Mark M. wrote:
On Sat, 21 Dec 1996, Mark Rosen wrote:
There are several problems with your argument:[snippo] * You are completely forgetting the other "non-English" group in America; the so-called White Trash or heavy Southern accents, which are violate just as many prissy and stuck up rules of grammar as Ebonics * You don't have to speak ebonics. You also don't have to speak with a Southern twang (or whatever the politically correct name for that is)
Just saying someone has a Southern "accent" is prejudicial and ignorant. It's true that anyone, Southern or otherwise, can slur words so they're not clear, but on averages, Southerners who speak clearly with their native inflections and pronunciations are easier to understand than your typical Yankees, whose speech is generally thin, nasal and rather pinched- sounding. People talked about hate in the South in the 1960's. What a crock. Apartheid, sure, no doubt about that. But hate, well, I grew up in the North and I lived for a few years in the deep South, and the people in the South don't hate like the Yankees do, on average. If you want to see how hate works, look how the big-media organizations have descended on Southern radio and TV and have been telling them that they speak wrongly, and that Southern "accents" are something to be ashamed of. There's a story about the Confederate officer who, following the War For Southern Independence (not a true Civil War BTW), walked up the steps of the veterans' club and saw a Union man sitting with a tin cup, looking absolutely miserable with all sorts of injuries, etc. The Southern man tossed a dollar into the cup, at which point the astonished Union soldier exclaimed "thank you, sir". The next week at the club, the same thing happened, and the soldier asked "Excuse me sir, but why would a Southern officer such as yourself be showing so much sympathy to a Union man like myself?" To which the Southern officer replied "Actually it's not that, it's just that you're the first Yankee I've seen that's been shot up to my specifications".