examples of Ebonics different from slang is the use of some verbs. For instance "be". If a person speaking Ebonics said "Don't worry about him doing his work, he be lazy." A person who wasn't familiar with ebonics might translate that as "Don't worry about him. He is lazy." However it actually means "Don't worry about him. He is always lazy. There is a difference, and it often leads to misunderstanding. Slang words are still slang words, though they are sometimes mislabelled as ebonics.
Further examples of Ebonics different from slang is the use of some verbs. For instance "be". If a person speaking Ebonics said "Don't worry about him doing his work, he be lazy." A person who wasn't familiar with ebonics might translate that as "Don't worry about him. He is lazy." However it actually means "Don't worry about him. He is always lazy. There is a difference, and it often leads to misunderstanding. Read the post above for a very introductory background on it.
Exactly right that Ebonics doesn't need to be taught in school. There are three different programs in California for students learning English, if Ebonics gets treated as a seperate langauge. Only one of which would teach subject matter in ebonics. and that would happen only at the beginning of a student's career and would be phased out by 8th grade. It is by far the minority in schools in California. Most use a structured English immersion program which does not teach content subjects in the primary language. However, even in situations where material is taught in Ebonics, it never replaces instruction in Academic English. Academic English is still the goal and the result.
The way it works is in some cases is that students start learning 80% in their primary language and 20% in academic English. As schooling progresses the ratio changes to 60/40 - 50/50 - 40/60 - 20/80 until the student is fluent in academic English but also hasn't missed any content in science, social studies etc. That is the ideal anyway. It may not be a foreign language, but it does have its own linguistic structure, and has nothing to do with slang. In fact Ebonics is spoken in parts of South America. It is a different ebonics, but it developed the same way and has the same linguistic structure. That form of ebonics isn't based in English at all.
First of all they might not be in the same school with other children who don't speak ebonics. Secondly there is a proven difference in the way volunary immigrants learn, and the way that people who come from enslaved, or conquered cultures. Even when socio-economic conditions are the same, Native American, Mexican American, Hawaiian, and African Americans performed differently. It isn't even Latin American, because many others would be categorized as voluntary immigrants.
Thanks a lot for the intro, which surely helps me understand the origins of Ebonics. Because of the rampant use of slangs and others, it is really a tall order for linguists to sieve the true form of Ebonics from the potpourri of everyday "informal languages". I venture to say probably nobody in USA speaks pure grammatically correct Ebonics.
Maybe I just don't understand, however, I do not see it as a foreign language and to state that is ignorant, IMO...
Or a sad predictable response from a professional educator, who wants everyone to learn academica English. I look forward to future responses from you which might actually contain some content.
I agree. It is also true that nobody speaks pure gramatically correct academic English. I also don't think that we should speak ebonics in school, or teach it to children. But it is important to know where it comes from in order to best help students learn standard academic English which they will need in the rest of their lives. They must understand that there is a time when speaking Ebonics is ok(outside the classroom, or workplace) and when they need to speak academic English.
Ebonics is not a foriegn language and its ridiculous to even suggest that. The idea of ebonics is nothing more than a way to cover up the stupidity and laziness of people. Parents who promote ebonics are just too damn lazy to teach their kids the proper way to talk and the whole idea of ebonics was created as a way to justify this laziness. Racism (or perceived racism) has made it taboo to call out the parents who do not teach their children correctly. Everyone knows that eboncs is just a butchering of the english language and anyone who speaks like that on a regular basis is going to be discriminated against in any type of professional atmosphere. Ebonics is just a furthering of a stereotype and I think holds back the ones who speak it.s
Rocketman Tex and I are both Lefties and we are against it. A sad response is one that doesn't actually focus on the issue at all.
I wholeheartedly agree. The right compains about knee-jerk reactions from the left, but they are equally as guilty of it.
Unless the plan is to teach those students that speak Ebonics proper English in English as a Second Language classes, this is the dumbest thing I have ever read. My wife came to the United States from South Korea along with her sister at the ages of 5 and 7 respectively. They spoke very little, if any English. They were placed into the ESL system which she described as awful and woefully inadequate. She and her sister left the ESL system after very little time. They taught their parents English at home. They entered regular classes and moved to honors classes in middle and high school. Both graduated from high school and the University of Texas with High Honors. Neither one has a hint of a Korean acccent (they sound as Texan as I do) yet can still speak Korean with almost perfect diction. If kids that come over with no English language skills at early school age and then grow up to have perfect grammer, proper diction, and not a hint of an accent (other than a slight southern one) these kids and their lazy parents have no excuse.
So a couple of you finally have a thread where you can make fun of the way some blacks pronounce ask?
The issue isn't really about who is 'at fault' or whether the parents and/or kids are lazy. It is about how to improve their performance and language skills at school. That said....this idea is simply crazy. Ebonics is slang. It is not spanish, or korean or any other language with a cultural base, and its own literature and history. You might be able to come up with some academic rationalization about it's history, etc, but really, it's slang, that got a funky label. So maybe some kids need extra help with english. Give them that help. But lets not pretend they're fluent in some foreign language and lets not grant Ebonics any more standing than other forms of slang just because we've somehow managed to label it. And lets not legitimize it by encouraging its use in schools...would we need ebonic's text books now too....hmmmmm.
If 'axe' is ebonics...do you want your kids grade three teacher mimicking 'axe' so that junior feels more comfortable???
