Phun wif' Ebonics(and other dialects)

Well I'd suppose every country on the planet has its own regional dialects, each of which are variants on the common language. Although pronunciation can vary greatly within this huge country(consider the phenomenon of "consonant migration", wherein the "r" is dropped in New England from words like car and yard and inserted in words in the South: "warsh", for example), there are basically two dialects: Ebonics, and "hillbilly"(not just ain't and t'aint, but using was instead of were: 'was you going to the store, Thelma Mae?'), which I suppose could be called--God help me--Ivoronics.

Ebonics does have its points. There are a few words up in there that really tell it like it is. My favorite word in the Ebonic dialect is foo'.

Foo' (foo) Syn. fool, fools. n. Injudicious individual. "Come on, foo'!"

But like its caucasian counterpart, Ebonics has its spit-in-the-face-of-good-grammar aspects to it. Where Ivoronics screws up everything in the past tense(I din't know them folks was coming)Ebonics leaves off all the contractions.

I guess without the contractions, the language is less labored. Okay, sorry for that one.

Anyway, yeah, I hear it all the time from clients where I work, and heard it real heavy in a movie I saw recently on BET. Don't remember the name of the film, but in it Ving Rhames was giving advice to a kid whose mother he was seeing, as to getting along with relatives. "I'm cool wif' both my baby mama". (Translation: I get along with both the women who bore my kids).

I dunno. Talking in either dialect like it's cool reminds me of when I was in 6th grade and we wore the linings from our jackets to school, thinking we were the shit. Looking back, of course, it's pretty idiotic and really says nothing but "we're young, dumb and full of--"

Seems to me that you'd want to make a departure from something, be it a language, culture, mode of attire, or any damn thing, to improve on it. Wearing the liners from your jacket looks worse. Leaving the contractions off words, or using the wrong word in the past tense sounds worse. Work smarter folks, not dumber. It's like going around wearing two different colored socks, and sneering at everyone wearing the same color on both feet. "Well, who do they think they are , anyway?!"

Clinging to ignorance is not "keepin' it real"

Just as one hates to see the environment destroyed by toxic substances, it's a shame seeing the language similarly polluted. English and English Lite....