Does this make me classist or (shudder!) racist?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A couple of years ago I took DC to visit a school in a suburb in Massachusetts. We got lost so I asked a police officer for directions. He said ".......then you go down to the "yad" and turn right. I thanked him but was thinking what the hell is a 'yad' and assumed it was a street. Stopping again to get directions, another individual said ".....go down to the YARD and make a right."

Some is mispronunciation. Other IS dialect. Would you crucify the police officer for mispronunication or credit it to dialect?

It is association. When people in DC hear "Hahvahd Yahd" they are likely to think of JFK. When they hear "axe" they may think of Marion Barry.

And you're making quite an assumption that people today associate "Hahvahd Yahd" with JFK. Unless you're around 55-60 years or a serious student of history or linguistics, many don't known the linguistic association. I will put that to the test later today when I talk to my 17-year old who wants to minor in history, major in CS.

PP again. Correction, you don't have to be in your 50s to know the connection but many were alive to listen to JFK speak and hear the reporter comments make the lingual 'association.'

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it makes you racist and little ignorant. Do you care that a teacher from Boston does not pronounce their r's? No. Because when white people don't pronounce things correctly it is cute when black people do it, you think they are uneducated.

+1

[Anonymous]

It's just an accent. We used to have many more regional dialects and accents before television homogenized everything. The added dimension is that the one you're complaining about is often identified as an African-American accent. So, yes it may reflect some bias on your part. But we all have them.

My FIL is incredibly biased against southern accents and automatically assumes anyone who uses "y'all" is a complete idiot. On the other hand, he thinks a patrician "high church" accent like William F Buckley or Pat Moynihan is the ultimate sign of intelligence, despite his own flat Midwestern voice. DO NOT BE LIKE MY FIL!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it makes you racist and little ignorant. Do you care that a teacher from Boston does not pronounce their r's? No. Because when white people don't pronounce things correctly it is cute when black people do it, you think they are uneducated.

Not the pp but that's just not the case--poor grammar is poor grammar. When my southern in laws say fixin or the something akin to that it drives me nuts! It's not a race thing but it may be a class thing. Other things I can't stand: "alls I'm saying," "where you at?,", I could care less," etc.

I work in IT, nobody pronounces anything correctly. 1/2 the engineers take on fake names because white people can even say their name.

It could be a "class" thing but I doubt you have many occasions to be around people of a lower class than yourself.

You just sound like a bitchy DIL... ignorant, new money and racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard rich, white folks use conversate, orientate, irregardless, could care less, etc etc.

AX is just a dialect. May not be awesome, but no worse than "warsh" (Baltimore), Birfday" (my upper PA in laws say this), or whatever. Really. You KNOW your kid is not going to come home saying "ax," so the only reason it bothers you is because...actually, I don't know why.

You idiot. "orientate" "irregardless" and "could care less" are all 100% grammatically correct.

You weren't an English major, were you? "Irregardless" is not a word. "Could care less" means just what it sounds like -- I could care less, so I actually care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard rich, white folks use conversate, orientate, irregardless, could care less, etc etc.

AX is just a dialect. May not be awesome, but no worse than "warsh" (Baltimore), Birfday" (my upper PA in laws say this), or whatever. Really. You KNOW your kid is not going to come home saying "ax," so the only reason it bothers you is because...actually, I don't know why.

You idiot. "orientate" "irregardless" and "could care less" are all 100% grammatically correct.

Oriented. Regardless (the other only RECENTLY accepted due to rampant use). Could care less isn't what you use when you are saying that you CouldN'T care less.

Do you want to try writing that out again, in English this time?

Different poster. She/he is speaking English. I think you just find it sucks to be wrong.

And ANYBODY who has bothered to study linguistics, and not their own biases, knows that ax/ask is a dialect. And I posted this in the last thread--unless you say Feb-roo-ary, you are saying it wrong. And words like often can be pronounced multiple ways. It is language, not a learning disability as another ignorant poster said.

Check again - I said that all those examples are "grammatically correct". Whether the common usage is "could" or "couldn't" is not relevant to BOTH being GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT. So where am I wrong again? Oh yes, that would be no where.

They are NOT "grammatically correct." You are wrong about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it makes you racist and little ignorant. Do you care that a teacher from Boston does not pronounce their r's? No. Because when white people don't pronounce things correctly it is cute when black people do it, you think they are uneducated.

