Word On The Street: Debunking The Myth Of A Pure Standard EnglishThough there is a contingent of linguists who fight the fact, our language is always changing -- not only through slang, but sound, syntax, and words' meanings as well. Debunking the myth of "pure" standard English, tackling controversial positions, and eschewing politically correct arguments, linguist John McWhorter considers speech patterns and regional accents to demonstrate just how the changes do occur. Wielding reason and humor, McWhorter ultimately explains why we must embrace these changes, ultimately revealing our American English in all its variety, expressiveness, and power. |
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... develop its modern meaning, replacing hlāf Even the sound system is vastly different from ours. We no longer have words like hlāfin which h precedes /, and in Old English, there was no such thing as a word beginning with v. The line ...
... develop its modern meaning, replacing hlāf Even the sound system is vastly different from ours. We no longer have words like hlāfin which h precedes /, and in Old English, there was no such thing as a word beginning with v. The line ...
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... developed into French (and Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and other languages) later, in the exact same way as Old English developed into Modern English. Chinese people today would find Ancient Chinese as baffling to the ear as we would ...
... developed into French (and Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and other languages) later, in the exact same way as Old English developed into Modern English. Chinese people today would find Ancient Chinese as baffling to the ear as we would ...
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... developed out of what was originally one. This happens all the time: Today, many Philadelphians pronounce bad not with a single vowel sound, but rather like “bayuhd”—again, two vowel sounds where there used to be one. But although we ...
... developed out of what was originally one. This happens all the time: Today, many Philadelphians pronounce bad not with a single vowel sound, but rather like “bayuhd”—again, two vowel sounds where there used to be one. But although we ...
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... develop not into just one other language but into several. In order to understand this, we need to refine our new conception of language a bit. An important thing to realize about the way language changes is that although there are ...
... develop not into just one other language but into several. In order to understand this, we need to refine our new conception of language a bit. An important thing to realize about the way language changes is that although there are ...
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... develop again, either there would be no endings on verbs in the present tense at all by now, or a single one would be preserved on some other verb form, such as the first person singular, leaving / lovie, you love, he love, we love, you ...
... develop again, either there would be no endings on verbs in the present tense at all by now, or a single one would be preserved on some other verb form, such as the first person singular, leaving / lovie, you love, he love, we love, you ...
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Word On The Street: Debunking The Myth Of A Pure Standard English John Mcwhorter Limited preview - 2000 |
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actually African Americans AfricanAmerican children AfricanAmerican students Afrocentric ain’t American English audience basic bidialectal bilingual Black and standard black children Black English black speech black students bridging advocates bridging approach classroom codeswitching complex Creole languages Creolist culture developed dialect of English dialect readers endings English dialects English speakers example expression fact French genderneutral German grammar Gullah habitual Haitian immersion issue Jamaican patois John Rickford language change language mixture Latin Level linguists means Media Lengua modern nonstandard dialects noun Oakland controversy Old English patterns person pidgin play prepositions problem pronoun Quechua reading Rickford Romance languages rules Saramaccan seen sense sentence structures separate language Shakespeare Shirley simply singular slang slaves sound system Spanish speak speech variety Sranan standard dialect standard English sure Swiss German teachers teaching tense things translation verb vowel walk West African languages words writing