People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.
John McwhorterRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Language evolves over time, and concerns about its decline are often exaggerated.
In this quote, John McWhorter reflects on the historical anxiety surrounding the evolution of language, suggesting that despite frequent warnings about its decline, the dire outcomes predicted rarely come to pass. He humorously implies that language change is a natural process and that the fears of degeneration often do not materialize as anticipated.
Themes
LanguageEvolutionChangeCultureCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
This quote would be fitting in a discussion about the future of language in a linguistics class.
More from John Mcwhorter
All quotes →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.
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It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's thought of as a bad habit, like sloppy posture or chewing with your mouth open.
John McwhorterRead
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