Wanted: Ebonics Translator for Federal DEA Job

Wanted: Ebonics Translator for Federal DEA Job

abcnews.go.com

The U.S. Department of Justice is looking for fluent Ebonics speakers to fill nine drug enforcement jobs, giving merit to a dialect that experts say is often mimicked and little understood.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I saw this on the news this morning and immediately thought of the clip below:

youtube.com

abcnews.go.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 24-8-2010 by indianajoe77]

[edit on 24-8-2010 by indianajoe77]

Ive memorized those for party occasions in the past...

stuff is soooo funny...

cutty say can't hang!

If this was any other government agency, I would be angry that tax-dollars are being used in such a way but this particular agency is tasked with beating back the crack problem in our country so I can understand.

With that being said, I think ebonics is the most retarded "trend". It's not that they are speaking a new language, it's that they can't quite understand their own language, though try as they might. Then, you have the people who purposefully speak this was to appear cool, as if they too are from the ghetto with no education or guidance. Personally, I wish that society would shun those who can't even take the time to learn their own proper language, at least to a degree in which your spoken word is understandable.

--airspoon


Edit to add:

I actually take back what I said about not being angry over our tax-dollars being used to pay these ebonics translators. What we should do, is just say that if you can't speak a proper language, I guess you won't understand what is being done to you. "your loss".

This is crazy! Ebonics is not be a new language or even dialect. Rather, it is just mangled English, for those who either can't comprehend real English or pretend not to.

[edit on 24-8-2010 by airspoon]

It's definitely time to hit the reset button on humanity. Nibiru plz!

reply to post by indianajoe77


LOL, from the article:

abcnews.go.com... ea-job/story?id=11462206

"They probably want reliable expertise to make sure they've got an accurate interpretation for what is said," he said."Because there's the perception in many minds that you don't need a translator, people believe they've understood something when they haven't."

What I want to know is, how does one become an "expert," in ebonics?

Are there any colleges that offer a degree in this so called, language?

I guess it gives ordinary folks from the hood, and opportunity to have at a government position, anyway!

Fo Sho.wherze a bruvah go to drop a app..


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(Minimal posts that contribute nothing to the thread are subject to immediate removal.)

I live in Atlanta and think that calling the evolving local dialect "Ebonics" is probably an oversimplification. What many of these young people are speaking would probably be better understood as a new form of Pidgin.

Our local variety of street slang here has been influenced by population influxes from New Orleans, post Katrina, which brought many Creole influences here, as well as a great deal of influence from Jamaica and African sources.

Southern slang was already a difficult thing to understand for many people who aren't from this area. Sometimes even for those of us who have been here for more than a generation. But in the last ten years it has become something like a foreign language. A kind of mumble-speak that is very difficult to catch and understand.

Add to this some aspects of the drug culture - specifically terminologies meant to be hard to catch or understand and it makes for a very difficult thing to interpret.

This is ridiculous. It's not a language or a dialect. Calling it that is like calling poop aromatic potpourri. It's nothing but ignorance. Just hearing it gets me riled up.

Originally posted by airspoon
With that being said, I think ebonics is the most retarded "trend". It's not that they are speaking a new language, it's that they can't quite understand their own language, though try as they might.

It's not a "trend." Blacks have been speaking with their own dialect ever since white men first started bringing them here and thrusting them into servitude often with no knowledge at all of the English language. The original first two lines of Dixie were, "I wish I was in de land of cotton / Old times dar am not forgotten."

Languages evolve with their people. It happens. Yankees don't speak like Southerners either, or Californians, and the English themselves actually get on my nerves with their accents. It's not their faults but I find ebonics infinitely more tolerable than a shrill English accent and something about crumpets. Not to mention the English have butchered their own language more since Elizabethan times than many isolated parts of the US and abroad have. There are still people in isolated parts of Eastern Virginia and North Carolina that are said to speak the closest thing to Elizabethan English still in existence today:




I don't suppose you'll be in a hurry to "correct" your English back to the way they speak it, you know, so you can properly understand how to speak "your own" language, because you have grown attached to your local dialect. We could even still go back to "Olde English" if we really wanted but I don't think anyone is in a hurry.


I don't like the blending of our various dialects. I don't like the fact that mainstream TV is killing off local dialects all over the country. It's good that people stay close to their roots and remember where their families came from, why, and their values.

Down here I hear lots of words I don't seem to see or hear much anywhere else. Yonder, reckon, ya'll, ma'am, fixin' ('fixin to rain'), etc., etc. That's what I grew up hearing and whenever I hear that kind of stuff it sentimental of home. I imagine it's the same for anyone.

