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