Thread: Говорите с флейвой !

http://www.atlantaga.com/ebonser.htm

http://www.joel.net/EBONICS/translator.asp

I don't regard Ebonics as a language. To my mind, it's rather an ethnolect, which stands far from real English. It sounds really weird and low, too idiomatic. But I can't be objective because I'm not an American.

Don't worry Rtyom. It is not a language.

I grew up in the Northeast, in the city. (Ok, I grew up in Cleveland, I admit it.) Urban vernacular doesn't really sound unusual to me.

What was truly hilarious was visiting the South for the first time (the "Deep South," not Tampa) and hearing suburban and rural white southerners speaking in much the same way. Same vocabulary and expressions, similar accent. Imagine G-Dub + Chris Rock.

What is that like to have a friend speaking only Ebonics?

Ebonics don't bother me at all, I hear it so much at school.

Yes, it doesn't bother if you are used to listen to it. But me... No experience at all.

Well, Ebonics sounds like terribly substandard, uneducated English to me. If someone comes up and speaks like that to me, my knee-jerk reaction is that this person must be poor, badly educated, and from the inner city. I know people who are well-educated and sucessful who speak that way, but from the way I grew up - as a snot-nosed suburbanite - I'll probably always have the same initial reaction to it.