I need some help

[Queen of the Ryche]

Actually I've found a large portion of the Cellar to be very bright, well educated, and open minded. Just becasue their opinions differ from yours, and they may not have taken as many linguistics couses as recently as you, does not indicate anything to the contrary - It just emphasizes your narrow mindedness for not accepting that yours is not the only version of the truth.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

Okay, I get the idea that people have different accents and speech patterns and such based on the subculture they grew up in. I do, too. But those things don't have an accepted written form. We spell them phonetically, or as apostrophe'd English. I tell people I'm "fixin' to" do things all the time. But when written, colloquiallisms like "fixin' to" are obviously shoddy and unacceptable for anything more important than instant messenger chat.

It's racism to say that Trevor from Compton should be entitled to have written tests and schoolwork translated from "Jack and Jill went up the hill" to "Jack be runnin up dat hill ovah deah wit Jill" just because that's how they say it in his neighborhood. If some white kid from the Ozarks wanted every vocal inflection and mispronunciation he uttered written down so he wouldn't have to learn that nasty grammar stuff, the debate would last all of 2 seconds.

Exactly.

This entire thread since we hijacked it has been about spoken english. There's nothing "wrong" with your language as long as your intended audience/social-group understand what ideas you're trying to convey.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by Queen of the Ryche

Actually I've found a large portion of the Cellar to be very bright, well educated, and open minded. Just becasue their opinions differ from yours, and they may not have taken as many linguistics couses as recently as you, does not indicate anything to the contrary - It just emphasizes your narrow mindedness for not accepting that yours is not the only version of the truth.

I've been trying to put my perspective, the perspective of the level of linguistics I'm familiar with, across so that someone can say "Yes that makes sense from that perspective".

• Use of Ebonics/AAVE has negative social connotations.
• Ebonics/AAVE is used primarily by those of lower socio-economic levels.
• Ebonics/AAVE has a strong cultural and historic background.
• Ebonics/AAVE is as valid a language, from a theoretical linguistics perspective, as Standard American English or Hoch-Deutsch or Martian or whatever.

Those are the four points I wish everyone could understand. This thread got kind of out of hand, I'm not even sure where we started out, and I apologize for getting pissy and insulting folks.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by grant

• Use of Ebonics/AAVE has negative social connotations.
• Ebonics/AAVE is used primarily by those of lower socio-economic levels.
• Ebonics/AAVE has a strong cultural and historic background.
• Ebonics/AAVE is as valid a language, from a theoretical linguistics perspective, as Standard American English or Hoch-Deutsch or Martian or whatever.

Pretty much my point. You want to call it a language, go ahead. Just don't mind if I call you a dumb jerk for speaking it. THAT was my point!