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Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

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Ebonics Made Easy For Caucasians With No Flava

When you see Snoop Dogg in that recent Chrysler commercial along
with Lee Iacocca, and you hear him say something like,

Fo shizzle ikeizlle!

....do you have any idea what he's talking about?

Chances are, your reaction is the same as mine: "Hey, this guy
is pretty good at coming up with nonsensical impromptu rhymes."

But that just reveals my ignorance of where a guy like Snoop
Dogg is coming from. It turns out these rhymes are not just
nonsense, but actually part of a much more widely used dialect
spoken by millions of African Americans -- especially teenagers
in "the hood".

Let's face it, people like me and Lee just don't get it. If you
ask me to translate even a simple sentence into this kind of
street talk, I have no idea.

In the popular media the dialect use by millions of African
Americans is known as "Ebonics" -- from "ebony" (black) and
"phonics" (sound). The serious study of ebonics has been around
for more than 30 years. In the 1970s linguists showed how most
of these dialects share many of the same grammatical features as
other languages. The original African American dialects emerged
when a hodge podge of West African languages melded together
with English to form a language the captive Africans could use
to communicate with each other. It turns out that many of the
grammatical features of ebonics that we usually dismiss as just
plain bad English actually have roots in West African languages.
- http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/EbonicsExamples.html

The popularity of rap and hip hop music has given these unique
ways of speaking tremendous exposure, and rejuventated the idea
that ebonics is a serious study of a real and important dialect.
In fact in 1996 ebonics was actually recognized by the Oakland
School Board as a native language of over 50 million African
Americans. And in 2005 it was also added to the curriculum by
the San Bernardino School Board.

Now Bling Bling Inc. has launched Ebonic Persuit, a unique new
card game that can teach everybody the basic vocabulary and
syntax of Ebonics. No more excuses. In the words of Jack Hoffer
its inventor, "Ebonic Persuit is a way to bridge a very palpable
communication gap" for those of us who have no idea what all
those rappers and comedians are talking about. According to
Hoffer, "Customers have told me they have taken the game on
cross country road trips and had a blast with it. And college
kids have told me Ebonic Persuit is a big hit at parties..."

Hoffer calls it "a ghettofabulous card game that has, as the
Rools of Play proclaim, no rules at all." The cards test
players' knowledge with multiple choice questions in six
different categories - Homeslices, Drug and Leizur, Sex and
Natur, Ghettography, Flava and Literature, and Hip Hop Trivia.
It is a satire of ebonics that succeeds at being eductional and
entertaining without in any way being disrespectful.

Sounds like a perfect way to get up to speed on ebonics

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