Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On 3/12/2010 5:52 PM, Steve Barbour wrote: > On Mar 12, 2010, at 3:48 PM, Vince Passaro wrote: > > >> My good man, I claim it and I took NINE years of grammar in the Catholic >> schools and from there went on to spend my adult life immersed in the >> requirements and pleasures of English. There are many many more expert >> than >> I but I'm no slouch. >> >> So I know you ain't right. >> >> I would add -- and this is going to infuriate people -- that to my mind >> the >> only vivid and creative new developments in the English language in my >> lifetime have taken place in the context of urban culture and its >> tremendously inventive, sly, colorful new forms of speech. Of course, >> 'standard' English is meant for those in power; those without power have >> to >> speak in code. Thus, in the U.S.,black English since at least the mid-19th >> century has been, quite intentionally, only marginally comprehensible to >> whites. >> >> So when people complain about irregular speech and bad grammar and such >> they >> are not talking about Mark Twain's vernacular, Casey Stengel's, or Yogi >> Berra's. INVARIABLY they are talking about people whom they view, or whom >> they want to depict, as below them socially. >> > brilliant, and I agree, > > Steve > > > > Sometimes when I am writing a tax opinion and bored, I will run a quote from the Internal Revenue Code or the regulations through an ebonics or pig latin translator. Odd, sometimes it makes more sense that way. Enkay Arneycay