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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... endings are constantly wearing off, new endings are constantly developing; word meanings drift; and the order of words changes. These things happen so slowly that they are usually barely perceptible within a human lifetime. However, the ...
... endings are constantly wearing off, new endings are constantly developing; word meanings drift; and the order of words changes. These things happen so slowly that they are usually barely perceptible within a human lifetime. However, the ...
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... ending was always pronounced “id,” such that called was pronounced “cawlid” rather than “cawld,” as we now pronounce it. Today, this pronunciation is restricted to a few archaic frozen phrases like blessed be thy name. As late as the ...
... ending was always pronounced “id,” such that called was pronounced “cawlid” rather than “cawld,” as we now pronounce it. Today, this pronunciation is restricted to a few archaic frozen phrases like blessed be thy name. As late as the ...
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... endings, just as all languages with such endings shed them. Latin did too, and therefore we do not have to be bothered with learning such things when we learn modern “Latins,” such as French or Spanish. As we saw, however, language ...
... endings, just as all languages with such endings shed them. Latin did too, and therefore we do not have to be bothered with learning such things when we learn modern “Latins,” such as French or Spanish. As we saw, however, language ...
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... ending we know and love. We can see a stage when the source of ly in like was more apparent in the word for daily in the Old English Lord's Prayer, gedæghwāmlīcan, “daylike” (the final an is another one of those persnickety endings that ...
... ending we know and love. We can see a stage when the source of ly in like was more apparent in the word for daily in the Old English Lord's Prayer, gedæghwāmlīcan, “daylike” (the final an is another one of those persnickety endings that ...
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... ending in the third person singular (she sings), an odd, serendipitous choice as language change goes. If English could develop again, either there would be no endings on verbs in the present tense at all by now, or a single one would ...
... ending in the third person singular (she sings), an odd, serendipitous choice as language change goes. If English could develop again, either there would be no endings on verbs in the present tense at all by now, or a single one would ...
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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