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0 pointscafard13y ago0 comments

Right--although the only speakers of Middle English that I've actually met were reading Chaucer out loud in a college class. So we've got it out of the way about them being ignorant or unintelligent.

I don't judge any particular speaker of French or Afrikaans to be ignorant or unintelligent. I do however judge that while they are speaking French or Afrikaans they are not speaking English.

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Cushman13y ago· 2 in thread

I have a sore memory of a recent lengthy debate on the concept of dialects, so suffice it here to say: It is utterly uncontroversial among linguists that AAVE, among other dialects which use double negation for emphasis, is a real English that young black kids grow up and learn to speak properly. It is not Standard in the sense that it is not used in news or government, and its use in formal speech will leave one branded ignorant, but it is in all other respects the relative equal of the English you speak.

If you have criticisms, that's fine, but again, this is the scientific consensus and not my area of expertise-- I'll have to direct you to Wikipedia.

leephillips13y ago

I'm pretty ignorant about linguists, so, honest question: if AAVE is considered "equal" to Standard English, why is it called a vernacular?

Cushman13y ago

It's a fuzzy line-- the old adage "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" is more or less accurate. If you're the official language of a country or religion, or are used extensively in business or politics, you get to be "Standard". If you're only spoken by a sub-national cultural group, or appear only in "informal" media and popular culture, you're just a dialect. The distinction itself actually is controversial, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(linguistics)

Not that there's anything wrong with having a standard language for business or politics, as long as you don't think that says something about people who grew up in the wrong place or class.

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