OPinion
Word up, G, dis’ be Eubonics talkin’

“Black” officially recognized as a foreign tongue. Das right.

 

by Trent

In Oakland, California, across the
bridge from San Francisco, they’re
going to teach Ebonics as a second
language in public schools.

Now, Ebonics, as you might have
guessed from its rather artificial
moniker, is an artificial, or at the
. very least modern, language. You
might remember the scene in
Airplane where the stewardess is
having trouble communicating
with two Black men until one lady
pipes up, “Maybe I can help. I
speak Jive.” If Airplane were filmed
today, she would say “I speak
Ebonics.”

Black Americans have had a long
history of speaking their own
dialect, from the “dis be mine” of
pre-civil war black plantation
workers to the “Yo, G” of today’s
urban black youth. Apparently,
though, this dialect has become
prevalent enough to qualify, in the
minds of some educators and
linguists, as a distinct language.
Which means that Black students
in Oakland are learning English as
a second language.

Some of the arguments for
Ebonics existing as a language and
not a dialect are technical, and exist
only in the realm of linguists. The
features of Eubonics are recogniz-
able, if not universally present. The
replacement of an initial “th” with

Travelling Without Moving

Part | of Ill

tis morning and my right foot
I is crusty. I wiggle my toes and

feel a chewy substance break
off the little one. I wrestle my eyes
shut, too damn afraid of the scene
surrounding me. I sniff. Not a good
idea. My nose hairs curl in repul-
sion. I flex my fingers and cau-
tiously move them forward. Shit. A
body that isn’t mine. And it’s hairy
too, but I guess that’s irrelevant
considering we’re in Greece. I
begin to think. Also riot a good
idea. Last night. It’s surreal; my
memories speed past like high
speed traffic on a rainy night. I’m
blinded by the glare of highbeams
and street lamps. I’m confused
because last night is merging into
every night. I’m confused because
’ it seems that we've stopped
travelling ever since we left
Vancouver.

The body beside me shifts and

groans, bumping against my crusty
foot. Is it waking? Is it naked?

a “d” sound (“dis,” “dem”) and of
a medial or final “th” by an “f” or
other consonant sound (“with”
becomes “wif,” “brother” becomes
“bruvah”); a reduction of conso-
nant clusters (so that “first”
becomes “firs” and “hand”
becomes “han”); the replacement
of a final “r” sound with a vowel
sound (“summah” for “summer”
and “mo” for “more”); the preva- ,

‘lence of so-called plosive conso-

nants (making a word such as
“bill” sound more like “beel”) and
the placement of stress on a first,
rather than a second, syllable
(“DEE-troit’”) are just some of the
features linguists point to. But a
recent editorial in the Chicago
Tribune points out that a lot of
these encultured similarities are
the fault of the slave owners, not
the slaves. “The Africans who were
brought here didn’t speak English
and weren’t taught it. It was a
tactic used to keep the slaves from
being able to learn, communicate
effectively, and move forward
socially. While they picked up
words from their masters, they
were never taught how to use
them, thereby damning them to the
lower rungs of society.”
Then again, some of the argu-
ments in favour of Ebonics are
almost laughable. Some scientists,
like Dr. Ernie X. Smith, believe that
the birthplace of humankind is to

Slowly, I open
my eyes to
investigate. The
back of a head,
long brown hair
held loosely by a
mangy elastic,
scrawny bones run the
length of a leather-
skinned back: a boy. He isn’t
naked though. Thank bloody God.
Bad enough we're in the same twin
cot, sharing the same pillow. I
cautiously lift my head to survey
the room. Clothing is strewn
everywhere. It looks like a bunch
of scarecrows passed out on the
floor, but I can actually make out
Candace and Journey. No Joiwind,
but my vision is still cloudy. I let
my head drop again and wince.
Hair of the dog. I need a beer.
Slowly, slowly, I ease myself up
and out of the bed. I really don’t
wanna wake dude up, although
the drool on his face suggests he’s

 

Recruiting Centre or call:

 

 
  

   

 

Défense
nationale

National
Defence

ivi

Join OUR workforce.

Need a job? Want to learn a trade? Looking for a career? You can
have it all in the Canadian Forces. Opportunities are available
NOW for Canadian men and women. Join our team and share
in a proud Canadian tradition. For more information, drop by your

1-800-856-8488

www .recruiting.dnd.ca

Our Team. The best thing that could ever happen to you.

 

    
  
  

be found in East Africa and the
original people are the Asiatic
Black people. If so, the argument
goes, then Ebonics (literally
“pertaining to blacks,” sort of a
nonsensical cross of ebony and
phonics. Eboniphonics would be
more accurate, and cooler sound-
ing) has always been around, and
as such is superior to such pidgin
tongues as English, a bastard son
of German, Latin, French, et al.
Such an argument is not only
cultural navel-gazing (mine is
bigger—or in this case older—than
yours), it is irrelevant to the
question of Ebonics as Black
English. Far be it for me to deny
anyone their culture and their
cultural artifacts, but the people
who argue in favour of Ebonics,
especially black people, are
missing the point. It is not a focus
of cultural pride; it is the basis of
discrimination. It gives the people
who are interested in keeping
Blacks down another weapon. -
While Blacks are fighting over
their right to Ebonics, White folk
are able to say “I’m not going to
hire you/buy your product/listen
to what you have to say, because
you don’t speak my language.”
Whites, especially White Ameri-
cans (but not precluding White
Canadians), are notorious for
refusing to communicate on
anything other than their own

nowhere near consciousness.
“Sssp, Candace...Candace
wake up...”
“Keeh, huh, wa- fuck,
Jez, my name’s Sydney.”
“Whatever man, and my
name’s Veronica.”

