DC's teacher says axing...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one is suggesting that the teacher should be fired -- just that she should try to not mispronounce a common word.

As for the realities of DCPS - it's been about firing and riffing as many teachers as possible assuming that would make the scores go up (not). Now they've hired a lot of new people with great english but no teaching experience.

There's also a push for improved professional development. Perhaps English usage could be addressed, pointing out common mistakes like have went, him and I, irregardless, and axing.

A lot of people could benefit.

This is a good suggestion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what if the teacher says, "tomahto"? that's obviously wrong, as well as pretentious. should she be sent to elocution class? i can't have my urban darling repeating TOMAHTO on the mean streets of DC. he'll be eaten alive...like a tomato.

look it up - tomahto is an accepted pronunciation, just like tomato, which is more common. The same can't be said for axing or still mill or youns.

So once it becomes accepted, it's okay?

[Anonymous]

prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Grammar is a set of rules that people agree upon that changes over time. Old English, new English etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what if the teacher says, "tomahto"? that's obviously wrong, as well as pretentious. should she be sent to elocution class? i can't have my urban darling repeating TOMAHTO on the mean streets of DC. he'll be eaten alive...like a tomato.

look it up - tomahto is an accepted pronunciation, just like tomato, which is more common. The same can't be said for axing or still mill or youns.

So once it becomes accepted, it's okay?

Yep, this is how organic language works. Change happens, it normalizes or gets discarded and eventually seems to be the way it always was. Think about it how often do you hear shall, yet it was common at one time.

[Anonymous]

So what? Sometime I misspronounce 'r's, not because I want to misspronounce it, but because I have had speech issues in the past and when I'm tired or stressed I sometimes fall back into my old habit. I would hope that wouldn't disqualify me from any job where I would be in contact with the public, as you guys probably would like me to be.

You have no idea about why the teacher uses those mispronouncations, but my bet is that it is not here trying to say something wrong, and I highly doubt your precious child will pick up on these difforent pronounciations.

Also, one of the best teachers I've ever had had a thick accent, and yes, might not have spoken 100% proper english, I still learned a lot in his class (which was English). Don't judge their skill as a teacher by their accent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:what if the teacher says, "tomahto"? that's obviously wrong, as well as pretentious. should she be sent to elocution class? i can't have my urban darling repeating TOMAHTO on the mean streets of DC. he'll be eaten alive...like a tomato.

look it up - tomahto is an accepted pronunciation, just like tomato, which is more common. The same can't be said for axing or still mill or youns.

So once it becomes accepted, it's okay?

Yep, this is how organic language works. Change happens, it normalizes or gets discarded and eventually seems to be the way it always was. Think about it how often do you hear shall, yet it was common at one time.

Shall is used in most, if not all, legal documents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what? Sometime I misspronounce 'r's, not because I want to misspronounce it, but because I have had speech issues in the past and when I'm tired or stressed I sometimes fall back into my old habit. I would hope that wouldn't disqualify me from any job where I would be in contact with the public, as you guys probably would like me to be.

You have no idea about why the teacher uses those mispronouncations, but my bet is that it is not here trying to say something wrong, and I highly doubt your precious child will pick up on these difforent pronounciations.

Also, one of the best teachers I've ever had had a thick accent, and yes, might not have spoken 100% proper english, I still learned a lot in his class (which was English). Don't judge their skill as a teacher by their accent.

Why continue to bring up being disqualified for a job over a mispronunciation when that was never the issue?

Perhaps it's easier to turn it into something ridiculous than to discuss it on its own merits.

Many people are grateful for being set straight on any number of issues.

[Anonymous]

I can understand slight cultural and accent differences in the pronunciation of a word..i.e: poem vs poim, tomato vs tomahto..those are more idiosyncratic in that respect...but ax instead of ask? There is simply bo excuse for it. If one stops and reads the word phonetically, first a then s then k, there is no way ax could be a valid pronunciation of the word. I cannot believe people are sticking up for the teacher. Sometimes good enough is not good enough. Regardless of whether or not your kid picks up on the pronunciation, (which I doubt would happen because they will speak the way they hear language at home rather than at school) that's not the point. How can the child look up to and see the teacher as a role model if they know thay speak better English than she? I think that's the bigger problem here. Diminished credentials in the eyes of the students

[Anonymous]

NP here, what does "youns" mean? I have never heard anyone use this term. My middle school student' s English teacher last year always wrote "your welcome" on notes when I had thanked her for various things. I always cringed, but did nothing about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here, what does "youns" mean? I have never heard anyone use this term. My middle school student' s English teacher last year always wrote "your welcome" on notes when I had thanked her for various things. I always cringed, but did nothing about it.

