Reddit reviews Twice as Less

> a different style/vernacular doesn't inherently mean it's an inherently incorrect or "less educated" way of speaking.

Except it's not just different. Every point in the Phonology section of the wikipedia tPRoC linked to is something missing from the dialect. The only additional part in Distinctive Features is degrees of tense.

Meanwhile there are things like "I didn't go nowhere" which doesn't make logical sense or "Twice as Less" that interfere with comprehension.

Maybe you can explain in layman's terms how this dialect is even half as worse?

She mentioned "grammar of Black English", reminds me of how algebraic expressions have a grammar, and the argument that we process it with the same neural grammar machinery that we use for English (one natural language grammar). If you have learned a language with different grammar, it won't fit as well.

Do native speakers of other languages (Korean, Finnish, Kurdish) have better/worse mathematical fluency, related to how similar their grammatical constructions are to algebra?

This is also related to an argument about intuitiveness of programming language syntax, especially prefix (lisp), infix (all mainstream languages), postfix (forth), that infix is intrinsically more intuitive, because the most often used grammatical constructions in English are infix - e.g. John threw the ball. Sometimes you can construct a prefix or postfix version, but they're generally contorted. I got this tip from someone on progit - and I also noticed in discrete mathematics introductory textbooks that they lean heavily on English expressions (If it's true that I like icecream and chocolate, then it's not true that I don't like icecream or I don't like chocolate). In my opinion, it's a horribly misleading approach, but at least it does convey the idea of operator composition implicitly.


However.... she seems to be examining more the English expression of mathematical questions, not notation (as above), according to the Amazon description:

> "Differences between black English vernacular (BEV) and standard English can affect a BEV speaker's concept of certain quantitative relations." Observing the functional role of prepositions, conjunctions and relative pronouns in the identification of quantitative ideas, Orr pinpoints misunderstandings that beset students whose first language is nonstandard English. Her belief that BEV is rule-governed and not merely "bad" English is supported by data from her students who, for example, confuse "twice" and "half" or combine "as" and "than" in their partitive comparisons. (amazon)

But the contextual consistency of errors at least confirms BEV has rules - I think this is also true of non-standard English slang, and even of memes. It's quite possible to slang wrong. You can also see new grammatical forms emerge. e.g. Teach me how to karma.