Alex: Pleased to hear you’ll be joining the AHD5 club. You’re in for a treat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuq8ZU2Uf_0 (it’s near the beginning)

On the merits of reading (and hearing) a bevy of glowing reports re/ the current 5th edition iteration of the AHD, including your very positive assessment of this venerable reference tome on more than one occasion, over a month ago, I asked my dear mum and brother back in Canada to include it on my short list of most desired Xmas gifts. (I don’t always have to be gobsmacked by a present I wasn’t really expecting. HA!)

I’m heading from my adopted home turf here in L.A. back to the Toronto area, my native home grounds, for a fortnight-and-a-bit holiday stay with those nearest-and-dearest, and look forward to opening a rather heavy, squarish, festively wrapped certain present; namely that most recent edition of the AHD, which will surely entertain and illuminate for years to come.

Thanks again for your AHD praises and positive critique, Stan.

I liked your “sight for screensore eyes” bit, by-the-by.

Alex: It was a troubling chapter, very revealing of social and cultural attitudes above and beyond linguistic matters. Anyone who natively speaks a minority dialect is likely to have some experience of such prejudice.

Technically, that should have read African-American Vernacular English in the first paragraph intro. I left out “Vernacular”… but hopefully the context implied AAVE, nonetheless.

Most of these naysaying critics viewed the legitimizing of “ebonics” as nothing short of giving official sanction to what boiled down to bad, or faulty English grammar; in sum, a bastardization of ‘proper’ Am. English.

I recall at the height of the “ebonics” debate where the likes of such heavy-weight African-Americans as comedian/ actor/ author Bill Cosby* weighed in quite vocally on the issue. He was particularly
disturbed by the proposition advocated by many in the “ebonics” camp that inner-city African-American public school kids should have the option to converse, discuss, or write essays, and such in class, articulating in “ebonics” throughout.

Seems like the heated “ebonics” debate has lost major traction over the years, although I sense their is a less prejudiced attitude toward its use, particularly w/ the more open, more worldly, millennial generation. Today AAVE seems to have become the official academic label for what was earlier termed “ebonics”.

Stan, in reading your fine article, and some of the attached links, I tend to agree w/ the general consensus that the argument for some West African linguistic connection w/ AAVE is tenuous at best**, although I found quite fascinating the notion of the multiplicity of distinct languages spoken amongst the ranks of the thousands of West African slaves destined for America; and how this linguistic diversity played right into the malevolent, or at least avaricious schemes of the slave traders; namely, by majorly mixing up the onboard tribal composition during ‘the great passage’, the possibilities of slaves plotting, verbally at least, against their captors would be greatly minimized due to the motley mix of alien tongues.

Of course, it’s also been well documented that slave holders deliberately, and systematically separated individuals of entire slave families from one another— yet another method of reducing the inter-slave collusion potential. But I digress.

I be movin’ along, ’bout now.

*Bill Cosby actual earned a Phd in Psychcology from Temple University in Philadelphia, his home town.

**For me, the argument for early Creole influences is most compelling, particularly re/ the ‘omitted copula’, and the ‘invariant habitual “be” ‘ phenomena.