ראובן לוי (friends with Vilet Wolf Read) also commented on Vilet Wolf Reads photo. ראובן לוי December 30 at 6:03pm I’ve studied linguistics for most of my life and I can tell you that “Black American English” as a dialect is no “dumber” or “more corrupt” than any other dialect of English. What most speakers of Standard American English (TV newscaster talk) don’t understand is that what they perceive as “ignorant errors” in Black American English (BAE) are actually grammatically correct in BAE because it works with a different set of rules than the standard dialect (SAE). Not to get too technical, but in BAE there IS a difference between “he working” and “he be working”. BAE normally omits “is” and “are”―that’s not an ignorant mistake. The word “be” is not used *instead* of “is” and “are”―it’s not that speakers of BAE are “too dumb” to use those words! In BAE, “he working” means he *is* working (right now―he’s AT work). “He *be* working” means something like “he has a job” or “he works (habitually)”. Look at these examples: 1: ― “Is John home?” ― “No, he working.” 2: ― “Why couldn’t John hang out yesterday?” ― “He be working Mondays now.” In the first example, John is *at work*. In the second example, John repeatedly or habitually works on that day of the week. Notice how “be” is used to indicate that. Black English gets a bad rap because it “sounds ignorant” to white ears, but it is just as sophisticated and nuanced as any other dialect. It just follows its own rules, like every dialect, so it sounds “intelligible but stilted” to people who speak other dialects of that language. They just ASSUME that certain dialects are for people with “less intelligence” or who “aren’t smart enough to speak right.” Having said that, I think people should be free to speak whatever dialect they want to, with their own friends and families and on their own time. But if someone’s being paid to do a job like customer service, like answering the phone or dealing with the public for a living, there’s nothing wrong with expecting them to 1) speak fluent English, and 2) make an effort to speak the Standard American Dialect while doing their job. It’s simply a matter of professional courtesy.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:42:39 +0000