Ebonics, which stands for Ebony + Phonics is a new term that Linguistics use to describe Black Dialect or Black English or many of the other names that it has been given for more that 350 years.. has been in the news recently but it is definitely not a new topic. Ebonics is a "language" that is a combination of "proper English" and a combination of African languages. Because of this combination a pattern was formed on how certain words are said such as this and that, would be pronounced dis and dat. In all words the "Th." sound sounded like a "D". There was also another pattern formed such as, no tense indicated in the verb, no "r" sound and no consonant pairs.
These are just some of the many patterns that were created when Africans were forced to learn the English language.History states that around 1619, during the slave trade, ships collected slaves not just from one nation but from many nations. Although they were all Africans certain areas spoke different languages. Some Africans spoke Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa. They were then separated from each other and had to travel with people whom the could not understand. Captain William Smith wrote:...There will be no more likelihood of their succeeding in a plot...The slaves then had to learn English so that they could have some form of communication with their masters. Their native language and English would be combined and they would speak African-English pidgin.
As the slaves began to learn how to communicate with each other, their words would merge into one common word that they could all understand. This is one of the ways that the language became mixed with English.When the African slaves had children they talked to them in African English pidgin. The slaves taught the children both languages so that they could communicate with the slaveowners and to other slaves. As each generation went on the Africans began to speak better English but there were still word that were never spoken correctly or said in proper form.In Georgia and other southern states there were blacks who were not brought from Africa and quite a few knew how to speak standard English.
Around 1858 over 400 slave from Africa were brought straight to Georgia and none of them knew a word of English.(Smitherman) Being that these two groups merged together they adapted each others language whether it was correct or incorrectOn the east coast of America, the Blacks spoke a different degree of
They mocked them as monkeys and simple minded figures of fun. I think this is why a lot of African Americans today are so musically inclined and so full of talent. Blacks today are so talented and have a unique way of showing it. There is a lot of teenagers that do not like education and would rather become famous than go to school. Blacks still attain less education than Whites. Some researchers suggest that there are some young Black males that are not always successful in school, because they don’t want to be seen as acting white. These young males tend to drop out of high school and turn to illegal activities. The mentally that they feel that speaking proper English is associated to White culture. I feel that this is a negative impact from slavery because Blacks talked differently. Blacks talked differently because they were less educated. I don’t think talking proper English is a form of acting white, it’s a form of education. This could be another form of a generational curse placed on uneducated families. I could imagine if one’s grandparents and parents are uneducated, and they don’t know proper English, how will they teach their children proper English? Their children could learn proper English in school but when they come home they could be looked down as acting white. I can personally relate to this situation. I have meet some uneducated people and because I talk proper English they want to make comments. They can say things like, “Oh you think you better than somebody, talking white”. Its mind blowing that racism and discrimination fail to go
In 1996, the Oakland School District proposed the inclusion of what is known as "Ebonics" into its curriculum. Ebonics, or Black language, has been referred to in various ways over the years: "African American Vernacular English," "Pan-African Communication Behaviors," "African Language Systems," or "West and Niger-Congo African Language Systems." By any name, Ebonics, when studied over the years, has been proven to be a real language with its own phonology, syntax, morphology, sentence patterns, and double interpretations of words. The pattern that Ebonics speakers in the United States speak is highly similar to the patterns seen in both the Caribbean Creole and the West African languages. No one would have thought that comedian Bill Cosby would have an opinion on this subject, but as I read through essay I realized the logic and validity behind his paper.
Smitherman is certainly qualified to address her colleagues about the treatment of “Black English” in academia, but with such a charged writing style it is possible that her audience would not make it to her conclusion. Smitherman assumes that the general base of her audience are “White English” speakers that can understand “Black English”. She also assumes that all African Americans speak the same way. These assumptions are her first major problem. At the time of this articles publication in 1973, it is conceivable that certain scholars would have ignored the piece because of its hybrid u...
Enslaved Africans were most successful in creating communities in the Chesapeake. Most slaves that were born in America lived in the Chesapeake, and so English became a common language which allowed a rapid development in the culture. Some tobacco farmers wanted to increase the workforce by purchasing woman slaves and encouraging large families among the slaves. They were least successful in the West Indies and the Carolinas because there were many different tribes of Africans with many different languages, which made it hard for the slaves to interact with one another, which was the goal of the owners because that way they would focus more on the work. Also, the labor force of growing rice was much more difficult. The Africans in the Carolinas
In Caucasia, Birdie and Cole are juxtaposed as a white-passing mixed person and a visibly black mixed-person, but they are drawn together by their mixed race identity and their shared world: Elemeno. They both experience pressures from blackness and whiteness to conform, and Birdie especially struggles to exist in either category. Senna uses the various aspects of Elemeno to highlight this sense of alienation felt and to examine racial identity outside the context of the black and white. Elemeno the language is critical to Elemeno as an identity, and contrasts languages and dialects of real communities in ways that reflect the mixed-race experience. The Elemeno people and their invisibility
Speech is a very influenced africanism in America. A word commonly used today by all races in America is the word “okay”, a Mande and Wolf term that means “that’s it” (Holloway 57). Ebonics is often tied back to african roots of west african language. Both lack the sounds and final consonant clusters (e.g. past), and that replacing or simplifying these occurs both in US Ebonics and in West African English varieties spoken in Nigeria and Ghana. Moreover, they argue that the distinction made between completed actions ("He done walked") and habitual actions ("We be walkin") in the Ebonics tense-aspect system reflects their prevalence in West African language systems and that this applies to other aspects of Ebonics sentence structure.
