Linguist John McWhorter comes to the defence of the African American Vernacular English (also called ebonics) as a distinct dialect of English with its own complex grammar – rather than an abberation – in this rather enlightening podcast on NPR. Recent discussions in my sociolinguistics class have focussed on the big controversy about the language (as it should be properly called) and teaching and cultural attitudes in the United States. Is the slang (as some have pejoratively called it) coming over to challenge the dominance of real English? And what exactly does it mean to make provisions for acknowledging its status (AAVE) as a language in the classroom when there exists a whole lot of other learners (like genuinely disadvantaged white kids) who have to take instructions in standard English, without any special preferences. It is fascinating, the discussions.
The part that gets me thinking however is how this relates to the language situation in Nigeria at the moment, with pidgin (which should appropriately be called a creole actually, since pidgins are more defined by simple grammars and spoken only by first contact generations alone) still being relegated to a low status position in a society from where it has evolved into its own place over many years. With an equally complex and systematically observable grammar, form and lexicon, the language has become a lubricant in the multilingual dynamic of our nation with its over 500 languages. The situation is not any different from what is happening in the US, at the moment, in fact. The codification of language usually takes informal means, and after a few generations become standard in their own place with or without government sanctioning. It has happened with AAVE as it has with Nigerian Pidgin, Jamaican/Haitian patois, among others. All that remains is the right institutional sanctioning to make them more relevant in official discourse. PS: Nigerian Pidgin could also do with a new name of its own.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
As an immigrant who had to make huge efforts to learn to speak and write in proper English of the grammar books and style aides, I see all these phenomena as a sign of intellectual laziness that tries to cover itself up in pretty verbiage. In order for the system of higher education to work and make any sense at all, we need to have a shared linguistic standard. And how people speak at home should be left exactly there – at home. I, for one, speak Russian at home. Should my students and colleague put up with my use of Russian expressions and grammar structures at work and in class? That hardly seems reasonable.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 8:08am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
The debate is an interesting one, but it has not yet been examined in the University level context. We’re talking of elementary and perhaps secondary level in American classrooms. How do students who come from your kind of culture cope in the beginning when the medium of instruction is strictly English that allows for no variation or understanding of cultural background?
Nobody is saying that they should never learn standard English. The argument is that if what they currently speak is not recognized for what it is – a distinct dialect – there is a chance of linguistic discrimination that hampers classroom learning and runs counter-productive to the purpose of public education.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 8:12am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
I think that this is nothing but a strategy to keep black students in the ghettos. To give an example, a student came up to me last semester to say, “I be studyin’ but I be not understandin’ nothin'”. This student failed all of our written assignments because she couldn’t write even a simple sentence. i don’t think she is very likely to graduate from our university where graduation rates are extremely low as it is. Do you think her interests have been served by her school teachers who didn’t insist on correct usage of the language in the classroom?
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 8:48am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
But it is not true. This argument that those who speak in a certain way don’t have the aptitude or the discipline to assimilate particular ideas has not been justified by research. Smartness or brilliance has nothing to do with the language one speaks. However, I agree that the status of English in today’s world makes it necessary to acquire the right amount of discipline to master it. It still doesn’t remove from the argument that discrimination exists, and it doesn’t always help. A famous example used by Patricia Ryan (an English teacher in Dubai, I believe) is Albert Einstein. Imagine if he had to pass the TOEFL before being allowed to do what he knew how to do best. If someone knew the cure for cancer, it shouldn’t matter what language they speak, as long as they can function in a society, and get around with the language they – and others – speak.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 8:53am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
This line of reasoning only works if this were, indeed, a language. But it’s not.
And before you get to “know” the cure for cancer, you have to go through a huge variety of stages that you will not be able to pass without speaking and writing according to the norms of accepted usage. How will one get into a grad school, for example, without writing a very impressive letter of intent?
Every language carries within it a variety of social barriers. In Russian, for example, we know that a person is from a humble, uneducated background by the way s/he uses accents. For a person who doesn’t learn the correct usage, many doors will be closed. Just like for the person who uses AAVE. So what’s the point of promoting something that will only keep people down? Like they already don’t have all the odds against them in this society.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:12am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
But the whole idea of legitimizing its dialect status is to remove the odds against them in the society. Your argument against it seems to inevitably support its recognition as indeed a creolized dialect of English – which it actually is. If I asked you why you thought it isn’t a language, I’m sure you’ll say it’s because only uneducated people use it, which will be wrong. It is an ethnic dialect which has evolved over many years. It is systematic. It is complex, and it is intelligible across a particular ethnic, racial and geographical area (among both educated and uneducated population). More than that, it has also now been codified in literature and other art forms. What other evidence do you need for a dialectal status? What is a dialect anyway if not an evolved variant of a standard language?
