Why do so many people in the inner city/Appalachians speak bad English?
The language of these communities is not bad, just different. All human languages & dialects have the same level of complexity. For instance, Appalachian dialects often have more irregular past tense verbs than standard English, often preserving archaic past tense forms lost elsewhere. Similarly, African-American has a more complex verbal aspectual system than Standard English (although not quite as complex as West African languages). The reason people think these dialects are “bad” is because of social conditioning, which is very strong and is attested in almost all civilizations. Speakers of the “prestige” or “standard” dialect usually think speakers of non-standard dialects are uncouth and stupid, while speakers of non-standard dialects can perceive the standard dialect as pretentious. The “Ebonics” debate of ca. 1995 brought out how emotional people on both sides of the issue were. Even though hearing people talk about “bad grammar” drives linguists crazy, most of us still feel & o