Oh get over yourself. Accents aren't the same thing as speaking improperly and making spelling and grammatical errors. The fact that the OP even asked the question says that she's someone who is accepting. It's the Left eating the Left here.

Sorry your racist, most racist don't see that they are being racist.

I am sure you say cannidate, not candidate... or chomp at the bit instead of champ at the bit... or melk instead of milk, or warsh instead of wash or some other commonly mispronounced word... or you know people that commonly mispronounce something but don't equate it with being uneducated or ignorant, because they are white or Asian.

You mean "you're racist" or "you are a racist".

I rest my case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Should I be concerned that one of the home room teachers at my kid's Big 3 Elementary School class says "aks" instead of "ask"?

Does that make you classist, or racist? Well, that depends. Suppose that your child's teacher said "y'all" and dropped her letter "l"s from the end of words like "pool". But she was a beautiful, preppy sorority type who had attended Nashville's elite Harpeth Hall (or Charleston's Ashley Hall) prep school, and later graduated from the University of Alabama, where she had been a Crimson Tide Cheerleader. Would you be "concerned", or would you be "really happy" to have your child taught by such a "sweet" teacher?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it makes you racist and little ignorant. Do you care that a teacher from Boston does not pronounce their r's? No. Because when white people don't pronounce things correctly it is cute when black people do it, you think they are uneducated.

Not the pp but that's just not the case--poor grammar is poor grammar. When my southern in laws say fixin or the something akin to that it drives me nuts! It's not a race thing but it may be a class thing. Other things I can't stand: "alls I'm saying," "where you at?,", I could care less," etc.

I live in the South, and quite a few people say "I'm fixing to do this and that." I figured it's local, y'all. Same as in New England, where "I says" used to drive me nuts. We are speaking of academic environment, where Standard American English, i.e. the dialect of Grosse Pointe, MI, is expected to be used and taught. You want to hear it? Turn on CNN. Throughout the world, regardless of a specific language, a heavy regional accent is a sign of poor education. Love it, hate it, it is what it is.

I speak English with a noticeable foreign accent and go out of my way to compensate with correct grammar and usage (to the best of my knowledge). I don't want my child to be taught a regional accent. The school is meant to perpetuate a standard. What happens outside of school is another matter entirely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I heard somebody say "aks" just this morning. English is at least her third language. She's a college graduate. If I assumed that she was ignorant based on her saying "aks", that would be ignorant of me.

She is obviously ignorant of part of English vocabulary. No need to assume the obvious.

Foreigners often use correct pronunciation and grammar, because they were taught it from the get-go. You college grad probably skipped that class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard rich, white folks use conversate, orientate, irregardless, could care less, etc etc.

AX is just a dialect. May not be awesome, but no worse than "warsh" (Baltimore), Birfday" (my upper PA in laws say this), or whatever. Really. You KNOW your kid is not going to come home saying "ax," so the only reason it bothers you is because...actually, I don't know why.

False equivalence. Ax is not a dialect or an accent. It is a mispronunciation of word, which reveals either a lack of education or some kind of learning disability. The white people who use the words you listed above are revealing a lack of education. Not sure how that aided your argument. All you're really saying is that there are also uneducated whites (or whites who are uneducated on the use of those words).

I grew up in the 1980s in a public school system that was 100% white. There were kids in my school who said ax instead of ask (if white kids in my lily-white town use it, how could it be a black dialect?). Those kids, more often than not, landed in the remedial program, and were certainly not the high performers when high school came around.

The true racists on this board are the apologists chalking up the use of ax as a black dialect, as if no one should expect blacks to be educated enough to know the difference. Sorry folks, but holding the black teacher to a lower standard is racist.

Pot meet kettle! You are the ignorant one ... educated yourself on the history of the pronunciation.

Nonsense. The Chaucer story is far from compelling.

+1. The bolded is absolutely not true. Google is your friend on this.

Nonsense. The Chaucer story is far from compelling.

Where's Beowulf on this subject? Just had to aks.

He's awguin with Grendel's mawtha over who's da smahtist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Should I be concerned that one of the home room teachers at my kid's Big 3 Elementary School class says "aks" instead of "ask"?