It is Pittsburgh english spoken by the lower class Scots/Irish of the region. It is the second plural of the verb "to be"...sort of a Pittsburgh version of y'all or you all. You can understand it's meaning from the context--just as you can discern "ax" from "axe". The same cannot be said for the "irregardless" and "have went" users out there. These people are just stone cold ignorant. We had a white male Principal at a JKLM school that used many of these phrases in his weekly "newsletters". I believe he probably had an undiagnosed LD as do many of these other folks that insist on certain usage. They may be very intelligent--my DH is, for example--but he really has a blind spot for certain words and expressions. It's pretty funny actually. He is a very competent surgeon AND was an english major at undergrad state school. Went on to a an ivy med school though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here, what does "youns" mean? I have never heard anyone use this term.

I always thought of this word as coming from the Ozarks and Arkansas region, and maybe northwest Kentucky and the Missouri bootheel. It is another way to say y'all. It is pronounce "yew-ins", accent on the "ins".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here, what does "youns" mean? I have never heard anyone use this term.

I always thought of this word as coming from the Ozarks and Arkansas region, and maybe northwest Kentucky and the Missouri bootheel. It is another way to say y'all. It is pronounce "yew-ins", accent on the "ins".

This was not meant to sound snide. It just happens to be a phrase that I frequently heard throughout my childhood. I had no idea they used youns in Pennsylvania too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here, what does "youns" mean? I have never heard anyone use this term.

I always thought of this word as coming from the Ozarks and Arkansas region, and maybe northwest Kentucky and the Missouri bootheel. It is another way to say y'all. It is pronounce "yew-ins", accent on the "ins".

This was not meant to sound snide. It just happens to be a phrase that I frequently heard throughout my childhood. I had no idea they used youns in Pennsylvania too.

No offense taken--it may be said there too.Those people are also originally lower class scots/irish. Generally this is considered a Pittsburghian thing though. That and the eating of SCRAPPLE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This week DC started school (K) at a supposedly good public school in NW, and I met and spoke with the new teacher a couple of times and she says constantly "axing". And I also had trouble with her pronunciation of other words. I am really stunned by this, especially by the 'axing' and actually think it's unacceptable that a teacher speaks anything else than grammatically correct English.
To me this is not an accent, it's incorrect English. The teacher is relatively new.
When I spoke with some friends about this, I get nervous reactions like I am not being PC.
How can I best address this? Talk to the teacher? Ask her about it? Talk to the principal?

It is doubtful that your five year old will start speaking this way if you don't speak that way at home, so chill a little. Different dialects are a part of life in the US.

Really? Hearing it 7 hours a day vs how many with you in the evening?

I assume all of you supporting OP had nannies who were white Anglo- Saxon Protestants who spoke the King's English. Right?

I have difficulty understanding some from the UK- turn on subtitles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here, what does "youns" mean? I have never heard anyone use this term. My middle school student' s English teacher last year always wrote "your welcome" on notes when I had thanked her for various things. I always cringed, but did nothing about it.

It is Pittsburgh english spoken by the lower class Scots/Irish of the region. It is the second plural of the verb "to be"...sort of a Pittsburgh version of y'all or you all. You can understand it's meaning from the context--just as you can discern "ax" from "axe". The same cannot be said for the "irregardless" and "have went" users out there. These people are just stone cold ignorant. We had a white male Principal at a JKLM school that used many of these phrases in his weekly "newsletters". I believe he probably had an undiagnosed LD as do many of these other folks that insist on certain usage. They may be very intelligent--my DH is, for example--but he really has a blind spot for certain words and expressions. It's pretty funny actually. He is a very competent surgeon AND was an english major at undergrad state school. Went on to a an ivy med school though.

Since we've been advised that Southern Standard English includes such pronunciations as, "axing," we now understand that "youns" is a pronunciation included in Northern Standard English.