Posted on 08/06/2013 12:04:45 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I believe Cockney is also known as the “rhyming slang”.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Leni
Bingo!
Would it be wrong to point out that the article was written in “Standard English?” Had the author applied for her position using the alternative “African American English,” she would not have been hired, even as a freelancer
I don’t know their situation. I would guess that they’ve picked up bits and pieces of their grandmother’s language, more of a broken good Chinese than a true dialect such as is Ebonics.
Well, not to belabor the point, but “. .our grand kids don’t speak good Chinese” is then not grammatically correct, just as ‘don’t speak good English’, or ‘don’t play good baseball’ are. Which I found ironic considering the topic.
Here’s a simple example of the difference:
“My name is VanShuyten. I am from Lower Slobbovia.”
Those two sentences are good English.
If that is all I can say, I don’t speak English well.
Rachel Jeantel has several things going on. She probably speaks Ebonics, which is a dialect of English which relies on simplification of verb tenses, vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence structures. ( Standard English also did that by dropping the Old English verb forms and conjugations for most verbs - eat, ate, eaten vs stop, stopped, stopped - and reducing the number and combinations of letters and pronunciations. The modern pronunciation of “knight” is much easier to us than the original, which was said much like it is spelled. Ebonics probably started with slaves from different African language groups using a simplified English to speak with each other.) She also probably never mastered Standard English, and it’s pronunciation and large vocabulary. Because of that, she was unable to completely “code shift” from Ebonics to Standard English and mixed the two. I think she also has trouble going from general, vague thoughts to precise speech, but there could be many reasons for that, not all having to do with her language ability.
There is another assumption by the author that because Ebonics is spoken, it deserves equality with Standard English. Thas retarted. The whole point of having a standard form is so that people with different dialects can understand each other. A person speaking Standard English can go to any place where English is spoken and be understood. That is why it is so important that all students master Standard English, and the failure to do that is just one example of how poorly our schools are doing.
And the point is that you are not writing in standard English and are technically misusing adjectives and adverbs. Well is an adverb and good is an adjective.
‘Speaking good Chinese’ describes the Chinese. Speaking Chinese well’ describes the speaking.
Perhaps your failure to realize this is a result of laziness or an indication of how the education system failed for people like you who now use imprecise language that can cause confusion to those who use ‘standard’ English.
Or, perhaps, language evolves and changes, new words added all the time. New phrases, concepts and structure. The language considered ‘standard’ and ‘proper’ today would be seen as barbaric to English speakers just 100 years ago who were the defenders of proper English.
How well would people from rural Vermont, Appalachia, New York City, West London and Cajun Louisianna understand each other? Which, if any, of these dialects are the ‘proper’ ones? I know I’d probably think it’s the one that most closely resembles the way I speak as it makes the most sense to me, but I’m not the standard bearer for the one true language. I don’t speak a language anywhere close to ‘standard’ oxford English, but if an editor of the Oxford University press were to question my intelligence based on the way I used language, I would probably tell him or her to f off.
Hell, a simple grammatical rule regarding the proper use of adjectives and adverbs has caused this back and forth with no progress even though the grammatical rule is available online with a simple google search, yet you are still insisting that you are correct. You are correct in that it is obviously part of the language since it’s being used daily in this way, but it certainly can’t be considered ‘standard’ or ‘proper’ English, although it more than likely will be should the rule continue to be ignored by those who speak the language causing those to define what is proper to change their definition based on the way the language is actually being used.
“And the point is that you are not writing in standard English and are technically misusing adjectives and adverbs. Well is an adverb and good is an adjective.
Perhaps your failure to realize this is a result of laziness or an indication of how the education system failed for people like you who now use imprecise language that can cause confusion to those who use ‘standard’ English.”
Thank you for making my point even if you don’t understand what you said.
“Good” is an adjective that modifies “Chinese(the language)”. “Well” is an adverb that modifies “speak.”
As far as your personal insults, I’ve taught English at the college level for over 30 years. I am rarely confused by standard English although I often see people with poor reading comprehension and logic skills who are confused by things such as the usage and meanings of adverbs and adjectives.
Note to self: Try to avoid grammar arguments with and never insult any FReeper who is familiar enough with British literature to have a tagline that's a quote describing a dead insane man on a stretcher and taken from Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a novel that explores the contrast between savagery and civilization.
;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.