It's clearly a creole, and that class of language always originates among the dispossessed.
This story be true.
Fasizzle!?!?
Bump for later when I need a long, hearty laugh!
Uh... a newer approach to getting "Esperanto" another go? lol.
Look what you get to learn at Brooklyn College....I thought this was from hip hop mag.
Re Priya Parmar:
"The ho be illin'.
Word up, yo.
I've been reading some works by the Puritans of the 1600's. Our contemporary English can't hold a candle to the sheer music of their speech.
Ebonics is a plague on the ears. It's foul and offensive to any of the Romantic languages and should be shunned by society, not embraced.
What utter rubbish.
It annoys me is that his colleagues will remain completely, even reverentially silent. And those who know better, in the university system, like Toni Morrison at Princeton or wherever the hell her Nobel tattooed ass is these days, will remain conspicuously hushed.
I have no problem with the argument that his ideas are preposterous, and beneath addressing but nonsense like this takes on a life of its own.
This teacher's indoctrination of children will have the same effect as that of a madrassa. Uncontrollable, unjustified hatred. This is not freedom of speech. Ebonics is a poor bastardization of English and should not be accepted.
That's going 100 MPH backwards.
I am not going to say that English is a perfect language. The spelling is not standardized and the grammar is tricky. I remember one time my six-year-old daughter asked me if there was a spelling of any word that was not a "special case".
But it is the common language of the people, and is therefore important. One can postulate all sorts of alternate languages that are more streamlined and standardized, but unless they are shared and in common use, they are just linguistic curiosities.
The fact of the matter is that Ebonics, such as it is, is the language of the underclass. There is no more certain way to ensure that a person remains in this underclass than to teach them to communicate in Ebonics. My Grandparents tried to keep my Father's generation down on the Kansas farm by teaching them only German and punishing them for speaking even a word of English. My Father did not speak English until he ran away and joined the Army.
I thank my lucky stars he escaped. I mean, I like gardening, but everything in moderation!
What up doggy!
Coming soon to your local high school! Isn't wonderful that teachers are highly-qualified experts?
Bizzook-mark, and pizzle my ingle. Got my chrome upside yo' white sox hat!
(This is too easy)
oh, snap.
If parents would rather their children speak ebonics or some other psuedo-language, then more power to them (or their teachers). They had better not complain when their ebonics speaking kids have a hard time breaking into the professional world.
Pardon me, if I'm being somewhat niggardly in stating my opinion...