THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 1997 TAG: 9701140006
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: 26 lines
Regarding Janet Bing's ``Ebonics is worth teaching'' (Another View, Jan. 4):
After speaking Sailoronics (a pidgin replete with monosyllabic expletives) for six years during a stint in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club, I feel qualified to say some ``languages'' are indeed bad. Sailoronics expresses all conscious thought using the restrictive vocabulary of sexual harassment, transforming even the most innocent ideas into X-rated drivel.
Similarly, Ebonics compresses thought into a faddish encryption which sounds either comical or poignant, depending upon the listener's point of view but which, when glorified, becomes the goal of the tragically misguided.
We should not encourage the propagation of bad language. Street talk would not exist if children were raised properly, Sailoronics would disappear if the military population was gender-normalized, and Ebonics will evaporate when self-marginalizing cry babies stop dwelling on the inequities of the past and instead focus on the possibilities of the future.
GEORGE WELLS
Virginia Beach, Jan. 6, 1997