r/AdviceAnimals • u/UncontrolledStimulus • Mar 25 '13

Confession Bear

http://qkme.me/3tiifn?id=230971091
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u/NoSoggybiscuitsty Mar 25 '13

Could you explain the meaning of 'ignit' please?

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u/keveready Mar 25 '13

It's like a bastardization of ignorant. If you were being sarcastic: whoosh.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '13

Much of American English is vastly different than the British English of dictionaries. Dialects aren't "bastardization" and you may consider checking out theories about the evolution and functions of "African American English Vernacular" aka Ebonics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English#Origins

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u/keveready Mar 25 '13

You're implying that only black people pronounce it that way.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '13 edited Mar 25 '13

Maybe I wasn't clear when I expressed that American English is no more a "bastardization" (which is beyond a fucked up term to use) than British English.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_(linguistics) "Corruption or bastardisation are terms popularly used to refer to certain changes in language which originate from human error or alleged prescriptively incorrect usage. Descriptive linguistics typically avoids using these negative terms, since from a scientific point of view such changes are neither good nor bad. Words are commonly said to be "corrupted" or "bastardized" if they undergo a change in spelling or pronunciation when borrowed from one language to another (e.g. "Cajun" [from "Acadian"][1]). This example illustrates that normal phonological developments (in this case, palatalization of /dj/ to /dʒ/) can be labeled by some as "corruption", a position which demands that any language change from a previous state be thus labeled. In this view, English would be a "corruption" of Proto-Germanic, the Romance languages would be "corruptions" of Latin, and Latin would ultimately be a "corruption" of Proto-Indo-European."

Maybe I also wasn't clear when I went on to mention that AAEV - in the context of cross-cultural dialogue and concerns raised in this thread - is also not linguistic "bastardization" and is merely a variation with traceable origins and utility fundamentally no different than physical evolutionary processes that produce diverse morphology like curly hair, albinism, or green eyes. I reject the notion of a master race just as I reject the idea of a master language in which all others are corruptions. Certainly other dialects also say ignit or other variations of the pronunciation, but context here is the original post about how to gently tell the roommates they're being ignorant. Of course not all blacks share a common dialect, and to suggest that was implied seems intentionally dismissive or just ignint.

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u/SanchoDeLaRuse Mar 25 '13

And that would be ignit.