For comparison

[Jason Witherspoon]

To fan the flames further:

(actually, I support "Ebonics" in principle-- let's not blame the kids for
"speaking wrong", just identify the differences between their speech
patterns & the standardized English which they're expected to understand to
succeed in Amerikkka, & then teach them as if it were ESL to some degree.
I think whoever came up w/the "snappy" name for it-- translated roughly as
"the sounds made by black people", making black folks sound like some type
of exotic bird-- should be hung up by their testes, however; apparently,
Spike Lee recently was quoted as saying something like "Ebonics be stupid",
so go figure.)


>
> Subject: Understanding the needs of Silicon Valley
> Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 22:53:44 -0500 (EST)
> From: Darren Bleuel <gav at nuc.berkeley.edu>
> Reply-To: obfuscate at cyberjunkie.com
> To: "obfuscate at cyberjunkie.com" <hackman at tiac.net>
>
>      **********NEWSFLASH on GEEKONICS***********************************
>
>      Geekonics
>      By John Woestendiek
>      Philadelphia Inquirer
>      Wed., January 8, 1997
>
>      NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who
>      have grown up immersed in computer lingo, the school board in San
>      Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or
>      "Geekonics", as a second language.
>
>      The historic vote on Geekonics -- a combination of the word "geek" and
>      the word "phonics" -- came just weeks after the Oakland school board
>      recognized black English, or Ebonics, as a distinct language.
>
>      "This entirely reconfigures our parameters," Milton "Floppy"
>      Macintosh, chairman of Geekonics Unlimited, said after the school
>      board became the first in the nation to recognize Geekonics.
>
>      "No longer are we preformatted for failure," Macintosh said during a
>      celebration that saw many Geekonics backers come dangerously close to
>      smiling. "Today, we are rebooting, implementing a program to process
>      the data we need to interface with all units of humanity."
>
>      Controversial and widely misunderstood, the Geekonics movement was
>      spawned in California's Silicon Valley, where many children have grown
>      up in households headed by computer technicians, programmers,
>      engineers and scientists who have lost ability to speak plain English
>      and have inadvertently passed on their high-tech vernacular to their
>      children.
>
>      HELPING THE TRANSITION
>
>      While schools will not teach the language, increased teacher awareness
>      of Geekonics, proponents say, will help children make the transition
>      to standard English. Those students, in turn, could possibly help
>      their parents learn to speak in a manner that would lead listeners to
>      believe that they have actual blood coursing through their veins.
>
>      "Bit by bit, byte by byte, with the proper system development, with
>      nonpreemptive multitasking, I see no reason why we can't download the
>      data we need to modulate our oral output," Macintosh said.
>
>      The designation of Ebonics and Geekonics as languages reflects a
>      growing awareness of our nation's lingual diversity, experts say.
>
>      Other groups pushing for their own languages and/or vernaculars to be
>      declared official viewed the Geekonics vote as a step in the right
>      direction.
>
>      "This is just, like, OK, you know, the most totally kewl thing, like,
>      ever," said Jennifer Notat-Albright, chairwoman of the Committee for
>      the Advancement of Valleyonics, headquartered in Southern California.
>      "I mean, like, you know?" she added.
>
>      THEY'RE HAPPY IN DIXIE
>
>      "Yeee-hah," said Buford "Kudzu" Davis, president of the Dixionics
>      Coalition. "Y'all gotta know I'm as happy as a tick on a sleeping
>      bloodhound about this. We could be fartin' thru silk perty soon."
>
>      Spokesmen for several subchapters of Dixionics -- including Alabonics,
>      Tennesonics and Louisionics -- also said they approved of the
>      decision.
>
>      Bill Flack, public information officer for the Blue Ribbon Task Force
>      on Bureaucratonics said that his organization would not comment on the
>      San Jose vote until it convened a summit meeting, studied the impact,
>      assessed the feasibility, finalized a report and drafted a
>      comprehensive action plan, which, once it clears the appropriate
>      subcommittees and is voted on, will be made public to those who submit
>      the proper information-request forms.
>
>      Proponents of Ebonics heartily endorsed the designation of Geekonics
>      as an official language.
>
>      "I ain't got no problem wif it," said Earl E. Byrd, president of the
>      Ebonics Institute. "You ever try talkin' wif wunna dem computer dudes?
>      Don't matter if it be a white computer dude or a black computer dude;
>      it's like you be talkin' to a robot -- RAM, DOS, undelete, MegaHertZ.
>      Ain't nobody understands. But dey keep talkin' anyway. 'Sup wif dat?"
>
>      Those involved in the lingual diversity movement believe that only by
>      enacting many different English languages, in addition to all the
>      foreign ones practiced here, can we all end up happily speaking the
>      same boring one, becoming a nation that is both unified in its
>      diversity, and diversified in its unity.
>
>      Others say that makes no sense at all. In any language.
>

                                                  Jason Witherspoon

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