Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

So what? It's a dialect of the English language. Noone "owns" language except the people who use it.

[thongd4me 69]

Going to stick my neck out here; feel free to chop it off

Last week I went to a major department store with my Thai wife.

We spoke to a gentleman who was very helpful and I commented "Jamaican?" and he smiled yes.

I think the Jamaican accent is very smooth, cultured and in a way much clearer and understandable

than the dialect of most whites in the US. Ebonics on the other hand is not as uniform as the Jamaican

accent nor is it always easy to understand. Some whites speak in such a thick "southern drawl" that

you might mistake it for "Ebonics."

Folks who identify themselves as "Blacks" in the US are not uniformly speakers of "Ebonics"

so I really don't see what this is all about. They are more likely to have an Hispanic accent,

but that will vary widely depending on which Spanish-speaking country they came from.

Naturally English has evolved since the folks set ashore at Plymouth Rock and we could

not use the UK dialect as a standard. We have developed our own style of English and it's

definitely not Ebonics.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

There is no singular black dialect, but perhaps in the context of the op article, ebonics is in common use for the purposes of the Justice Departments need for trained linguists.

[HAL 9000 96]

Neither of those are any good.

Still, the best and most current ebonics translator is http://www.urbandictionary.com

Nothing like white frat boys to keep ebonics going!

This actually reminds me of something back in the day when I worked Loss Prevention on the side at CCity...

The majority of the Chapelle DVD purchases came from white guys. Seriously.