Ax or Ask: bad grammar of African Americans
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Stumble ThisDuration 4 minutes 3 seconds.
Teacher Garrard McClendon focuses on correcting the poor grammar of African Americans. Understandably this is controversial.
His final line in his interview made me smile.
Teacher Garrard McClendon focuses on correcting the poor grammar of African Americans. Understandably this is controversial.
His final line in his interview made me smile.
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Wow...
And you can say "ain't" or "ax" or "irregardless", but I don't have to give you a job. You have to know the rules you're breaking and the consequences of breaking them.
I wonder if he has any trouble with spelling or grammar in his second or third language.
@stewilliamson - you obviously don't know westy.
Dialects are a fact of life, but if you want to look educated/cultured, you want to speak with a passably clean dialect/non-dialect, or you risk not getting ahead in professional environments where a moderate degree of sophistication is expected.
Having said that, the "he and I" and "to him and me" me/I split continues to baffle too many people for my taste.
There's a good article on this at Esquire.com: a word of warning--the title is NSFW: http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1206BLACKESSAY_108
This reminds me of Pinker's language mavens:
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html
"I hope to have convinced you of two things. Many prescriptive rules are just plain dumb and should be deleted from the usage handbooks. And most of standard English is just that, standard, in the sense of standard units of currency or household voltages. It is just common sense that people should be given every encouragement and opportunity to learn the dialect that has become the standard one in their society and to employ it in many formal settings. But there is no need to use terms like "bad grammar," "fractured syntax," and "incorrect usage" when referring to rural and Black dialects. Though I am no fan of "politically correct" euphemism (in which, according to the satire, "white woman" should be replaced by "melanin-impoverished person of gender"), using terms like "bad grammar" for "nonstandard" is both insulting and scientifically inaccurate."
Westy, that was booootifull!
Welcome, timtoner. Choggie's right, there are quite a few of us here.
I just want to point out that there is no such thing as "standard English." There's British English, Australian English, Singaporean English, Indian English and a host of others. There's not even a "standard American English." There are many regional standards that have overlapping facets but still also have a lot of variation--the most important variation being pronunciation. Think about this--why is it in this clip the black children are considered uneducated for pronouncing ask as "ax" yet Boston children are not considered uneducated for pronouncing "car" as "ca-."
Let's not confuse "grammar" with "pronunciation." They are two different concepts. If I say "y'all" but know full well that it is written "you all" or even only "you" in formal writing contexts (academic, business, etc.) then accusing my English of being "poor" is silly. Yet some people will consider a black student who writes "ask" correctly yet prounounces it "ax" as uneducated. And their only justification for such a judgement is that it isn't "standard English." And as I mentioned in the previous post, what they usually mean by that is that it's not "white middle-class English."
I don't see how anyone is getting hurt by a person saying "ax" instead of "ask" or "liberry" instead of "library." It's as ludicrous as chastising Boston speakers for saying "ca-" instead of "car" or Southern speakers for saying "y'all" instead of "you/you all." Those pronunciations would be acceptable in all contexts--social, academic, business, public speeches, etc. So why insist that black children change their pronunciation? It just smacks of racism to me.
unless english is someone's second language ... i don't care who uses the term 'ax' in place of 'ask' ... it is INCORRECT! you will not find 'ax' defined as: to inquire or request in any dictionary.
"Ax" is incorrect according to you. Is "ca-" in the dictionary? Is "y'all?" Here on the West Coast many people pronounce "caught" the same way as people on the East Coast say "cot" (similarly "bought" is pronounced like "bot" as in "robot"). Those pronunciations are not in any dictionary either under those words. Are they wrong? Also you're confusing spelling with pronunciation. Many words are pronounced differently from their spellings in English, as I'm sure you're well aware (weigh is just one of many examples--no one pronounces the 'g' or 'h').
Dictionaries are outdated from the moment they are printed. The English language adds words at the rate of several hundred a year, so using a dictionary as a guide to what is correct or incorrect English is not very useful. Dictionaries are great for checking the spelling and definitions of words that have been in common use for a while. But they certainly aren't infallible. I own a dictionary printed just a few years ago that doesn't include a definition for "gay" to mean "homosexual."