[edit on 24-8-2010 by VirginiaRisesYetAgain]

a lot of blind hatred in here, you guys should be very proud of yourselves. it turns out people from different regions speak in different dialects. you don't see me going into threads and making fun of the way ignorant retarded hicks talk. it takes all different types of people to make the world go around, and all people are a lot more alike than you think.

reply to post by Skid Mark

Definition of DIALECT

a : a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language

Source

It is, in fact, a dialect.

Originally posted by airspoon



Edit to add:



This is crazy! Ebonics is not be a new language or even dialect. Rather, it is just mangled English, for those who either can't comprehend real English or pretend not to.

[edit on 24-8-2010 by airspoon]

if i recall correct... the affirmative action tsunami together with the political correct 'bage...had the dialect classified as a true speach language ...

i believe it was during the Clinton-Lewinsky ...err clinton-gore era
somebody took their eye off the ball & allowed the 'dumb-them-down' crowd to prevail

ADD~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`


and since 'Eubonics' is given status as a language, next it will be given cultural status...

consider the following, (the Gullah), relating to a far flung community of lowcountry folks here in SC, they used to live on islands & such in the old rice plantations, more or less like the Cajuns in the Bayous... but the big money & Hilton Head cultures clashed with these folks...


en.wikipedia.org...
"The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of
South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and
the Sea Islands. Historically, the Gullah region once extended north
to the Cape Fear area on the coast of North Carolina and south to the
vicinity of Jacksonville on the coast of Florida; but today the Gullah
area is confined to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry.

where might the eubonics culture eventually lead?
well, look forward to cultural parity with the white-black-latino subcultures.
for example:

...The Gullahs achieved another victory in 2006 when the U.S. Congress
passed the "Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Act" that provides
$10 million over ten years for the preservation and interpretation of
historic sites relating to Gullah culture. The "heritage corridor" will
extend from southern North Carolina to northern Florida. The project will
be administered by the US National Park Service with extensive
consultation with the Gullah community

The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee ..."


will the Eubonics speakers also be known as rappers or gang-stas?
as that subculture is in every major metro/democrat area of the nation

[edit on 24-8-2010 by St Udio]

reply to post by St Udio




I grew up speaking a Pidgen English. In Hawaii. Our teachers spoke it, I spoke it, the cops spoke it, everyone spoke it in the rural area I grew up in.

Then I went to get a job in "town" (Honolulu) when I was 18. I was un-hirable to work with tourists because of it. I spent many, many years, getting rid of it.

Moral of the story. For those of you who are saying its a "lazy way to speak" you are just wrong. If you learn a dialect from birth onward, it is THE way to speak in your area. No better, no worse, than any other. It says nothing about your IQ, nothing about you as a person. It says everything about where you grew up.

However, and this is just the way languages become dominant. Money talks. English is becoming a world language because of commerce. They had the power first, and so others came around to them. Most people who speak Ebonics as a dialect will be punished for it economically by being denied jobs and opportunities unless they choose to learn to speak "proper English."

So dont worry, those of you who fear the "American way of life" is endangered. It isnt. These agents are going to be talking to the people who are committing, witnessing, or know something about crimes. They are going to be talking to the people who are already marginalized because of their English skill and for other reasons, and Ebonics will not take over the world any time soon. No Ebonics speaking people has the economic power to make that happen.

And for Ebonics "supporters," it is a simple fact that not learning good, clear, English will limit you economically. You can hold onto your heritage all you want, or you can acknowledge that languages do change. All of them do. Rigid refusal to adapt is the path to extinction. You will be marginalized, excluded from opportunities, and you have no one but yourself to blame for it.

Everyone who speaks a language other than English knows this to be true, in many countries. Ebonics speaking African Americans are not going to be given an exception to this. Most whites coming into America gave up their language for the dominant language too. Its just the way it works. Its the golden rule.

Originally posted by 2weird2live2rare2die
a lot of blind hatred in here,

you don't see me going into threads and making fun of the way ignorant retarded hicks talk

Uhm, ok?

It would seem you're just as guilty of doing the same thing.

Funny thing about "ignorant retarded hick talk" is that I don't see the DEA wanting translators for it. But yet they do for ebonics... hmm...

it takes all different types of people to make the world go around, and all people are a lot more alike than you think.

Perhaps, but I don't see alot of people who talk this gibberish ending up being very successful in the workforce. I'm sure never going to hire someone who cannot speak at least some normal version of English.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

...this is just the way languages become dominant. Money talks. English is becoming a world language because of commerce. They had the power first, and so others came around to them. Most people who speak Ebonics as a dialect will be punished for it ...

is this an attempt to skewer me...or what?

i made it plain that Gullah was here & intertwined in the local communities since the slavery eras... and now the quiet peaceful folk that keep to themselves are being blistered by the money hungry predatory capitalists
that want to run them off the lands (marginal at best) that the Gullahs were sequestered into.

now... theirs' is a historical plight--- with plenty of mitigating factors--- Very much different that the 'gimme-class' of modern intellectual midgets who, for whatever reason choose not to assimilate into the American Melting-Pot...
they elect to become outsiders from the mainstream, create a seperate jargon of metaphors...and insist thats a cultural mandate... i say * 'em

in my post i laid out just what the mainstream culture/socirty can expect ===> mucho dollar$ to be given to these misfits/miscreants by pie-in-the-sky Liberal Democraps that are just 'buying' votes from this group of people that display a form of stuttering/slurring/ Tourette' syndrome.

god help 'em all... this is Pandering--
and NOT an act of liberating a suppressed people's freedom.

