Ebonics Just Increases Blacks’ Alienation

Nothing prepared me for the uniqueness of American English and colloquial American speech. Six months after arriving in this country, I still am in a state of linguistic shock.

To come here from Nigeria, I was required to take a test of English as a foreign language by the U.S. Embassy in my country. If I had failed, I wouldn’t be here.

Which is why I am surprised to discover there are Americans who cannot speak standard English. To survive in the United States, I have to understand a broad range of American colloquialisms - and a strange tongue called ebonics.

Americans speak of the “elevator” instead of the “lift”; instead of “boot,” they say “trunk”; for “railway station,” they substitute “metro” or “train”; the college “bus” is called a “shuttle”; instead of “petrol,” Americans buy “gas.”

I often have referred to the small space I share with two colleagues as a “flat,” but I am told it is an “apartment.” When I refer to my colleagues as “flatmates,” I am told they are “roommates,” although we do not live in the same room.

I also have discovered that Americans rarely pronounce the consonant “t.”

Every university teacher is a “professor.” Every “press boy” is a “journalist.” Every “girl” is a “lady.” Everybody calls everyone else by his or her first name. A bartender once asked me if I wanted my “tab,” and I told him I didn’t need any tablets because I was not ill. It turned out he wanted me to settle my bill.

My roommate and I met a woman in an elevator and she asked us, “Hi, guys - what’s cooking?” We told her we don’t know how to cook. Another woman responded, after I’d greeted her with “good morning”: “What’s going on? What’s the matter?” I thought I had offended her until I was told she merely wanted to start a conversation. Well, I missed the opportunity.

Several times, I have heard Americans sprinkle their conversations with “Oh my God,” and I always responded “sorry,” thinking they were in some form of pain. I since have discovered that Americans call on God as a matter of habit to express surprise, joy, regret, all at once.

But I am not stubborn; I am learning and adjusting. I realize that the success of my 10-month stay in this country depends on my being able to understand the people. There is perhaps no point in complaining.

When I tell Americans that they confuse me with their pronunciations, they tell me I have a funny accent or that they have problems understanding the English I speak. Yet, I speak simple, standard English as handed down by Her Majesty, the queen of England’s government, to the former Colonies.

The problem probably is with the English language. Every society that inherited it from the English has had to infuse it with local color and experience.

But ebonics stretches my patience and frustrates me.

Often, I meet African-Americans, and because they look so familiar, I experience an instant racial bonding. I feel like talking with them to let them know that meeting and seeing them make me feel at home, as if I were in the midst of my own family.

But this natural identification collapses immediately when the African-Americans begin to speak ebonics.

On several occasions, I have heard my brothers and sisters in diaspora tell me “Yo!” “She say.” “He say.” “We was.” “I is.” “I be.” This is supposed to be English, but it is not English.

At such moments, the genetic coding fails, and I am forced to note the difference between nature and nurture. To me, ebonics is totally unrecognizable, and those who argue that it has a West African origin merely are contriving a thesis to justify nonsense.

True, West Africans speak a kind of English called pidgin English, but it is the language of the illiterate, a tribute to incompetence, and it bears no resemblance even to ebonics. Those who speak pidgin English in West Africa and other parts of Africa would rather speak standard English.

Author James Baldwin may have made a case for ebonics; it may well work as literature and music; African-Americans also probably are entitled to a linguistic “inside baseball.” But they should not be encouraged to cling to a dialect that is bound to increase their alienation - from their brothers and sisters in Africa, their fellow Americans and the rest of the English-speaking world.

The success of African-Americans and all black men who speak and write good, proper English proves the point that ebonics is not in the genes.

It certainly is not in the African gene.

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