Ebonics :: essays research papers

Ebonics, which stands for Ebony + Phonics is a new term that Linguistics use to describe Black Dialect or Black English or many of the other names that it has been given for more that 350 years.. has been in the news recently but it is definitely not a new topic. Ebonics is a "language" that is a combination of "proper English" and a combination of African languages. Because of this combination a pattern was formed on how certain words are said such as this and that, would be pronounced dis and dat. In all words the "Th." sound sounded like a "D". There was also another pattern formed such as, no tense indicated in the verb, no "r" sound and no consonant pairs. These are just some of the many patterns that were created when Africans were forced to learn the English language.History states that around 1619, during the slave trade, ships collected slaves not just from one nation but from many nations. Although they were all Africans certain areas spoke different languages. Some Africans spoke Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa. They were then separated from each other and had to travel with people whom the could not understand. Captain William Smith wrote:...There will be no more likelihood of their succeeding in a plot...The slaves then had to learn English so that they could have some form of communication with their masters. Their native language and English would be combined and they would speak African-English pidgin. As the slaves began to learn how to communicate with each other, their words would merge into one common word that they could all understand. This is one of the ways that the language became mixed with English.When the African slaves had children they talked to them in African English pidgin. The slaves taught the children both languages so that they could communicate with the slaveowners and to other slaves. As each generation went on the Africans began to speak better English but there were still word that were never spoken correctly or said in proper form.In Georgia and other southern states there were blacks who were not brought from Africa and quite a few knew how to speak standard English. Around 1858 over 400 slave from Africa were brought straight to Georgia and none of them knew a word of English.(Smitherman) Being that these two groups merged together they adapted each others language whether it was correct or incorrectOn the east coast of America, the Blacks spoke a different degree of