After finally getting caught up with all posts and with my head spinning from a thousand different ideas, I'd thought an attempt at continuing a conversation I had last night would settle me in a bit. I've been a substitute teacher for the Chicago Public School system, on the west side (where my home is), so I have first hand experience with this *issue.

When a student goes into a classroom and is taught SE (Standard English), they are being taught a dialect of English. When they go home they are speaking another dialect of English, if they are speaking English. They speak one dialect of English at home, out in the schoolyard, at the candy store, on the playlot, or out in the alley. The school is only place they use/learn the SE dialect (most of the West Siders, anyway). Although I know about the *need to call dialects a name, there is just about as much Standard in SE as there is Black in so-called Black English.

This country spends time and resources to *allow a bilingual person, but not a bidialectical person. We'll spend enormous resources on making sure the cultures of other countries are respected, yet we don't respect the other cultures that are staring us in the face. This is becoming more and more of an issue when it comes to what is considered an educated person or not. It is the same problem that has surfaced as people being discriminated against by the way their voice sounds on the phone. It is what makes one race slander another, and it is clearly based on a lack of understanding, on both "sides": those that are currently learning SE but haven't grasped it yet, and those that don't acknowledge other dialects of English, and never learn them.

My friend, whose parents are Japanesse, chimed in and added that the symbol for the meaning "surprise" is the same in these three dialects - Court Japanesse, Kagoshima and Kumamoto - but they are pronounced completely differently - no audible similarities at all. I'm sure that what she called Court Japanesse is what is taught in schools, but these dialects exist within miles of each other, and a person that can speak freely within all the dialects has *clear social advantages.

I think we should be teaching all the current dialects of English that we can. We've *borrowed from other languages and put them into our dictionary, We should be insuring that more of what is considered "slang" (slang, my ass) is acknowledged as the part of a dialect of English.

IMFHO, of course.