“At least I don’t fuck up
all the time. Everyone’s
getting totally suspicious. I
feel like a criminal!”

Yeah, I suppose. Candace is
having to explain she’s got a sister
named Candace and that I always
mix the two of them up. Some-
times I just can’t get down with
these aliases. She’s pretty good at it
though, not once has she screwed
up and called me Jezebel. We’ve
had to re-invent ourselves for both
Greece and Turkey. I think the two
of us are frightened of who we've
become. So far we’ve been to
places fossilized in time and with

 

cece
| could show you
how to eliminate all
your long distance
charges...and how
to make up to $500
per day, 6 days a
week...would that
interest you?

Your destiny is a
matter of choice.
Call now.

LINCOLN * 515-1551]

 

 

 

terms. That means English. If the
notion of Ebonics as a language
becomes widespread, the States
could be facing a language crisis
worse than Canada faces with
French/English. At least here we
have language laws that have the
appearance of equality, but how do
you translate the ingredients in
Shreddies into Ebonics? And
would White America be willing to
watch their cereal boxes go
bilingual? Hell, no, and so Black-
speak would become the death
knell in race relations in the states.

Whatever the source of Ebonics,
the linguistic gap is widening. For
example, the widespread use of the
so-called invariant “be” to indicate
continuous or habitual action (“he
be late”), for instance, is not a
historical legacy but a develop-
ment of the last 50 years.

William Labov, professor of
linguistics at the University of
Pennsylvania, argues that lan-
guage is a major divisive factor in
the de facto racial segregation that
exists for a vast group of Blacks in
America.

Labov believes that the problem
lies not with the student, but with
the teacher. In a 1972 Atlantic
Monthly article entitled ‘Academic
Ignorance and Black Intelligence,’
he says “There is no reason to
believe that any nonstandard
vernacular is in itself an obstacle to

the exception of Knossos, the
travelling we've done is from one
drinking hole to the next.

Right now we're on Ios, an
island renowned for its nightlife.
The fun here is borderline suicidal.
We've hooked up with two Jewish
kids from the States: Journey and
Joiwind. Brother and older sister.
Journey is seriously deranged.
He’s a computer whiz with some
social problems. He feels comfort-
able enough with the three of us,
but stick him in a bar and he turns
into a baboon. Also, he has this
nasty chemical reaction with booze
so that when he gets really loaded,
he turns into this massage hound.

learning. The chief problem is
ignorance of language on the part
of all concerned.... Teachers are
now being told to ignore the
language of black children as
unworthy of attention and useless
for learning. They are being taught
to hear every natural utterance of
the child as evidence of his mental
inferiority.”

Admittedly, the Oakland school
board is declaring Ebonics a full-
blown language not to teach it, but
as an attempt to deal with quality
of education. But is the problem a
language barrier, or have the
teachers just given up on trying to
understand and educate the Black
students? It seems to me that these
figures speak more to a shitty
education system then to a com-
munication barrier. I applaud the
Oakland school board for trying to
deal with these problems, but they
are passing the buck. They’re
putting the blame on the backs of
Black people, for not speaking the
right language. Putting the blame
on the blacks, to disguise the true
source of the problem. Now the
Oakland school district administra-
tors are heroes, fighting to rescue
the Blacks from what wasn’t the
Black’s fault in the first place.

Want to find out more on Ebonics?
A good place to start is at http://
wwwe-leland.stanford.edu/~rickford/
ebonics/

When the sun descends, he goes

from back to back peddling
massages so brutal they leave these
tidepool bruises on your shoul-
ders.

Journey’s been up for some time
now. He's been staring at me and
Candace. “Why did you call her
Candace again?”

“I told you the other day she’s
always screwing me and my sister
up. Weird, eh?” Candace inter-
jected before I had the chance to
jump in and worsen the situation
even more. We’ve decided that
Joiwind and Journey would be
seriously sketched out if they clued

in to our ruse. End of part one

 

Douglas College students
get first crack at job fair

Westwood Plateau Golf and Country Club of Coquitlam is
hiring for over 100 positions (full-time, part-time,
seasonal) at a job fair on Friday, February 21 and
Saturday, February 22 at Douglas College’s David Lam
Campus (atrium and cafeteria).

The event is open only to Douglas College students for
the first two hours, 1:30-3:30 pm on Friday.

Students may also attend during public hours, 3:30-7:30
pm on Friday and 9:30 am-4:30 pm on Saturday.

Positions available include:

Restaurant and Banquet staff: servers, bartenders,
bussers, hosts, cooks, captains.

Golf Academy: retail sales staff, cashiers, guest services.

Golf Course: grounds workers.

Full job descriptions will be posted at fair
e|nterviews will be conducted on an as-available basis
No advance applications or phone inquiries accepted

David Lam is located at 1250 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam

 

 

The Other Press February 171997 5