A film on its way here 'Akeela and the Spelling Bee' is about a young African American girl who is good at spelling and enters a national competiton against her mothers will. Larry Fishbourne, who plays a stern English professor and her mentor, saids in a scene to her"Dont talk ghetto around me".

Is there a fascination with speaking the Queens English, so if you dont speak 'proper'you automatically qualify as black and less intelligent?

There are wide variations in between "Queens english" and "ghetto talk". Its not a case of speaking one or the other. There are regional variations, dialects, localised slang (localised in terms of area and time). I'm sure lots of us who were born here ("here" being the UK) have parents born in another country and we pick up certain words and inflections from them. Does not mean we are talking "ghetto".

For my part, i don't speak either. However I am aware that sometimes my speach can be lazy (eg leaving of "t"'s etc) that i will have to clean up for the classroom. That is not to say i will start speaking the "Queens english". That being said, i think kids are more comfortale with a teacher who "speaks like them". so i won't be changing ALL my inflections.

Le Moor:I would argue the reverse, there is too much emphasis on talking 'ghetto' and behaving 'ghetto' ie talking like you have a low IQ and behaving as if you have no brains..because somehow that supposed to be keeping it 'real'....Pathetic!!!

Sorry but there are too many of us aspiring to be arseholes and think thats ok, the whole point of ghetto's is that whilst you're proud of what you are, no one in their right minds would aspire to be there or live there... But yet again we have turned being mediorce into a fine art.....

If i hear another child puntuate a sentence with the word yea,i swear i will knock them the **** out...Sorry but its not about the Queens English is about having children that artuculate their words properly, who can form sentences and for chrissake can make an intelligent point without sound as if they have a lower IQ than a rat...

Ingonyama - he is a lion! wrote: Yikes, Remind me to deal with you later..you bounder

I like to hear people talking/writing properly.

But this 'properly' have changed over the years.

My objection is the automatic association with 'black' anytime 'speech' is 'wrong'.

Le Moor that is how it's always portrayed that, 'bad speech' is connected with 'blacks'. By both 'blacks' and whites I might add.

It's fascinatingby just readinga few comments, how many seem to bypass the pointof if it is interlinked with us, but immediately took on thebelief that it is, byimplying that 'blacks' should shape up!

lol!

Le Moor:I would argue the reverse, there is too much emphasis on talking 'ghetto' and behaving 'ghetto' ie talking like you have a low IQ and behaving as if you have no brains..because somehow that supposed to be keeping it 'real'....Pathetic!!!

I'd have to quote you and argue the reverse. Sometimes that 'ghetto talk' is a rejection of what Le Moore is saying.

Its about status, if you talk like the queen it implies that you are high up on the social ladder, close to royalty. An ?aristocrat? somehow superior intellectually showing a better education, an in-fluent-ial as it were. Whereas a 'poor' persons life experience is their status hence the use of slang and talk about ghetto experiences. Life lessons over school lessons.

There are plenty of stupid people who use long words and talk like the queen and plenty of clever people who talk 'ghetto' and are worth listening to because of what they've been through.

Ya get me!? banana.gif

Like Patoi beingrelated to street slang and frowned upon when itsEnglish mixedwith Spanish and is a language in itself.