It is a huge deal. I lived in Hawaii for several years and they were desperately trying to reclaim their language because so much of it had been lost with the death of elders. Once it’s forgotten and hasn’t been written down, it’s gone forever. That’s a tragedy. I thankfully finally got rid of cable tv. Every time someone on Fox said, “Mr XXXX, he...,” made me want to throw something at the tv. Proof reading and editing has become a lost art. It’s a sad commentary on our society. An acquaintance tried to argue with me about Ebonics being it’s own language. While that might be technically correct, good luck getting a decent job speaking it.
‘Ebonics (be) its own language’ is a ruse to get federal money for non-English speakers for the schools, doncha know? It is NOT a language; street dialect perhaps. Many dialects in Germany, but they all know Hoch Deutsch.
Thank you for writing. I appreciate your comments. Re “ebonics”, ask your friend to explain how and why, if “ebonic” speech is derived from Africa, it doesn’t exist in the populations of African descent in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, et al - and where is it in the former English colonies on Africa?