Any discussion of
African languages would be unacceptable without a discussion of the African
origin of African American vernacular Black English (VBE). Many sociolinguists
believe that VBE is derived from a Creole language spoken in the Deep South
before emancipation (Dillard 1972). Sociolinguists that adhere to this view
believe that VBE is derived from an earlier British dialect.
Other linguist
believe that VBE is really the result of the social isolation of African
Americans during slavery which forced them to learn English words, but allowed
them to live in communities separated from SAE speakers. This separation of the
Euro-Americans generally, and African American slaves made it possible for an
African deep structure to remain constant among this people. We call this
African American language Ebonics.
Ebonics is a
dialect made up of an English vocabulary and an African structure/ grammar. Dr.
Ernie Smith of the California State University at Fullerton noted that Ebonics:
"follows the African deep structure in every respect when it is different
from English, and there is solid empirical linguistic evidence of identical
deep structure or syntactical patterns in West African languages". (Clegg 1980, 16)
Many linguists
argue that Ebonics has its own rules and grammar.(Rickford 1986) This is absolutely true. (Clegg 1980)
The grammar of Ebonics is analogous to the grammars of the
Niger-Kordofanian family of languages. Niger-Kordofanian languages are spoken
in West Africa.
Social separation
of racial groups in America has led to the continuity of Niger-Kordofanian
linguistic features among African Americans.
The ethnolingistic theory of Ebonics is a more accurate description of
African American speech patterns than VBE, which suggest that the speech of
many African Americans is wholly a dialect of SAE.
Traditionally
Ebonics is seen as a form of Standard American English (SAE) with a transformed
phonology or surface structure pursuant to the transformational theory of
linguistics. For example, SAE 'Do you understand English'; in Ebonics 'D'ya dig
black talk'; and Wolof (an African language) 'Dege nga Olof' ('Do you
understand Wolof').
But Ebonics
speakers use an African 1) morphology and 2) syntax, with an English vocabulary
as observed above. As a result Ebonics and SAE are mutually intelligible, but
like German and Norwegian they are distinct languages.
The pronunciation
of Ebonics words show NK influences in two broad categories: 1) consonant
clustering avoidance and 2) absent phonics.(Fretz 1985) Both NK and Ebonics
speakers avoid the pro-
enunciation of consonant clusters:
SAE Ebonics
left lef
object objek
desk dess
fast fas
Certain SAE sounds are not found in Ebonics and NK, as a
result we have absent phonics:
SAE
Ebonics
think
tink
then den
arithmetic
arifmetic
yours
yohz
drift
drif
build bil
The morphology
and phonology of Ebonics causes many African American children to have reading
problems. This difficulty may results from the differences between the
pronunciation and spelling of words in
Ebonics, and the pronunciation and spelling of words in SAE. Goodacre (1971, 80) noted that
"Even more difficulties occur in the pronunciation of vowels and end
sounds. One study found that of the 220 words in Dolch's list of basic words in
the English language, Negro dialect of this type changed 158". This
dropping of certain phonemes or letters by some Ebonics speakers while reading
create difficulty for the child trying to attack new words and sound them out.
Fasold (1969) has made it clear that among many readers whose language show an
above average importance of vowels,
while reading the words will not change them to won't; and do not to don't.
In conclusion,
Ebonics is not just a dialect of English, it is a "different" speech
analogous to African languages in structure and some vocabulary. This
genetically encoded linguistic principle was reinforced in the African
community as a result of the social isolation of many African Americans and
Euro-Americans since slavery.
This isolation of
blacks, allowed environmental stimuli to trigger and reinforce NK syntactical
patterns among Ebonics speakers .The SAE pattern would probably have erased NK
grammatical structures if African Americans
and Euro-Americans would have been fully assimilated rather than live in
separate worlds, in the same country.
Given the
information outlined above, Ebonics is a foreign language, and under Federal
law, bilingual education should be provided Ebonics speakers. The allocation of
federal dollars to support SAE instruction among African Americans, may enable
many more Ebonics speakers to not only
finally learn SAE, and many of them to perform better academically in
the area of reading.
This linguistic
reality makes it clear that some speakers of Ebonics might be prone to reading
difficulties because of the syntactical
differences between Ebonics and SAE at
the deep structural level. This view is
supported by the research of Baratz (1969 and Labov (1965).
This suggest
that African American children could benefit from learning English as a Second
Language. The teaching of ESL might help African Americans become better
learners by learning SAE, rather than assuming that Ebonics is just non-standard
English.
