Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 08:56:21 -0400

From: "David A. Johns" djohns[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PEACHNET.CAMPUS.MCI.NET

Subject: Re: The Lords Prayer/Ebonics



At 08:02 AM 10/10/97 -0400, Al Futrell wrote:



I find this an odd statement coming from someone who studies

language

usage. Although there is no doubt that the fabricated Ebonics

example

Carol sent bears little resemblance to how an "Ebonics speaker"

might use

the dialect, there also is little doubt that this language variety

is

regular misconstrued by non speakers. Seems that as language

scholars,

this misappropriation of a dialect -- i.e., "incorrect" examples of

Ebonics flying around the net -- should be part of our knowledge

inventory.



Let's distinguish here between honest misconceptions -- say, "Black

English replaces all forms of the verb _to be_ with invariant _be_"

-- and the deliberate, puerile misrepresentations exemplified by the

"Ebonic Lord's Prayer" and that web site.



The latter, as far as I can see, is simply the output of the "jive"

program, which has been around for at least ten years. It is no more

than a blind text replacement program. For instance, it replaces all

instances of "th" with "d", and all instances of "you" with "ya'"; as

a consequence, "youth" (in the _Electra_ file) becomes "ya'd".

Phrases like "What it is, Mama" seem to be thrown in at random.



Why such offensive silliness would require academic analysis is

totally beyond me.





--

David Johns

Waycross College

Waycross, GA 31501