Bilingual in Europe versus USA

Dave Frightens Me writes:

Read upstream. It's all in this thread.

No, it's not.

I never did, you brought Bill Cosby into this.

So? What does that have to do with race?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Mxsmanic wrote:
Dave Frightens Me writes:

Read upstream. It's all in this thread.

No, it's not.

[snip]

It's confused. Someone brought in "black
english or jive" to which you suggested that such
dialects were "substandard". You were asked about
what substandard was and you suggested the
ability to get a job. Someone questioned whether
that was a useful definition and you suggested it
was unless one wanted to be a welfare receipient
or a drug dealer.

So whether you intended it or not, you jumped
from speaking a "black" dialect to being a drug
dealer which would tend to suggest a certain
bias on the subject. Not clear cut however.

" wrote:

Mxsmanic wrote:
Dave Frightens Me writes:

Read upstream. It's all in this thread.

No, it's not.

[snip]

It's confused. Someone brought in "black
english or jive" to which you suggested that such
dialects were "substandard". You were asked about
what substandard was and you suggested the
ability to get a job. Someone questioned whether
that was a useful definition and you suggested it
was unless one wanted to be a welfare receipient
or a drug dealer.

So whether you intended it or not, you jumped
from speaking a "black" dialect to being a drug
dealer which would tend to suggest a certain
bias on the subject. Not clear cut however.

I'm surprised that you bothered to check. While some of the arguments
Mixi gets into are interesting, many deteriorate to trivial niggles.
This recent subthread is of the latter type.

--
PB
The return address has been MUNGED
My travel writing: http://www.iol.ie/~draoi/

writes:

It's confused. Someone brought in "black
english or jive" to which you suggested that such
dialects were "substandard". You were asked about
what substandard was and you suggested the
ability to get a job. Someone questioned whether
that was a useful definition and you suggested it
was unless one wanted to be a welfare receipient
or a drug dealer.

In other words, I didn't say anything about race.

So whether you intended it or not, you jumped
from speaking a "black" dialect to being a drug
dealer which would tend to suggest a certain
bias on the subject. Not clear cut however.

The "black" dialect is spoken by some whites, too. And anyone who
speaks it is going to spend his life as a loser, no matter what the
color of his skin. Being black or white has nothing to do with it.

And I do find myself wondering about people who read race into every
conversation in this way.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Padraig Breathnach wrote:
" wrote:
[snip]
So whether you intended it or not, you jumped
from speaking a "black" dialect to being a drug
dealer which would tend to suggest a certain
bias on the subject. Not clear cut however.

I'm surprised that you bothered to check. While some of the arguments
Mixi gets into are interesting, many deteriorate to trivial niggles.
This recent subthread is of the latter type.

Casual curiosity based upon a former thread about "Bell curves"
and intelligence. He has a propensity for certain attitudes about
direct descendants of Africa and I was curious if it had shown itself
again.

B writes:

On 29 Aug 2006 19:22:23 +0100, des small
wrote:

B writes:

On Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:57:04 -0700, Hatunen wrote:

Old languages are generally much more complex that modern
languages. Certainly, Old English is more complex than Modern
English.

Most languages tend to get simplified over time. Both Chinese and
English illustrate this pattern, as do other Germanic languages and
Romance languages.

No they don't and no they don't. Chinese is arguably acquiring some
morphology and English phrasal verbs are notoriously confusing to
non-native speakers.

Neither of these contradicts what I said.

Sorry, I should have said _phrasal_ verbs.

Chinese once had a considerably more complicated grammar than it has
now, and English has always had those modal verbs. They're a typically
Germanic feature.

Modern English also uses generally uses prepositions rather than cases;
which prepositions go where is another very confusing feature for
non-native speakers.

Chinese is simple in that it doesn't rely on case endings and
declensions and such.

It once had a much more complicated grammar.

Inflectional morphology isn't all of grammar, and Chinese syntax isn't
considered simple by Sinologists.

It once had all that syntax *plus* inflections.

_All_ of it? You have a reference?

In any case, the modern view of language "evolution" is that it is
largely undirected across typologies, and I have yet to see a recent
scholarly argument (since the bad old days of Bodmer's _Loom of
Language_) that there's a gain or loss of "complexity".

http://linguistlist.org/issues/8/8-810.html gives a sample of views,
including Laurie Bauer's remark on (colloquial) French:

"""
Yet if you consider French le livre, je l'ai lu, moi in terms
of phonology instead of traditional word breaks, we could argue
that we have le_livre je_l'ai_lu moi in three words, the middle
one of which is synthetic, derived from a more analytic
j'ai lu le livre. So we find both directions occurring naturally.
"""

This kind of analysis of colloquial French is quite popular among
linguists. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypersonal_agreement:

"""
Some have observed that the French pronominal
clitics (common to all Romance languages) have evolved into inseparable
morphemes in the colloquial use, and that French could now rightly be
analyzed as polypersonal.
"""

Since you haven't said what "simpler" actually means, I have no way of
knowing the tactics you might employ to avoid considering this a
counter-example, but I'll lead with my intuition: it's more complex.

Des

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 23:04:31 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Dave Frightens Me writes:

They are just as often white as black.

Where did I say anything about them being white or black?

Bill Cosby does not feel the same way as you.

Are you sure?

Are you?

************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 08:13:45 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

Dave Frightens Me writes:

You are of course aware that that's derogatory.

I'm aware that it's true, too.

Why do you always delete the material that tells us what you're
talking about?

************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On 29 Aug 2006 19:22:23 +0100, des small
wrote:

B writes:

On Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:57:04 -0700, Hatunen wrote:

Old languages are generally much more complex that modern
languages. Certainly, Old English is more complex than Modern
English.

Most languages tend to get simplified over time. Both Chinese and
English illustrate this pattern, as do other Germanic languages and
Romance languages.

No they don't and no they don't. Chinese is arguably acquiring some
morphology and English phrasal verbs are notoriously confusing to
non-native speakers.

Chinese is simple in that it doesn't rely on case endings and
declensions and such.

It once had a much more complicated grammar.

Inflectional morphology isn't all of grammar,

Please note that although you claim above that you have quoted
me, you haven't.

************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Hatunen wrote:

On 29 Aug 2006 19:22:23 +0100, des small
wrote:

B writes:

On Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:57:04 -0700, Hatunen wrote:

Old languages are generally much more complex that modern
languages. Certainly, Old English is more complex than Modern
English.

Most languages tend to get simplified over time. Both Chinese and
English illustrate this pattern, as do other Germanic languages and
Romance languages.

No they don't and no they don't. Chinese is arguably acquiring some
morphology and English phrasal verbs are notoriously confusing to
non-native speakers.

Chinese is simple in that it doesn't rely on case endings and
declensions and such.

It once had a much more complicated grammar.

Inflectional morphology isn't all of grammar,

Please note that although you claim above that you have quoted
me, you haven't.

Whose words are these, then?
Old languages are generally much more complex that modern
languages. Certainly, Old English is more complex than Modern
English.

--
PB
The return address has been MUNGED
My travel writing: http://www.iol.ie/~draoi/