People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.
John McwhorterRead
People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Language evolves over time, and concerns about its decline are often exaggerated.
In this quote, John McWhorter reflects on the historical anxiety surrounding the evolution of language, suggesting that despite frequent warnings about its decline, the dire outcomes predicted rarely come to pass. He humorously implies that language change is a natural process and that the fears of degeneration often do not materialize as anticipated.
Themes
LanguageEvolutionChangeCultureCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
This quote would be fitting in a discussion about the future of language in a linguistics class.
More from John Mcwhorter
All quotes βPeople banging away on their smartphones are fluently using a code separate from the one they use in actual writing, but a code it is, to which linguists are currently devoting articles.
John McwhorterRead
It would be good if teachers could genuinely understand that black English is not mistakes, it's just different English, and that what you want to do is add an additional dialect to black students' repertoire rather than teaching them out of what's thought of as a bad habit, like sloppy posture or chewing with your mouth open.
John McwhorterRead
Similar quotes
The language itself, whether you speak it or not, whether you love it or hate it, is like some bewitchment or seduction from the past, drifting across the country down the centuries, subtly affecting the nations sensibilities even when its meaning is forgotten.
Jan MorrisRead
Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.
George SteinerRead
I'm about as monolingual as you come, but nevertheless, I have a variety of different languages at my command, different styles, different ways of talking, which do involve different parameter settings.
Noam ChomskyRead
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
Daniel DennettRead
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.
Edward SapirRead
The Hebrew language will go from the synagogue to the house of study, and from the house of study to the school, and from the school it will come into the home and... become a living language
Eliezer Ben-YehudaRead