!tasukuchan

I have heard recent discussion amoung my friends that people have been debating whether or not to "add ebonics" as a language for highschool / college classes. My reasoning is that ebonics isn't foreign"language". Moreover, it originated domestically ~ within the US, hence it shouldn't be classified as a course needed or an elective in school.

Languages such as Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Italian all have distinct cultural backgrounds...but if you go to Africa you will not see anyone speaking "ebonics". It originated in the US, after African-immigration.

Has anyone heard anything related to this matter? Should this be put into our education system?

Hassun

I'm not really for that idea. It's a pretty useless 'language' (if you can call it that) for most people anyway.
We don't learn any specific dialects at school either, we should be able to pick that up at home.

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Legend

No I think we should keep it out of our school system. Reason why I say this is because our kids have enough problem with grammar anyways, and we really don't need more confusions with, "I is what I is."

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Raven Omega

Yeah, let's teach klingon as well, that's just as useful.

Ebonics is not a language, nothing acknowledges it as such, just because Webster's dictionary is adding a couple words of slang here and there doesn't mean any of it has any meaning or value to the english language or on its own as a language. At the end of the day it's trash slang spoken by lower levels of society with absolutely no practical use whatsoever.

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Eriadd

Hell, Raven, you find me a school that teaches Klingon for college credits, and I'll be right there.

Arrianna

Ohhhh!!! Me to! lol

Of course it shouldn't be taught. That would be like teaching cockney as a new language. What? You're planning on going to the wilds of down town ____ where your ability to get a job and survive will depend on it?

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Barronmore

Acutally, there are positions that need to be field for those who speak the Klingon language. There's a insane asylum that acutally had to hire a translator who spoke Klingon because there were MULTIPLE inmates who would only speak Klingon to the staff.

Here's the CNN article that talks about it : http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/05/1...ter/index.html

I guess if we need Klingon in the world, there may be room for Ebonics after all!

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Arrianna

In an insane asylum?

If that doesn't put it in perspective.lol

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l Stone Hold l Now We're Cooking! l

emmy_chan

i think the whole ebonics thing is bull crap, its just more or less an accent than i dialect. what is this country coming to?

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Don't let me be.

Meiwaku

Simply put by most people already, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Japanese, German, English (ESL)... these are all languages spoken by a wide variety of people all over the world, they are taught in elementary school, highschool and university alike because they are languages that are possibly useful in economics.

In Canada I know for sure if you want to work for the government in the upper status jobs you must be bilingual (English and French), and furthermore if you can speak both languages you are almost guaranteed a decent job with the government and what not.

But what I am getting at is, schools teach these languages because they have the potential to be useful.

Ebonics on the other hand is not even a language it's slang, at most I would call it a dialect that originated in the USA and dialects usually only pertain to their specific area. Anyone who is not from the USA and speaks in ebonics is probably someone who just adopted that way of talking because they think it makes them look badass or something, and no offence but people where I live who talk like that just come off as pathetic wannabes. It's a culturally specific linguistic utterance. And anyone who speaks it that's not from that culture sounds some what ridiculous, it would be like someone who is not British to just up and start speaking with a British accent all the time. (That's just an example I know an accent and a dialect, language, whatever are totally different things.)

Therefore it would be irreverent to teach Ebonics in schools, especially since the majority of people who speak in Ebonics speak and understand "Formal English" it would be pointless to teach it in schools. Unless your making a living in a US community populated heavily by Ebonic speaking individuals where would you ever use it? Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a retarded abuse of the English language like people have claimed in the past (not on here) it's a way of speaking that pertains to a specific culture and if they feel so strongly about preserving it they can have cultural classes after school. In Ontario (Canada) most schools offer after school cultural specific classes for kids who want to keep their heritage, language and their culture.

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Miroku4444

Dam, you beat me to it. I was going to say that.

This ranks up there with one of the most stupidist things ive ever heard. Instead of facilitating this stupid way of speaking, why not have programs set up to help ppl( who speak this way), to learn the kings english.

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