Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 14:05:43 -0500
From: Mark S Kuhn mskuhn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]HOPPER.UNH.EDU
Subject: Re: VBE and 60 Minutes
I would appreciate a response to this inquiry. This past Sunday,
60 Minutes, the TV news program, contained a piece on Vernacular Black
English and educational efforts that address VBE. While the segment
contained a range of provocative perspectives on VBE, one person
interviewed in the segment made a claim I had not heard or read before.
Norma LaMoyne (sic?), an educator, claims that the simplification of
consonant clusters such as "tests" to "tes" by VBE speakers is a direct
influence of a Nigerian tribal language. Students in my class who had
seen the program asked me about the claim, since I had mentioned the
example as one which is an example of pressures toward "naturalness" (an
example from Wolfram's Dialects...text) in some vernacular speech. VBE
is not my area, so I would appreciate feedback from you all.
Mark Kuhn
Communication Department
University of New Hampshire