Comments on: Mah Thusday – ebonics style

By: Crystal

Crystal — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:31:06 +0000

seems like I was successful.

PS – check out “Precious” or “Push” the book and basis for the movie. You may come to believe that this post is not as exaggerated as you might think

By: Crystal

Crystal — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:24:26 +0000

Of course ebonics is a “modern” version of historical speech, just as any language evolves. Ebonics includes many different regional variations of African American vernacular. However, many of them share common patterns, such as the ones I have illustrated in this post. The degree to which specific users employ either standard english or ebonics in their speech varies with factors like region, age, gender, and social class. Perhaps this sounds “muzzled” to you because I am trying to write out phonetics, whereas one would not be surprised to consistently hear the same grammatical patterns and pronunciations in speech. Additionally, why do you call it “muzzling”? Using ebonics is not bad, simply different.

That said, yes – this was written to help me practice using the concepts we learned in class. I did purposefully try to use ebonics in all applicable contexts, which may not be reflective of how often a real speaker of ebonics would speak.

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. Although I am a computer ignoramus, but I’ll try to figure out how to install the plug-in.

By: Ravi

Ravi — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:58:58 +0000

Is this ebonics or a rough imitation? As I understand it, ebonics is more a modern-day interpretation and amalgamation of a historical set of social dialects. It doesn’t necessarily require muzzling every word and sentence, in my opinion.

Also, an interesting song on the topic: “Ebonics” by Big L.

PS. Get the Subscribe to Comments plugin (I think that’s the name) for WordPress to help commenters stay engaged in the conversation.