Does that make you classist, or racist? Well, that depends. Suppose that your child's teacher said "y'all" and dropped her letter "l"s from the end of words like "pool". But she was a beautiful, preppy sorority type who had attended Nashville's elite Harpeth Hall (or Charleston's Ashley Hall) prep school, and later graduated from the University of Alabama, where she had been a Crimson Tide Cheerleader. Would you be "concerned", or would you be "really happy" to have your child taught by such a "sweet" teacher[b]?

The fact that no one has responded to the above example is telling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Should I be concerned that one of the home room teachers at my kid's Big 3 Elementary School class says "aks" instead of "ask"?

Does that make you classist, or racist? Well, that depends. Suppose that your child's teacher said "y'all" and dropped her letter "l"s from the end of words like "pool". But she was a beautiful, preppy sorority type who had attended Nashville's elite Harpeth Hall (or Charleston's Ashley Hall) prep school, and later graduated from the University of Alabama, where she had been a Crimson Tide Cheerleader. Would you be "concerned", or would you be "really happy" to have your child taught by such a "sweet" teacher[b]?

The fact that no one has responded to the above example is telling.

I'll bite. The y'all bit doesn't really matter to me (as that is clearly southern dialect), but I would not be happy spending $35K a year to have some dumb ass cheerleader teach my kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard rich, white folks use conversate, orientate, irregardless, could care less, etc etc.

AX is just a dialect. May not be awesome, but no worse than "warsh" (Baltimore), Birfday" (my upper PA in laws say this), or whatever. Really. You KNOW your kid is not going to come home saying "ax," so the only reason it bothers you is because...actually, I don't know why.

False equivalence. Ax is not a dialect or an accent. It is a mispronunciation of word, which reveals either a lack of education or some kind of learning disability. The white people who use the words you listed above are revealing a lack of education. Not sure how that aided your argument. All you're really saying is that there are also uneducated whites (or whites who are uneducated on the use of those words).

I grew up in the 1980s in a public school system that was 100% white. There were kids in my school who said ax instead of ask (if white kids in my lily-white town use it, how could it be a black dialect?). Those kids, more often than not, landed in the remedial program, and were certainly not the high performers when high school came around.

The true racists on this board are the apologists chalking up the use of ax as a black dialect, as if no one should expect blacks to be educated enough to know the difference. Sorry folks, but holding the black teacher to a lower standard is racist.

I disagree. Have you ever heard of African American Vernacular English? We studied it quite thoroughly in a linguistics class that I took in college. I don't think it's false equivalency at all. I do think it's important for children to understand that language is an inherent part of our identity, and that we use language as a tool, and often times it is necessary to use more "standard" or "formal" language. The key is teaching children when and where the more formal version is appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have heard rich, white folks use conversate, orientate, irregardless, could care less, etc etc.

AX is just a dialect. May not be awesome, but no worse than "warsh" (Baltimore), Birfday" (my upper PA in laws say this), or whatever. Really. You KNOW your kid is not going to come home saying "ax," so the only reason it bothers you is because...actually, I don't know why.

False equivalence. Ax is not a dialect or an accent. It is a mispronunciation of word, which reveals either a lack of education or some kind of learning disability. The white people who use the words you listed above are revealing a lack of education. Not sure how that aided your argument. All you're really saying is that there are also uneducated whites (or whites who are uneducated on the use of those words).

I grew up in the 1980s in a public school system that was 100% white. There were kids in my school who said ax instead of ask (if white kids in my lily-white town use it, how could it be a black dialect?). Those kids, more often than not, landed in the remedial program, and were certainly not the high performers when high school came around.

The true racists on this board are the apologists chalking up the use of ax as a black dialect, as if no one should expect blacks to be educated enough to know the difference. Sorry folks, but holding the black teacher to a lower standard is racist.

I disagree. Have you ever heard of African American Vernacular English? We studied it quite thoroughly in a linguistics class that I took in college. I don't think it's false equivalency at all. I do think it's important for children to understand that language is an inherent part of our identity, and that we use language as a tool, and often times it is necessary to use more "standard" or "formal" language. The key is teaching children when and where the more formal version is appropriate.

Until this thread, I've never heard anyone claim that ax was part of an AA dialect. I've certainly heard that offense to the ears muttered from all races. In fact, my childhood experience was only with white people saying it.