But we're getting off-track here. My question to you is, when you say something is "incorrect" in English, to what authority are you appealing? Language is a form of power, so who's calling the shots and saying what's right and what's wrong? My answer is that mostly it is white, middle-class Americans who are doing the finger-waving without considering that their English is but one of many world-wide standards.
would you accept someone saying 'bool' for 'blue'?
there is no double standard here ... i cannot stand it when ANYONE uses the phrase 'ax' regardless of race ... i guess under your terms if i corrected a gay man or lesbian on the word i would then be homophobic?
as for your dictionaries statement ... thanks for the chuckle!!
anyway ... i've said what i can on the matter! it's been lovely debating with you, but i think i will turn my attention to something else now! ta!
Language divides are nothing new.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_4_urbanities-language.html
I, for one, agree with Dr. Dalrymple.
Another example, the demonstrative use of adjectives. English does use adjectives demonstratively but such adjectives tend to be very ambiguous. "The land of THE FREE and the home of THE BRAVE"; we understand the meaning but there are many unanswered questions with regards to these demonstrative adjectives. Are these free people or free things? Is it one or many? Are we talking about the concept of the free as a whole or just a specific instance of it? In Greek and Latin, those sorts of questions are answered by case endings, and, in Greek, the definitive article. As a result abstractions based upon purely conceptual ideas are much more easily expressed. If you ever pick up an English translation of Plato, you might be puzzled by references to the Good and the Just and the Noble; all of which are expressed much more lucidly in the original Greek.
The point here is that different languages and dialects provide you with different expressive toolkits. Some of these toolkits are better able to equip one to speak and write articulately than others. I do not know enough about the dialect spoken by Black urban Americans to say definitively whether or not it better equips one to speak articulately. It is however entirely possible that, by not having their speech and language "corrected", young, Black Americans are being handicapped in their ability to express themselves. One who cannot express his or herself is doomed never to break out of the working class.
I grew up in the sticks, and rednecks have exactly the same problem.
I think we should teach our kids to know the difference between the two languages: the one we were raised with on the farm, or in the barrio, or on the south side, and the one that shows the world that we aren't ignorant.
There are times when it is not only perfectly okay to say "ax" but probably wise. Same with saying "Do what now?" instead of "Beg your pardon?"
[quote]the Old English verb áscian also appeared as acsian, and both forms continued into Middle English. The two forms co-existed and evolved separately in various regions of England, and later America. The variant ascian gives us the modern standard English ask, but the form "axe", probably derived from Old English acsian, appears in Chaucer: "I axe, why the fyfte man Was nought housband to the Samaritan?" (Wife of Bath's Prologue, 1386.) It was considered acceptable in literary English until about 1600 [13] and can still be found in some dialects of English including, of course, African American Vernacular English. It is, however, one of the most stigmatized features of AAVE, often commented on by teachers. It also persists in Ulster Scots as /aks/ and Jamaican English as /aːks/, from where it has entered the London dialect of British English as /ɑːks/.[/quote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_consonant_clusters
south london they say "arks" and "libry"
i totally disagree that this is "wrong" or "bad" or "poor" english. The only reason english got the way it did is because it is so "wrong". To stop that development, to freeze time, is actually more wrong.
My girl learnt "BBC English". I taught her south london. Now she can say "Wha' the fak?" with the best of them.
People quickly forget that english is at root a "low" german heavily influenced by french. if the french hadn't invaded and changed the official language to french, the peasants wouldn't have had 300 years to bastardise and simplify english, making it the perfect language to learn as a second language, precisely because it doesn't have all the crazy endings and cases any more (see scottishmartialarts above)
So, in other words, the english this guy is calling "correct" is actually totally mashed up, and he should probably learn german or lithuanian or greek instead, or sanskrit or something.
But, i totally agree with him that there should be such thing as "business english"... but you should not feel ashamed about your heritage if you learn a different dialect in order to get a job.
if you want to be taken seriously in business, you need good graphic design! moron!