My point is that promoting the language is not what will keep people down. It is the current system that does.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:22am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
This is circular reasoning. 🙂 It should be legitimized because it’s a language and it’s a language because it’s been legitimized.
My issue with this is that I don’t see how it will benefit its users. I do, however, see a multitude of ways in which it will disadvantage them. What is or isn’t a dialect is a purely academic issue of terminology. In practical terms, however, people who use AAVE come out losing opportunities every single time.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:30am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Actually it isn’t circular :). It’s not a language just because it’s being legitimized. It’s a language dialect because all the scientific indices point to it.
My issue with your issue is that the only disadvantage that users of the dialect have comes from the attitude of the system. Not from the students themselves. If someone in your class spoke with a French accent, an Australian dialect, or spoke in an Irish dialect of English in your class (imagine your class is an engineering class, for instance, or medicine), how would that affect their aptitude beyond occasional “pardon?” “what did you mean by that?” ?
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:36am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
If they wrote an essay that was filled with grammatical and stylistic mistakes, I’d fail them. It really isn’t my problem where anybody comes from. They have to write well in the language of the instruction.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 11:03am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
What if they wrote to standard, but continued to speak in their own way?
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 12:01pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
The way they speak at home and in the street is their own private business. But in class? In a professor’s office? At a job interview?
Are you suggesting that the wrong oral usages in the classroom should not be corrected?
It sounds like an impossible enterprise for anybody to speak in one way and not let that seep into what they write immediately after. This entire system would place an undue burden on school kids, the advantages of which you still have not mentioned.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:15pm.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
If the classroom is a classroom of English language grammar, then definitely, wrong oral usages should be corrected. Actually, in all classes in American/British schools, one would expect this to happen. The question of the argument is how much that has led to linguistic discrimination in early learners who are (note I’m not using “corrected” here) punished for using a form not considered standard. PS: On this issue, I’m content to be the devil’s advocate because I am already a beneficiary of the status quo.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:25pm.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
I understand why, politically, the issue could be a very touchy one. Even Bill Cosby came out against the speech form in his famous “Pound Cake” speech. Linguistically however, or as it relates to education, I believe that students have much to gain from an official recognition of the dialect status of AAVE than to lose. No one says that we should scrap the teaching of standard English or make it voluntary. We all know the place of standard English in the world. Most research has shown that children learn more in their most native languages. In the case of African Americans, it is the AAVE. (Of course, not all African Americans speak this language, but those who do shouldn’t have to be punished for doing so. Same for the creole in Nigeria, by the way.)
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:53am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
“students have much to gain from an official recognition of the dialect status of AAVE”
-Like what, for example?
“Most research has shown that children learn more in their most native languages. In the case of African Americans, it is the AAVE.”
-So you think teachers should be required to master it and employ it in the classroom?
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 11:05am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Well, teachers may not have to master it. The fact is that teachers already do understand it. They just choose to snub their noses at it. What I think they have to gain is the confidence to not be regarded as disabled students just because they spoke a different dialect.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 12:03pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
I’m dedicated to making this one of the most popular topics on your blog, so I’ll inundate it with comments. 🙂
I think of recognizing AAVE as a language the same way I think about autism. It only makes sense for one to recognize themselves as an autistic if they believe it will benefit them in some way. If, however, you don’t think that the “diagnosis” will improve your life, then to hell with it.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 11:16am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
You’re welcome with the comments. I actually enjoy the topic myself (again because I can relate it to what takes place in Nigeria). I went to a private primary school and I know the language attitude. We paid fines, and were punished many times, whenever we spoke a different language in class. It was what the private schools had to do to make sure we spoke standard English. In spite of that, many people still didn’t master it. And I’m sure that many people could not learn much of what they should have learnt because of the strict system. I spent one year in public school and I didn’t like it because the teachers were very lax, and allowed other students to speak their local languages in class. I felt that they were getting unnecessary pampered. But thinking about it now, if they had done better with themselves in life – and progressed in their careers, it would have been worth it. I don’t think that my aptitude in English, or in anything, was because of the strict nature of the private school, but because of my own willingness to learn.
