The Soapbox: Rants and Commentary: Hey, Smooth-Talker By Mike O'Leary(olearym@alpha.montclair.edu) What an exciting time to be alive! In a communications breakthrough that rivals both the telephone and the Internet ("While you're up could you check on the latest breakthroughs in Doppler waves and what the sixth episode of The Dukes of Hazard was?") comes Ebonics. No longer do me and my "homeys" (ho' meez : n. friends) have to waste precious gangbanging time by trying to reach competency in the English language. Thanks to Ebonics, it's the other way around. Now all those people speaking English have to learn the _language_ we speak down in the "hood" (hood : n. neighborhood, specifically an inner city neighborhood). And what a language it is! With Ebonics, you don't need conjugation. Who wants to learn several versions of the same word anyway? Plus, hasn't anyone told you that incoherency is "dope" (dohp : adj. very cool)? What if I take my "bitch" (bich : n. girlfriend) to Denny's and I rob it? And then the cops catch me but don't read me my rights in Ebonics? I'm free, yo (yoh : int. Yo is meaningless. It is believed to be some form of pronounced punctuation, as if someone were to say "period" after every sentence.)! "Yo, G. You gots da right to rap if yous wanna. If yous don', I be down wit dat. If you be rappin', I can come right back and knock you out wi' that mo**** fu****. Word. You can call a lawyer. If you ain't got one, no big thang. We gots one for ya. You got the 411, G?" Soon, everything will be translated into Ebonics: "All us boyz, so dats we can get along better, made livin', protection from the man, and lookin' for everythin' that's the bomb, yo!" So what have we learned? If people can't learn, legitimize what they know. Back To Rants and Commentary

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