The Controversy over Ebonics

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 78, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 237-240

  Fox, Steven ^a  

^a Shaker Heights High School   (United States)

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Indexed keywords

EID: 0346540665     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (1)

1. The picture is not absolutely clear, and some exceptions come readily to mind. Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are commonly held to be distinct languages, yet speakers of one can understand speakers of the others with little effort. We call them languages, rather than dialects, partly because of the political histories of those peoples and their nations. Still, millions of speakers of one "dialect" in China cannot understand the millions who speak a different dialect. Yet all are said to speak Chinese. Thus the distinction between dialect and language is imperfect at best.