About autism, what will be bad is if you were discriminated against in class precisely because you were autistic (and put in a special education class, as many African American students now are because of their language), then it would be wrong.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 12:09pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
” if they had done better with themselves in life – and progressed in their careers, it would have been worth it.”
-But that’s the thing. They don’t. I just told you the story of the student who was not taught the correct usage at school and is now failing university-level courses.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:17pm.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
“But that’s the thing. They don’t. I just told you the story of the student who was not taught the correct usage at school and is now failing university-level courses.”
Where I disagree with you with the above assessment is to say that the reason why this student is now failing at university level courses is because he was not taught correct usage at school. We don’t know that. I know many people who went to the same private school as me who turned out for the worse later in life. And since we know what the status quo is in the US, we cannot say that this student of your wasn’t taught the standard, because we know that he was. He just lacked aptitude, and this is not related to the language he speaks.
I’ll give you a final example, this time from Nigeria. An experiment was carried out during the military regime in the eighties to find out the impact of using first language to teach children for the first six years of their education. Called the Ife six-year project, the result of that experiment shows that children taught in their first languages tend to comprehend and thus perform better than those taught in English. We’re talking here about all courses: science, social studies, art, technology etc. The situation of African Americans today is the most similar I can reference. The first language of many of them (contrary to what we’d like to believe) is NOT English but AAVE. The earlier that fact is recognized, the better it will be in the end for those who might need to benefit from such vernacular education. But again, I understand the reluctance only from a totally political perspective. Linguistically speaking, there is no excuse, but linguistic discrimination.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:32pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
Another important consideration is that we now live in a globalized world where, whether we like it or not, English has become the language of international communication. Of course, we are talking about the traditional English which is what is being taught in schools all over the world. AAVE speaking kids will be excluded from possessing the language of international communication because no foreigners is likely to understand them. I, for one, struggle a lot to get just the basic gist of what 5 negations one after another are supposed to mean, for example.
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:19pm.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Of course, I recognize the globalization aspect of the whole matter. Yes, English is now an international language which everyone must master whether they like it or not. That makes perfect sense.
But it aint really true that you aint gonna get nothing outta my words unless I say it in no Standard English. See? Heavens didn’t fall. 🙂
Thanks for this discussion by the way. Short posts seems to get the most responses. (Although I wish we had teachers from elementary and middle schools in America’s inner cities come to talk on this as well. It would have given it a different perspective other than that of two immigrants from across the sea :))
Posted at April 7, 2011 on 9:39pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
I noticed it too that people love it when I write short posts. Which is extremely difficult for me to do.
Short attention spans are the curse of our times.
As for us being immigrants, it definitely makes sense that we are the ones to discuss these issues. Literature in English will only survive if the post-colonial subjects keep writing it. Nothing of any literary value has come from Anglo-Saxon English-speakers for a while. In the same way, we will have to be the ones to preserve their language for them. 🙂 🙂
Posted at April 9, 2011 on 12:36am.
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Bola at http://YourWebsite
“Of course, I recognize the globalization aspect of the whole matter. Yes, English is now an international language which everyone must master whether they like it or not. That makes perfect sense.” Nope, it doesn’t make sense at all.
Posted at April 10, 2011 on 11:57am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Well, there you go. I’ve been waiting for more non-native speakers of English to come to my rescue.
Posted at April 10, 2011 on 12:01pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
And still, we are sitting here having a discussion in the academic English. My blog is also in English because if I wrote in any other language, my audience would be a lot smaller. Writing in correct English that is taught everywhere in the world allows me to reach crowds of people, including a growing number even from my own country.
Posted at April 13, 2011 on 8:09pm.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
And then again, reaching enough number of people just because of the language medium is not enough proof of a pioneering ingenuity behind the written thoughts of the writer. If you were to write to a limited number of people, and yet are able to provide a crucial, essential information relevant to their needs, you would still be as important as one with a far larger audience. More important, in fact, if the one with the larger audience has nothing particular to offer. It still comes back to the Einstein example. If someone could cure cancer, I won’t care what language he speaks – even if it’s gibberish, as long as someone can understand them. Making him/her learn English doesn’t improve on his thoughts or cancer cure techniques. And making it a criteria for listening to him at all does as much disservice to us as does to him/her.
