Phrase by 'John McWhorter'

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Rap and spoken word have reawakened the country to poetry in itself. Texting and Twitter encourage creative uses of casual language, in ways I have celebrated widely. But we've fallen behind on savoring the formal layer of our language.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  Poetry , Language , Country , Creative


Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  Black , Great , Call , English


The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  Great , America , School , Contribution


Black English is something which - it's a natural system in itself. And even though it is a dialect of English, it can be very difficult for people who don't speak it, or who haven't been raised in it, to understand when it's running by quickly, spoken in particular by young men colloquially to each other. So that really is an issue.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  People , Black , Men , Speak


People banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  People , Writing , Away , Use


People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  People , Never , Language , Horizon


Most languages spoken by a few thousand people are so complicated they make your head swim; a Siberian yak herder's language is much more complicated than a Manhattan bond trader's.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  Your , People , Language , Bond


Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  Black , Language , Some , Drops


People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  People , Black , Think , Relationship


As a linguist, I see the arbitrariness of strictures editors force on me as a writer.

Author: John McWhorter - American Writer
  Me , See , Force , I See


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