The Word On The StreetIn The Word on the Street, John McWhorter reveals our American English in all its variety, beauty, and expressiveness. Debunking the myth of a "pure" standard English, he considers the speech patterns and accents of many regions and ethnic groups in the U.S. and demonstrates how language evolves. He takes up the tricky question of gender-neutral pronouns. He dares to ask, "Should we translate Shakespeare?" Focusing on whether how our children speak determines how they learn, he presents the controversial Ebonics debate in light of his research on dialects and creoles. The Word on the Street frees us to truly speak our minds. It is John McWhorter's answer to William Safire, transformed here into everybody's Aunt Lucy, who insists on correcting our grammar and making us feel slightly embarrassed about our everyday use of the language. ("To whom," she will insist, and "don't split your infinitives!") He reminds us that we'd better accept the fact that language is always changing - not only slang, but sound, syntax, and words' meanings - and get on with the business of communicating effectively with one another. |
From inside the book
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Page 132
... system : systematically lazy diction ! What we need to see in order to get beyond such an honest mistake is that Black English sounds are complex as often as they are simple , just as the sounds in standard English are . What we have ...
... system : systematically lazy diction ! What we need to see in order to get beyond such an honest mistake is that Black English sounds are complex as often as they are simple , just as the sounds in standard English are . What we have ...
Page 133
... sound system , as many of us can intuit from nightmares like trying to distinguish the vowel in oeuf'egg ' from the one in oeufs ' eggs . ' The Black English accent is similarly difficult to pick up because it too has a complex , subtle ...
... sound system , as many of us can intuit from nightmares like trying to distinguish the vowel in oeuf'egg ' from the one in oeufs ' eggs . ' The Black English accent is similarly difficult to pick up because it too has a complex , subtle ...
Page 149
... sound system . This is why the notion of , say , Dan Rather learning Black English from a book and dutifully uttering a phrase like " Ain't nobody done seen nothing like that " is so comical : The sound system is missing . In the 1970s ...
... sound system . This is why the notion of , say , Dan Rather learning Black English from a book and dutifully uttering a phrase like " Ain't nobody done seen nothing like that " is so comical : The sound system is missing . In the 1970s ...
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Lava Lamps and Language | 7 |
The Linguistic Melting Pot | 35 |
Copyright | |
8 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Word On The Street: Debunking The Myth Of A Pure Standard English John Mcwhorter Limited preview - 2000 |
Word On The Street: Debunking The Myth Of A Pure Standard English John Mcwhorter Limited preview - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
actually African Americans African Language System African-American children African-American students Afrocentric ain't Ameri American English basic bidialectal Black and standard black children Black English Black English sound black speech black students bridging advocates bridging approach child claim that Black classroom code-switching complex creole creole languages culture dard dialect of English dialect readers divergence English dialects example fact French glish grammar guage Gullah habitual Haitian Haitian Creole home dialect issue Jamaican patois John Rickford language change language mixture Latin less linguistic means Media Lengua nonstandard dialects Old English past patterns person problem pronoun Quechua reading rural Southern seen sense sentence structures separate language Shakespeare Shirley simply slang slaves sound system Spanish speech variety spoken Sranan standard dialect standard English standard German sure Swiss German teachers teaching tense things tion translation verb vowel walk West African languages words writing