Posted at April 13, 2011 on 10:07pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
Today, a scientist who doesn’t speak English will be severely limited. Research doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You need to have access to what other people are doing and be able to discuss your research with them. The image of a lonely scientist inventing a cure for cancer all by his lonesome in an empty lab is a fantasy. A scientist needs to apply for grants (and what is the language of the countries that give out the best grants to scientists?), hire the best assistants s/he can from all over the world, attend conferences, read research from other scholars. This imaginary scientist can be a total genius but if Ukrainian, say, is the only language s/he speaks, there is no hope for such a researcher.
I know a specialist in my field who is a genius. And his career has been stunted because his English is not good. This is his greatest pain and his greatest resentment. If he wrote in English like you do, he would be one of the 5 or 10 leading scholars in Hispanic Studies in the world. Since he can’t, he is stuck in his parochialism.
Posted at April 13, 2011 on 10:38pm.
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Bola at http://YourWebsite
Yes, it is a disadvantage for a scientist not to speak any English. However, that does not mean that EVERYBODY must know some English. I would even go as far and say that not every researcher needs to know English, not to talk of MASTERing the language. If you speak one or more of the other languages which have been widely used in academic writing, e.g. French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and German, you might be fine without knowing much or even any English. At least, that’s my humble opinion. 😀
Posted at April 15, 2011 on 8:49am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
“However, that does not mean that EVERYBODY must know some English. ”
-Bola, our students don’t speak any language other than English. So I don’t think it’s too much to insist that they at least manage to master the correct version of their only language.
Posted at April 15, 2011 on 10:45pm.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
But the point is precisely that our students speak MORE than one language. There is English, and then there is AAVE. If they can master only one of them, why should it be a problem?
Posted at April 15, 2011 on 10:55pm.
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Bola at http://YourWebsite
I guess this shows the difference between language teachers and linguists very well: The former teach a language, i.e. they prescribe the correct rules; while the later study a language, i.e. they observe the speakers to uncover the rules. In consequence, I consider any English that is spoken by a community that grew up with the language as correct English but possibly different from Standard (American) English.
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That’s theory of course. In practice we need standards when teaching a language or when teaching another subject through the medium of a particular language. One solution would be that everyone in the US has to adhere to Standard American English in this respect.
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Another solution would be to allow regional and/or class varieties to coexist with the standard. This would be equivalent to bilingual education, which is already common practice in a number of schools around the world.
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I admit that allowing AAVE and other English varieties a place in US school would cause serious problems. First, how much variety should there be? E.g. one might argue that it is not enough to just admit one AAVE variety since there are probably regional/class varieties. Who will create the standard forms of the selected varieties? Yes, I believe you need standards when you teach (at least in the beginning, if the student is at a certain level you might want to make her aware of the variety). And who will teach these standards as there are no teachers yet who have been educated in them?
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However, there are also things to gain from such a bilingual approach. What I remember from the Ife program is that students started with Yoruba and that English was gradually introduced. In the end the students who had started with Yoruba performed better in their exams, even in the English exams, than the students who had been taught entirely in English throughout their schooling.
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Moreover, other countries have demonstrated that elevating a linguistic variety to the level of language of instruction is possible. Positive examples I can think of are Welsh in the UK and Catalan in Spain. Have they not been successful in creating speakers who are proficient in the two linguistic varieties involved?
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Finally, from the point of view of a linguist, bilingual education might also reduce language death and give us more opportunity to study the human language as a whole. (I had to add this; after all I am a linguist, albeit one who is training herself to become a German teacher as well.)
Posted at April 16, 2011 on 2:51am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Oh, before I get off topic again, I just read this about autism and the way students in college struggle to study and graduate like others because of the social inability. (http://www.npr.org/2011/04/13/135345982/colleges-address-autistic-students-struggles). The article requests for some sort of official intervention in order to make schooling easy for autistic students. This is the original premise of my post (even though I don’t agree that people are necessarily disabled because of their language) – that language plurality shouldn’t be an obstacle for college education. School should at least never deliberately discriminate against it. And the presence of AAVE in America today is obviously one of language plurality/variation.
Posted at April 14, 2011 on 1:38am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
I, for one, am extremely happy that such degrading and marginalizing practices weren’t applied to me in college.
As for the initial topic of discussion, a colleague from our university told me that some of his students start the final essay with “A think that. . .” instead of “I think.” Do you think he should take it in his stride, accept it as a legitimate dialect and not fail them? Would this serve such students well in terms of their future? Would it serve the general value of our university’s diploma?
Posted at April 14, 2011 on 8:05am.
