Hooked On Ebonics

R

RockX

Banned
The U.S. Department of Justice is looking for fluent Ebonics speakers to fill nine drug enforcement jobs, giving merit to a dialect that experts say is often mimicked and little understood.

The federal Drug Enforcment Administration translators would work out of the Atlanta field office according to a Justice Department request, posted online today by The Smoking Gun.

The request is again drawing attention to the form of speech that was hotly debated in the ’90s after a California school district passed a resolution recognizing the legitimacy of what is now more commonly referred to as “African-American English.”
…

DEA spokesman Mike Sanders said the request for the translators was made by the Atlanta field office.

“It has nothing to do with racial issues,” Sanders said. “It is a type of language recognized by different linguist services as a type of language.”

The DEA’s Atlanta field office did not return calls seeking comment on the jobs. According to the proposal, the Atlanta field office is also looking for 144 Spanish linguists, 12 Vietnamese, and nine each for Korean and Farsi.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wanted-ebonics-translator-federal-dea-job/story?id=11462206&page=2

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:rofl:
 
LOL

Too fricken funny

what a failure of the teaching community and the community (of the speakers of ebonics) that people developed ebonics at all.
 
webbway said:
The U.S. Department of Justice is looking for fluent Ebonics speakers to fill nine drug enforcement jobs, giving merit to a dialect that experts say is often mimicked and little understood.

The federal Drug Enforcment Administration translators would work out of the Atlanta field office according to a Justice Department request, posted online today by The Smoking Gun.

The request is again drawing attention to the form of speech that was hotly debated in the ’90s after a California school district passed a resolution recognizing the legitimacy of what is now more commonly referred to as “African-American English.”
…

DEA spokesman Mike Sanders said the request for the translators was made by the Atlanta field office.

“It has nothing to do with racial issues,” Sanders said. “It is a type of language recognized by different linguist services as a type of language.”

The DEA’s Atlanta field office did not return calls seeking comment on the jobs. According to the proposal, the Atlanta field office is also looking for 144 Spanish linguists, 12 Vietnamese, and nine each for Korean and Farsi.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wanted-ebonics-translator-federal-dea-job/story?id=11462206&page=2

View attachment 564



:rofl:
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As a citizen of a country in which accents affect almost every aspect of life (even though few would ever admit it) I must question a system that allows certain population segments to be 'branded' by the way they speak.
I listened, the other day, to interviews with residents of Washington's Disrict 8 and, in particular to the mayor (?) of that district, one Marion Barry.
I was struck at once by the obvious poverty there compared with the riches of other parts of Washington. Despair, high crime rates, poor education, lower life expectancy were the district's hallmarks.
Now as an erstwhile employer I must ask if I would employ someone whose speech patterns tie him or her to poverty and possible crime? Of course not.
So how about this. Don't throw money at these problem areas, simply teach them to speak in a way that their misfortune does not dog them for their whole lives. I dont mean teach them to speak 'white', I mean teach them not to wear the badge of despair for ever.
I was born extremely fortunate. It had nothing to do with money, which we did not have in excess, but that the particular part of England that nurtured me spoke in what is sometimes described as 'standard English' or 'R.P.'
The advantages have been inestimable. I know I will usually win in competition with people from the west country, charming as there accent is. I will usually initially win over Liverpudlians and Glaswegians. Naturally one may still be incapable of doing a job and lose it to one of the aforesaid, but one does get a better chance.
It is one thing to be proud of your roots and culture but quite another when that very culture, those very roots, tie you into a life of inequality and deprivation.
 
tinfoil said:
You can't force a community to speak correctly. They accept failure so it is they who are doomed to be failures
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You are quite correct. You cannot force people to speak in any particular accent or pattern, BUT you can reduce the promotion of accents that hold people back. You can offer to help, you can dispense with the attitude of false pride when it is used as a defence mechanism. Perhaps if the poor did not feel under constant attack from the more fortunate sections of society they would not need to invent life-crippling identities.
It might work, don't you think? Could we not at least allow the opportunity of getting out of holes like District 8?
 
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