I dare say 'Pandering'...because the DEA agency got the go-ahead by the 'change' President Øbama (what a crock he turned into)



[edit on 24-8-2010 by St Udio]

Originally posted by St Udio


is this an attempt to skewer me...or what?

What?

Originally posted by St Udio
god help 'em all... this is Pandering--
and NOT an act of liberating a suppressed people's freedom.

Now that was just stupid. And I will say that plainly so you dont have to guess what I meant by that. How is hiring people who speak a specific lingo pandering? Is the army pandering to terrorists when it hires Arabic speakers? Hardly. They want to be able to understand what they are doing, talking about, planning, etc.


How do you get the idea that government or law enforcement agencies hire people who can speak the dialect of a population they need to monitor is pandering?

Its not like these agencies are hiring people who speak ONLY Ebonics. If all of a sudden, Ebonics was the only language our government did business in, ok, that would be ridiculous. However I am willing to bet (using logic) that every one of these translators speaks perfect English as well as Ebonics. If they didnt they would be worthless as translators.

It seems to me you guys are getting your shorts in a bunch for nothing. This is no different from hiring bilingual people to deal with any language group or dialect. Its just recognition that the dialect is confusing enough to non-speakers that there is a need to specifically hire people familiar with it to meet their goals of knowing whats going on in those communities.

reply to post by airspoon


In a way airspoon you make a good argument, yet crack was an invention of the CIA "allegedly", and furthermore there are non-violent people in prison waisting tax moneys who use things like pot, which is significantly less harmful and for a long time now people have been tired of it being illegal. Just because something is illegal does not mean the law is right. In fact the whole drug war is a racketeering scheme designed to keep the dealers who fund the feds secretly out of prison, and put the independant local dealers in. So the big cahunas in the end walk away. This isnt always the case, but it happens. My point is the drug war started with pot, a "substance" i prefer the term herb or vegetable, being it can be cooked into food...started by a fraudulent liar who planted fake news articles in newspapers about how it caused people to be violent and commit crime, let me offer an example, when a gun kills someone, do people blame the gun? No they blame the person. The people committing violent crimes E.G. robbery, assaults, gangbanging. Are without drugs, predisposed to violence via there thinking and beliefs. Therefor blaming a drug, even crack which is dangerous, and making it illegal is a logic error, because there are always going to be addicts, coffee addicts, food addicts, stamp collectors, gamblers, gun owners, tv heads. Should we ban all those things as well, what about video games? In south korea people die from playing games..

The law is the law, but its been corrupted by prohibition. Prohibition which is supported by men and women who prefer whiskey, or lemonade on there gazeebos and who are misinformed about natural law (constitutional law), or just willingly oppressive via democracy (how the drug war was falsly forged and where two wolves agree to eat the sheep) the sheep being all drug users, whether addicts or not, the wolves being those who profit and those the profiteers convince to maintain the prohibition age, and its costing america and the world too much, both in money, lives and the slavery those around the world suffer under, under the drug lords who are legitimized by the system they enjoy because its profit for them and it feeds the bottom feeding oppressive police state who also get there hands dirty.

I recommend decriminalization, giving serious drug addicts better alternatives to fixing their lives. Like hospital or clinical programs designed to ween them off addictive drugs. Similar to methadone clinics. Everything that exists is a product of something else, the microcosm represents the macrocosm and vice versa. Sometimes there a paradoxes and that is where the greedy and selfish minded ones exploit for power or gain. The drug war, like alchohol prohibition, fails natural law, if i want to chew on a stick, i might look crazy doing it, but by natural right, I have a right to be an individual who has dread locks, wheres tie die, and chews on sticks. Good grooming is for professional conformists who want money and things, the objectifiers, while I the naturalist, wants a connection with the nature that actually provides substanance, cement, steel and glass, and suits only provide images, images that have been entrained into our minds by those deceived by the greed and lust of a "modern" age.

I like trade, i enjoy commerce, A free market..but its not, its all a scam, created by the top of the pyramid, and the great eye looks down everday from the penthouse floor and feels satisfied with the power gained, while the real humans connect with higher being, sometimes, as native cultures have shown that includes more existential roads to be taken, just ask the north american native american church in new mexico.

All you need to do to master Ebonics is study this song:



[edit on 24-8-2010 by SpectreDC]