This country, especially the southern United States, was built using African slave labor. Africa slaves were not allowed to be educated. All most every African slave could not read or write because it was against the law to educate slaves for over 200 years. The master/slave relationship caused assimilation to be very difficult. Values and convictions were formed during those years and are still evident to this day (Parrillo, 2009).
The African influence of American English can be found as far back as the Seventeenth century. Although its influence may have began that far back, the influence of African American slang has arguably reached its peak (so far) in the last half on the 20th century. Evidence of this can be seen in magazines, music, television, and films. Perhaps more importantly, evidence can be seen in the way that people of ethnic groups, other than African American, have changed their speech due to this influence. The Equal Rights Movement lead to a paradigm shift in African American linguistic consciousness due to Black intellectuals, scholars, activists, artists, and writers deliberately engaging in a search for a way to express Black identity and the particular circumstances of African American life. Although there had been strides in Black pride in the past, this was the first one to call for linguistic Black p...
Ebonics, also known as Black English, is a nonstandard dialect spoken in many homes in the inner cities of America. This nonstandard language is often looked upon as low-class or lazy talk. This is not the case, however. Due to consistencies found in the dialect, there seems to be an order. It has been found that, when learning English, African-Americans adapted the language using some of the structure and rules of their own native tongue. This Black English has carried on through slavery and then freedom for hundreds of years. Although there is a coexistence of more than two dialects in our society, those in power forget the flexibility of our language and see no other way than the use of Standard English.
In December of 1996, the Oakland school board recognized Ebonics or African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to be a legitimate language. Furthermore, Oakland proposed that students should be instructed in Ebonics in order to help transition into speaking and writing in Standard English. This resolution was met with controversy as the opposition views the language as “slang” or “broken English”. Although linguists disagree whether or not Ebonics is its own language or if it is a dialect of English, “All linguists, however, agree that Ebonics cannot correctly be called 'bad English ', 'slang ', 'street talk ', or any of the other labels that suggest that it is deficient or not a full-fledged linguistic system.” (Rubba, 1997) It is incredibly important for these students to become fluent in standard english as lack of fluency makes it incredibly difficult to succeed in modern American society. Without implementing an education program stressing transition from AAVE, these students will continue to achieve below average, and will never truly become comfortable using Standard English.
Language is universal, but there are different meanings and sounds, which vary from one culture to another. In China citizens speak many languages, but about 94% speak the Chinese language. The difference in dialects was overcome by the written word and eventually a version of Mandrin became the “official speech” (The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 1996,p.304). In America there are many ethnic groups with many varieties of language. The U.S. was created through many people from different countries migrating to the new states. In the U.S. there is an “official speech” which is the English language. The language of both these countries are not only different in meaning and sound, but also reflect the way in which the people in these societies live, believe, and function.
Pidgins and creoles are new varieties or types of languages, having developed from the contact between the colonial non-standard varieties of European and non-European languages from around the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Pidgin languages typically appeared in the trade colonies that had developed in and around existing trade routes, such as the West African coast. Reduced in structures and specialized in function, initially they served as non-native ‘lingua francas’ for those speakers who chose to use their native language for normal every day communications. Some pidgins have been able to expand into regular vernaculars, particularly in urban settings, and are rightfully labeled as ‘expanded pidgins’. An example would be the Pidgin-English from Nigeria or Cameroon, both as structurally complex as creoles.
Hepworth, M. D. (2012), Tutorial Notes, '69214339 TMA01', Unpublished Work. Leith, D. and Seargeant, P. (2012), 'A Colonial Language', in Seargeant, P. and Swann, J. ed. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a History, Diversity, Change (U214, English in the World), Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 113-117. 101.
Several European immigrants are reported to have arrived in America during the 19th century and early 20th century. Notably, the first wave of these European immigrants is believed to have begun in the late 1820s largely sustained by the unrest in Britain. This wave of migration went on for almost a decade highly attracted by the dreams of creating a model utopian American society. This is in turn closely associated to some extent with the development of the American English. European immigrants immensely contributed to the development of American life and more specifically American English. Today, American English has become an omnipresent phenomenon in every aspect of the American society. British English, the main source of American English