[PowerPuff Grrl]

Originally Posted by Amber

You see, this is where the problem lies, people always compare Ebonics to the official languages of other countries, they are putting a vulgar slang on the same level as litterary languages.

The problem is that people on this thread think their tastes are the arbitrates of all things language, dialect, and slang.

Originally Posted by Amber

Many people who posted in this thread to criticize Ebonics are European, a continent half the size of North America with over 50 official languages, it only takes a few hours (even a few minutes for some of us) to go to a neighboring country where people speak a different language, in the EU parliament the deputies can speak in 20 different languages, so i think we are quite aware of and open to cultural differences.

It helps of course that you have coexisted with these other cultures for thousands of years, though not entirely peacefully. The second somebody outside of Europe comes in, it becomes a very different picture.

Originally Posted by Amber

Things like 'woddya' for 'what do you' are the result of lack of education, no educated person would merge an interrogative pronoun with an auxiliary verb and a personal pronoun because that makes absolutely no grammatical sense. Words with different grammatical functions have to remain seperate for a sentence to keep its grammatical coherence, you can't go merging things anyway you want just because in speech it sounds that way, people who do that were never taught proper grammar.

That isn't a lack of education, that is an accent not limited to Black people.
Or the sound of a person who had too much to drink.

Originally Posted by KillaQueen

no one said they endanger it. but dialects and slangs are two different things. dialects are almost impossible to be formed today, precisely because main languages are so well spread and accepted.

Dialects are formed when a language is split between two groups. Considering the segregation of the US and how strong it is I would gather that yeah, it is still possible to have dialects these days.

Originally Posted by KillaQueen

slangs, on the other hand, are ignorant versions of the main language for the most part. i don't see them enriching the language in ANY way. neologisms enrich it, new morphological derivates enrich it, but not slangs such as ebonics, ffs!

Slang these days in North America are usually formed through pop culture. Though Ebonics is not slang, it is easy to get the two mixed up seeing that Blacks have contributed to 70% of American Pop Culture.

Originally Posted by KillaQueen

and, again, it's not a matter of endagering the english language (except to maybe those poor black children who are being taught to speak only ebonics by their ignorant drop out parents). it's a matter of a whole country

It is a matter of the whole country; deterioration of the public education system that is, not Ebonics. About 40% of high school students cannot point out the US in a world map, that is the total population, not just Black people who make up about 13% of the US population. Ebonics is not the result of a lack of education. The sudden exposure to Ebonics is attributed to the fact that people, all people, are not being sufficiently taught the Standard English in schools among other things. Whether black people learn Standard English or not, Ebonics will still survive among Black people so long as segregation is still in the US.

With the level of outrage of the "miseducation" of Black people through Ebonics, I'm surprised nobody has even touched upon segregation. If you guys really did care about the Black people in the States where's your outrage over this?

Originally Posted by KillaQueen

it only takes looking at the american music charts: 50 cent and all his 'homies' rule them. it's outrageous. and to think that music is considered to be art. mumbling grammatically incorrect english over the same rhythmic beats is very far from art. but it's not poor 50 cent's fault. he only does what he knows and what he was taught. it's the people's fault for buying his cd's and praising ignorance. and this in the age when human intelligence is supposed to be at its peak, what with the access to information and education. still, we're singing praises to forms of sheer stupidity. nice. and don't think i'm only referring to hip hop and americans. we have the same phenomenon here: the afore mentioned so-called gypsy 'music' (with the language errors it entails) is the most popular. i fail to understand why.

Ok, so now we're talking about Hip-Hop? Pointing to 50 Cent as proof Rap sucks is just about the equivalent of me pointing to Ashley Simpson and proving the Rock 'n Roll in its entirety sucks. People like Ashley Simpson, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and their ilk ruined R'n R becuase their songs are fluff. Rappers like 50 Cent and his ilk ruined Hip Hop ever since they started glorifying violence, misogyny, and homophobia; not because of their use of Ebonics. I think its safe to assume that even if Hip-Hop artists rapped in the Standard English (which they once did) you still wouldn't considered it art.

Ebonics is a dialect that has a grammatical system based in Creole (which is the fixed hybrid of two or more languages). Furthermore the grammatical stucture is similar to the grammatical stucture found in West African languages (Wolof, Twi, Hausa, Yoruba, Dogon, Akan, Kimbundu, Bambara, etc):

1. Present progressive: He runnin (=Standard English "He is running" or "He's running")

2. Present habitual progressive: He be runnin (=SE "He is usually running")

3. Present intensive habitual progressive: He be steady runnin (=SE"He is usually running in an intensive, sustained manner."

4. Present perfect progressive: He bin runnin (=SE "He has been running")

5. Present perfect progressive with remote inception: He BIN runnin (=SE "He has been running for a long time, and still is")

"bogus" from Hausa boko, meaning deceit or fraud.
"cat" from the Wolof suffix -kat, which denotes a person.
"dig" from Wolof dëgg or dëgga, meaning "to understand/appreciate".
"hip" from Wolof hipi, meaning "to be aware of what is going on".
"honky", a derogatory term for a white person, may come from Wolof xonq, meaning red or pink.

For more examples you can check it out here.

PS: Not to be a bother but I really don't like the title of this thread. Though I don't like Ebonics being the centre of attention (because really, it seems that anything Black people do is scandalous) clearly it is but this isn't the issue. Saying "Slang, result of ignorance or dialect" is implying that Ebonics is slang and that to say it is a dialect is to be arguing on the fringe. As well, giving the option of stating it is a result of ignorance grossly tips the balance, giving more credit to the argument that it isn't a dialect. So the people arguing for Ebonics have to argue against two things now.
I think we were better off with the first title; "Ebonics: Slang or Dialect."