‘Abbott Elementary’ brings ‘jawn,’ ‘boul,’ and other Philly words to network TV | The Grammarian

Let us now praise famous grammarians: William Strunk. E.B. White. William Safire.

And now, Quinta Brunson.

The West Philly-born-and-raised creator and star of ABC’s new hit sitcom Abbott Elementary might not seem like the most obvious linguistic hero. But a recent episode revealed some surprisingly subversive — for a network TV show, anyway — notions of how kids learn language. And in the process, it taught America a little bit about how we speak in Philly.

» READ MORE: ‘Abbott Elementary’ is full of Philly references. Here’s a list of all of them.

In the opening scene of the series’ fourth episode, Brunson’s character — Janine Teagues, who teaches at a fictional Philadelphia elementary school — is working through some standard Philly slang on her classroom whiteboard. As she calls out words at both the introductory level (hoagie, jawn) and advanced (ard [”all right”], boul [“boy”], oldhead [”those of you who need these bracketed explanations”]), the class repeats the words back in unison. Cheesesteak is up there too, but it’s inexplicably written as two words, which — since every Philadelphian spells it cheesesteak, and the show otherwise labors for local authenticity — can only be a nod to the many imperfections of struggling public schools.

Fellow teacher Barbara Howard (played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, who also has deep local ties as the real-life spouse of State Sen. Vincent Hughes) bursts in, demanding to know why Janine’s lessons are abandoning phonics principles.

But in this case, the rookie Janine might be ahead of the curve by recognizing the educational value of connecting reading instruction to slang and local dialects.

» READ MORE: There’s a new sitcom about Philly public schools. So we asked a city teacher to review it

Teaching what’s now known as African American Vernacular English has a checkered history. It was exactly 25 years ago that a national controversy forced the Oakland Unified School District in California to abandon its plans to incorporate “Ebonics” into its language curriculum. Critics from President Bill Clinton on down decried the district’s plan to use Black English to teach “standard” English.

But in the years since, research has shown that Oakland might have been on the right track. Academics debate endlessly whether Black English is a language or a dialect — and about the racist assumptions that come with each argument — but most agree that a student raised speaking African American Vernacular English has to work harder to translate something in “standard” English in order to understand it. Just as foreign-language learners have to translate a sentence to their native language before processing it, so do people for whom white English deviates from how they learned to speak. That translation takes time, and it presents endless opportunities for the translators to fall behind.

Moreover, these translation skills are hardly ever taught outside of foreign language classes — something most American students don’t take until much later in their schooling, by which point wide disparities have developed, particularly in the literacy rates of Black vs. white students. Some research credibly suggests those gaps are due in part to the added work that many Black students are forced to do, translating works into a different language or dialect just to reach the same level of comprehension as their white counterparts.

From that perspective, Ms. Teagues’ slang lessons were more than an opportunity to teach students (and ABC viewers) how we speak in Philly; they were an example of how teachers in actual Philly schools can better serve their students.

Strunk, White, and Safire would be proud.

The Grammarian, otherwise known as Jeffrey Barg, looks at how language, grammar, and punctuation shape our world, and appears biweekly. Send comments, questions, and diachronic precursors to jeff@theangrygrammarian.com.

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