Ebonics: Why?

Da = The
Dem = Them
Hatas = Haters
Nu = New
Das = That's

Ebonics: who's idea was it? For some reason, it makes minorities feel better about themselves, when in fact, it makes them sound stupid. It's purely bad english. I cannot believe that some people are trying to establish it as a real language. What I don't understand is why people want to conform to a stereotype. And it's not just a problem in young black America, but every race. Even OLD black America.

Ebonics (defined as a blend of ebony and phonics) is something many cannot comprehend or interpret; it can affect employment opportunities, and may have a strong negative effect on the financical growth of those who speak it.

It is thought of as bad speech by us speakers of standard English language when Ebonics does not use grammatical forms which are required when speaking; ie the absence of the verb “to be” in forms like “you crazy!” or the use of double-negative constructions like “he don’t know nothing.”

In this statement, “the brotha be lookin good; that’s what got the sista nose open!" brotha is used for an African American male, lookin good refers to his style, his attractive appearance. Sista is used for an African American woman and her passionate love for the brotha is conveyed with open; sista nose is standard used for denoting possession, indicated by adjacency/context. The use of be means that the quality of looking good is not limited to the present moment but reflects also the "brotha"’s past and future essence. This shows some of the characteristics used in Ebonics when people have a conversation. The words used are in the English language. The only thing that alters are the endings, which are cut short a little, and when speaking Ebonics are sometimes replaced, like the “er” with an “a” as you can see in the words “brotha” and “sista.” Other conventions of Ebonics replace “ing” with “in” as in the word “lookin.” Now that we have seen the characteristics of Ebonics, we can see that it is not another language, just wrong. It can however be defined as a dialect, though I find that to be quite a stretch. “If A and B speak different language systems, but can understand each other when each is speaking their characteristic language system, they are speaking dialect of the same language”. (Luomala, “Identifying features of American Black English”).

Even though there is nothing wrong with sparingly speaking in the Ebonics language system, everyone should learn to speak STANDARD ENGLISH because... it's just the right thing to do.