"Don't Ax Me Again..."
 

As long as I don't do it on his Berfday...

Why? Why? I can understand if there is a speech issue but really now. :confused:

Careful...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/AYMyxTFwuz8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

ebonics.

It drives me nuts too, but not really any more than some other dialects. Listening to some of the accents/dialects from the Northeast are very grating (New Jersey, Philadelphia, Boston, New York) and even some of the stuff you hear in the South.

I work in IT, and most of the folks that I work with in my field are pretty intelligent, but I've got a guy that sits near me that is very "country". He grew up in a very rural area near Houston. I hear him on the phone with people daily say "posed ta" (country for "supposed to").

It's a cultural/regional thing.

I'm a transplanted pilgrim, (from Pa. originally). I've gotten over the dropping of R's... "Paaking your caa". But what still irritates me is putting the damn things where they never were... I live in Americer with a girl named Liser. vs. I live in America with a girl named Lisa.

I don't know for sure but I think ebonics is just plain laziness vs. being an accent or a language.

brilliant song.

When we moved from CT to MN after third grade I had to go to speech therapy because they thought I had an impediment. Today, I am many times asked if I am Canadian, which will be great if my flight is ever taken over by terrorists.

People are different. They come in all shapes and colors and sizes and sounds.

That's because you were with all those Swedes!! Have a great day my friend.

The girls were hot! You too, I'm working on the Cab. First day of fun in ages!

I must have changing accents or something. Sometimes people say I sound like a CA girl (I tend to say "like" a lot, even though I can switch it off when I am in professional situations). Or they say I sound like I have a slight Southern accent. ????? Don't get that one.

I have cousins from PA and I died laughing when they came out to AZ for the first time and I heard them say "wurtur" and "hot derg".

And I swear a friend of mine from Minnesota almost tore off my head because I had no idea what she was asking when she asked for a "baeg". A what? "A baeg". A what? "A baeg! Oh goodness gracious! How can you not know what a baeg is. You know, something you can put other stuff in and carry around?" Oh, a bag!!! I swear, I think she was going to murder me. Still laughing...

I do not mind people saying it this way, but spelling it this way(or worse) in text is pretty atrocious considering our fine government schools should be supposed to at least teach spelling.

It's funny how everyone thinks their accent is normal.

New Yorkers laugh at the southern drawwwwwl. Sounds sub-intellectual to them.
Northerners can tell the difference between NY, NJ, and MA.
Canadians say "eh" in every sentence and "owt" instead of "out".
Californians use the words "like" and "dude" in every sentence.

Stereotypes! :rolleyes:

p.s. Go back and watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon. He's got a Brooklyn accent!!!

Bill Cosby would agree with you there. When the LA County school system suggested ebonics be taught as an official language, he blasted them pretty good saying it is pure laziness and very sad that Americans don't want to learn the English language properly. Way to go Dr. Cosby!

It's not laziness. I've known many folks that at work sounded like anyone else at work in a professional environment, but then when you hear them on the phone with friends or family, they sound completely different. Some of them spoke ebonics (of various levels), some had an island accent (Jamaica, Trinidad, etc...), and there are other accents. How is it lazy to use a different form of a word or pronounce it differently?

People are adaptable and often take on the attributes that are common around them. I knew a girl from Texas that moved to England. She came back for a visit after several years and had an English accent. That took me by surprise.

As I travel, I tend to pick up local speech patterns. Pretty funny when I've been in NJ for a while - "watta u lookin' at??"

angela

Now THIS is the accent that makes my skin crawl. :eek:

I can speak Hochdeutsch but was raised on Schwäbisch.

When I'm in Germany my clothing and appearance present as American.

Many times it's advantageous to bust out the Schwäbisch as it's not something anyone would ever learn in school and it immediately gives me credibility as a homeboy.

It's especially useful in tourist areas where the locals really don't like American tourists. The level of service changes immediately.

The "LA County school system", (WTF is that?), never suggested that ebonics be taught as an official language. That's a lie, no matter which school system you are actually referring to. Get your facts straight. :cool:

"They is" bugs the ***** out of me....

Not sure why that became ebonically acceptable.

In my position as a Heritage Interpreter, I get to meet and talk to over 8000 people each year and I have to be sooo careful of how I speak.

I have a few words of French and German, but it's the English language which gets me into trouble. If I am speaking for any length of time with folks from the Deep South or Ireland or northern UK, I will start to unconsciously mimic their speech patterns. Vowels tend to get drawn out or clipped and accents on words shift. I do not want to offend folks, but my voice just starts to follow what I hear.

I do love to listen to people and am easily amused.

Best
Les

I was an Air Force brat. We moved a lot. I can you tell the move from Hawaii to Alabama was HARD for language.

I was pretty good at my Pidgin and could talk like a Hawaiian. Then we moved to Montgomery Alabama. Talk about a shift in language. On the first day of 3rd grade our teacher gave us a pop spelling test. She said the words and we were supposed to write it down. I made a ZERO! I could not understand her thick southern accent. The school called a parent teacher conference because they thought I was learning disabled. My parents could not understand that teacher either! They assigned me a different teacher.

