C'est la vie, Ebonics, &c.

Longtime Slicers may have noticed that from time to time I end a paragraph or a blog post with some random phrase, often in a foreign language. My personal favorite is linked here. (As an aside, my brother-in-law Stevie not only translated the linked phrase, but also figured out why I used it. I was proud of him.)

I stole this concept from one of my favorite writers and use it to add character to the blog as well as to pay homage to him. I consider myself a semi-professional linguist, a point I will try to make later in this post. Nevertheless, many of the foreign phrases I've used were just poor word substitution. For example, when I did the story on the Serbian dude whose house kept getting hit by meteorites, I ended the paragraph with the phrase "what a country". I'm quite sure that the actual words I used don't convey the meaning I intended, but I don't speak Serb...

Or French.

Several years ago I read a paragraph that was beautiful in its composition as well as in its content. The writer showed a mastery not only of his subject matter, but also of the English language. Every word was perfectly selected and used for maximum force. It was an amazing thing to behold. The last sentence of the paragraph? C'est la vie...

I immediately put my big brain to work deciphering this oddity. I read and re-read this wonderful paragraph looking for context clues as to what this French phrase might mean. I finally came to the conclusion that it meant "The more things change" with the three periods (...) leaving the reader to fill in "the more they stay the same". Such a phrase, used in this manner, would have been the perfect ending to the perfect paragraph.

So for the past 4 or 5 years I've been roaming the Earth thinking I had a French phrase in my arsenal and probably even fired it off a few times at some unsuspecting listener. Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when I learned that "C'est la vie" actually means "Such is life". In hindsight, I should have known better than to try to translate a foreign phrase using context alone. More importantly, I certainly should have verified this little piece of knowledge before I tried it out in conversation. Oh well, C'est la vie...

I mention this today because I recently ran across a couple pictures that when viewed side by side are pretty funny. As I thought about how to present them on the Razor, I thought it would be nice to say "The more things change" in French. However I no longer "know" how to say that in French.

So enjoy these photos in English:

Adam Thomas, on a cruise to the Bahamas, circa 1995:

Adam Thomas, on a cruise to the Bahamas, 2009

I'm sure that Slicers will immediately notice the similarities of the two photos. Same shirt, same pants, same tie, same hair cut, &c. Over the course of the past 15 years, I've graduated from college, toured the globe, read the classics, seen amazing works of art, eaten the eggs of endangered fish, and have experience amazing personal growth in terms of fashion sense. Except for the last part. C'est la vie... (which unfortunately does not mean, The more things change...)

And finally, my credentials as a semi professional linguist? I'll use this article as a reference point. In it we learn that the Justice Department is looking to hire experts in the non-standard English dialect Ebonics to assist with their narcotics investigations. In the mid to late 1990's there was a debate about whether Black English (also known as African American Vernacular or Ebonics) was a distinct dialect or just people using bad English intermixed with slang. A quote from the article, "Detractors reject the notion that Ebonics is a dialect, instead considering it a bastardization of the English language."

Allow me to retort. On my flight to Baltimore 2 weeks ago, my mother and I had an interesting exchange with a black couple. I mentioned to my mom that we had seen Elijah Wood (the actor who played Frodo in the Lord of the Rings) when we went to Malaysia and now we had seen Biz Markie on a flight to Baltimore.

A lady near us overheard me and said, "I'ma travel wit chall. Y'all be going places." This is a near perfect example to explain a distinct difference between textbook English and Ebonics and I hope to use it to convince you that it is a true dialect. Clearly the first sentence is full of slang, but there is something happening in that 2nd sentence which is neat.

To me, a dialect must have rules that all speakers know and use. Whether the speaker learns the rules in a classroom or in the living room is not important. The rules that define a language are called grammar. Whether to put the adjective before or after a noun, how to denote gender, &c. There are thousands of factors and languages around the world use all sorts of wild and wacky rules. These distinctions make it extremely difficult to learn a new language. It's not just a matter of word replacement.

So does Ebonics have a grammar? Something going on behind the scenes that adds meaning beyond what the words literally say?

Yes. Let's look at her second sentence: "Y'all be going places." The word "be" clearly stands out as something a standard English speaker wouldn't use. So what does it mean? It is a "habitual marker", meaning that the subject does something a lot. She didn't mean, "You two are currently going somewhere." She observed that my mother and I have traveled a lot this year and then said, "You two travel habitually.", "Y'all be going places."

Notice that standard English does not have a "habitual marker". In standard English if you want to say someone does something a lot, you have to use more words than just "be".

So should the Justice Department be hiring Ebonics speakers? I don't know and don't care. Should schools teach Ebonics or teach other subjects using Ebonics? Not in my opinion, but if they find that some students learn math, history, &c. better when it is taught in the dialect they learned at home, I'm OK with it.

After reading this, what do you think? Is Ebonics a dialect? I think yes. There are many more examples of its grammar that go beyond the scope of this post. Sure, it's mutually intelligible with standard English. Anyone who speaks English can have a perfectly understandable conversation with someone speaking Ebonics. But Ebonics has a separate grammar, rules that it's speakers must follow. Which makes it something more than slang and something less than its own language, A Dialect.

Adam Thomas
Fashonista and Semi-Pro Linguist