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Bola at http://YourWebsite
No me molesta continuar esta discusión en español, si mis errores no molestan a ti. Tengo un amigo que enseña matemática en la Universidad de México. No habla inglés y no parece que tenga algunos problemas por eso. No es un destacado erudito, pero no creo que lo quiera ser – y yo tampoco, solo quiero vivir y ser feliz. 😀
Posted at April 15, 2011 on 9:22am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
A mi tampoco me molesta pero me da pena con otros lectores del blog. En especial con Kola. No quiero que piense que estamos diciendo maldades de el en su propio blog. 🙂 🙂
Posted at April 19, 2011 on 11:43am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Don’t worry about Kola. I don’t think he would mind, actually ;). Maybe it will bring more Spanish speakers to read the blog. PS: And he can read some Spanish too 😉
Posted at April 19, 2011 on 11:50am.
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Bola at http://YourWebsite
La ver dad es que Kola no pue de le er cas te lla no. Só lo sa be có mo se u ti li za un pro gra ma de tra du cción au to má ti ca. Pe ro a si, no va a com pren der na da. Al me nos, e so es lo que es pe ro. ;D
(Let’s see how long it will take him to figure this one out!)
Posted at April 19, 2011 on 3:16pm.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Ah, you thought putting too many spaces in-between the letters in the words would throw me off. Hehe, nice try 🙂
Posted at April 19, 2011 on 3:36pm.
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Bola at http://YourWebsite
Clarissa, should you as a Spanish teacher not be used to multiple negations? 😀
Posted at April 10, 2011 on 11:56am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
It is especially funny when the same students who took a course in English with me and had the double negatives drummed out of them by me, then take a course in Spanish with me and discover that now they have to use them wherever they can. 🙂 They feel very confused and scared. 🙂
Posted at April 13, 2011 on 8:06pm.
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Myne Whitman at http://www.mynewhitmanwrites.com/
Interesting discourse, and great comments from both sides. 🙂
Posted at April 8, 2011 on 12:27pm.
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Vera Ezimora at http://www.verastic.com
Kola ooooo!
Posted at April 9, 2011 on 11:13am.
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Steve Hayes at http://methodius.blogspot.com
I was invited to join this discussion, but I don’t feel qualified, as I come from South Africa, where we have 11 official languages and a few more unofficial ones. I would say South African English is a variety of international English. One could say that there are a variety of sub-dialects, especially among those who speak it as a second language, but these are gradually becoming assimilated to each other. “Eish”, for example, is a relatively recent experience of surprise, pain, or sympathy, and it is used across all dialects. There are borrowings from other languages — “fundi”, for example, from Zulu, would be translated into “guru” in American English, as in “computer fundi”. Yet guru is probably from an Indian language.
Where possible, i think people should be taught international English, which makes it easier for people to study in other countries. They will continue to use regional dialects at home. I remember working as a bus driver in London in 1966, and about a third of the staff were English, a third Irish, and a third West Indian. They all spoke English, but when they were talking among themselves I couldn’t understand a word they said. But when they talked across groups they slowed down and used a more universal vocabulary. Accents still made it difficult to follow, but the written language was the same.
Posted at April 10, 2011 on 5:49am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
Hey Steve, thank you very much for the contribution. You are always qualified to contribute even if you are not a language teacher. I see thats you come from a place where more than one language is spoken, so that perspective is always welcome. 🙂
Posted at April 10, 2011 on 11:11am.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
I think I need another PhD to master the system of commenting on this blog. Why do some comments have a Reply button underneath while others don’t?
Kola, do you think that not enforcing the uniform, standard English on all students helps or hurts their chances to find employment upon graduation?
Posted at April 19, 2011 on 11:45am.
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Kola at http://www.ktravula.com
I think some comments get nested to the point where they can’t be replied anymore. I don’t know what do do about it either. 🙁
To your question: I know for a fact that enforcing the uniform, standard English on all students today helps their chances to find employment (in the US) after graduation. I have no problem with that. The premise of this post, however, is that the society is so bent on this uniformity that it inevitably harms the diversity that is already a strong part of its existence. So, rather than say that English should be made less relevant, what I am saying is that other linguistic forms should be made less irrelevant. Why do we disagree on this?
Posted at April 19, 2011 on 12:02pm.
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Clarissa at http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com
I guess because we disagree on the level of optimism we have about our students. I think it will be a hard struggle to get them to speak just one language passably, while you have this optimistic belief that we can get them all the way to two.
As the semester is coming to a close, I feel too wiped out to be optimistic about anything. Except the impending end of the semester. 🙂
Posted at April 19, 2011 on 9:01pm.