That's funny. Been down that road myself. I think I did 7 schools in 12 years. High IQ, low performance. Finally figured out I was just lazy.

I did 10 schools for the 12 years of school. I heard the phrase "Class this is Glen the new boy in our school" every year except as a senior in High School.

Only 6 schools for me, I guess I got lucky that dad was deployed for 2.5-3 years a pop.

My mistake (poor memory to blame). It was the Oakland school district in 1996.

In 2004 Cosby's most scathing statement on the issue went like this; Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "Why you ain't." You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth"

happy now?

"scathing statement" (?)
~~~~~~~~~~
Sounded to me like he was doing the black community a favor - reality ck., etc.

At some level, the way blacks speak (to each other) can be seen as a way to communicate in an affectionate manner. Also, something comforting in knowing that it's just between them.
.
I do see it as irresponsible that it's fostered and abetted in their culture.
Sort of a F. U. on 'the man'.

That's actually a fairly common one in TX, you hear it from whites/blacks and hispanics.

Some of the local stuff that makes my skin crawl is "Cuss", hate that one. Or "come/go with", as in "____ is gong to the ____, do you want to go with?"

And "braggin on"

Lately I have heard ebonics being refer to as hood speak.

I'm someone who is not happy with the BS bandied about here as the truth. I'm also someone who believes that everyone should be fluent in standard English in the USA. There is nothing wrong with slang as long as you know it's slang. If it's the only way you know how to speak, you have a problem.

Back to your assertion: the Oakland school board wanted to make Ebonics "the official language" of their schools or they wanted to recognize it as a form of American speech? Don't let the truth get in the way of a good redneck story.

I personally think that a lot of Ebonics is garbage speech but nothing hurts my brain more than dumb schit white slang like, "just for shyts and grins", or "I just 'seen' her walk by", etc.

Look again there is a lot of difference between the official language and an official language.

I think the word is aks not a axe y'all, eh.

"Taught as an official language"...that's the one that made the BS detector start overheating. I'd be glad to admit if I'm wrong, do you have a link for this?

I think the word you guys are looking for with regard to the schools is "recognize." Just as there are courses in Black studies the language, the dialect of the African American is part of those studies. The AA's have brought 1000's of words to the English language as we speak it here in the US. The AA pronunciation is just as much a part of it as the word itself.

I could go on and on but I won't. I'm sure you all know a lot of the Western African language got married with English in early American history. In Louisiana, it got married to French.

American dialects have been my course of study at 2 different junctures in my life, both having something to do with college. ;) I have several books on slang and origin. As an English major in school I might have liked to teach this had I known there would have been an interest 30 years later. I also would have needed a better foundation in the academics rather than the way I approached school. http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/i...illy_nilly.gif

Speeder, check these links out:

Oakland Ebonics controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Original Oakland Resolution on "Ebonics"

Amended Resolution of the Oakland School Board on Ebonics


I'm all for learning another language or being exposed to another language. Don't really care which, the more the merrier. For example learning a language of one's ancestry. The thing that has me slightly surprised is it would appear they were attempting to put into place an educational sub-system in which the language of communication is generally not known/understood elsewhere? What would alarm me is where then could they go upon graduation if they cannot adequately communicate with others? How could they perform in standardized tests to gain entry into higher level education if they so desired?

I worked with a girl that would get "her hair did" every friday.

A guy would cash his paycheck and get all one dollar bills so "his money be long".

Another guy would respond to something by saying "bochetamo like a mofo"....
(never knew what that meant) (other than the mofo part)

There's many many more......

Like this?....

NSFW

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wWulZOKANB4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

LOL,

Remember Vic Miles, CBS News.

He was a good friend of my father.

His off air persona was different than on.

I can't stand the northeast/Boston accent. It instantly lowers the perception of one's intelligence by about 30 or 40 I.Q. points, which is unfortunate because there are some genuinely smart and bright people in this part of the world, they just sound dumb as a box of rocks when they open up their cake-holes and start droning in that nasal tone with no "r"s. After about four or five words I tune them out. It's insufferable.

Oddly enough, southern drawl is typically associated with people who are slow, less-than-intellectual, etc. but I find that accent to be much more tolerable.

My advice to people in this area is if they want to be taken seriously by others, they need to learn to speak and annunciate properly, or at least in a way that approximates normal. Right or wrong, that's the way it is. People with heavy accents simply won't command the attention and first impression respect necessary to convey even genuinely intelligent ideas.

Obviously, the rest of the country needs to conform to what some of us think is tolerable (no one person in particular). Especially since some regional dialects are more irritating that others. :rolleyes:
BTW, this issue is not an English only problem. Dialect issues are in many European countries as well. I believe the Aussies also have issue with it.

What I can't understand is why American immigrants expect the country to change everything we do to adapt to their foreign language. Both sides of my family came from different countries. My grandparents got a basic grasp of English but my parents and their siblings all adopted English as the language of their new homeland. None of them expected govt offices to change the forms to the language of their land of origin. Can you imagine "Thank you for call Zorch Corporation. Please press one for English. Bitte drücken Sie zwei für Deutsch" ?

So, who here thinks Country Music sounds like you have an IQ of under 100?