The Virgin Islands
The English of the Virgin Islands, which is described briefly in AL4, p. 378, is basically archaic English, not American, and seems to be common, with local changes, to the whole British West Indies. The Danes held the group from 1668 to 1917, when the United States bought them for $25,000,000, but Danish never made any progress as the local language against English. The only report upon the speech of the native Negroes that I am aware of was made by Henry S. Whitehead in 1932;1 it included a somewhat longish story told by a colored brother in St. Croix to the white pastor of his church. A specimen passage:
A tek a liddle run, den A mek a jump, but A bin a foot too shart, so de two shoes drap in a’ de water. Howsomeber, a’-wee go on till a’-wee mek Orange Grove bridge, when we cahl out foo res’. By de time a’wee was gwine tek de ’tart again, me foot get soak, an’ ef yo’ bin-a-go shoot me A couldn’ move an inch. Me see one mahn da pass, so me beg ’im pull dem aff foo me, an’ after he hab almos’ drag-aff me foot an-’all A put dem shoes ’pon me unmrella-’tick, an’ tell you what, it must-a bin a fine sight to see me in me old bell-topper, me frack-coat, an’ me big crabat, da-mash de broad path wid me bare foot.
The use here of a’wee (all-we), a first person analogue of the Southern American second person you-all, will be noted. Whitehead reported a number of loans from West African languages, e.g., buckra, a white man; shandrámadan, a rascally act, and caffoon, a fall or other mishap, and some survivals of French, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Spanish loans from Crucian (and St. Thomian) Creole, “a lingua franca invented [for the slaves] by early Moravian missionaries who combined the language of their European masters’ families with their own African dialects, and who needed the common tongue to serve them when they passed by purchase or otherwise from one estate to another where a different European language was spoken.” The basis of the dialect, he said, is “late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Century English – traditionally the language of trade and of the buccaneers throughout most of the West India islands.” This dialect, he added, is not only “the language of the normally English-speaking islands, such as St. Kitts and Antigua, but also of Dutch Saba and Dutch and French St. Martin.” It tends to throw the accent back whenever possible, so that good-morning becomes gu-marnín; it elides s before a consonant, so that spoon becomes poon, it changes th to d, and it includes many pronunciations recalling the American Negro, e.g., sarmin, lebben, gwine, wuk and fotch. There are also some traces of Irish influence, or perhaps they are only vestiges of Seventeenth Century English, e.g., woife and toime.1
Canada
Palmer, Martin and Blandford, in their “Dictionary of English Pronunciation With American Variants,”2 group American and Canadian speech together as facets of the same gem. The earliest writer on the latter, the Rev. A. S. Geikie, noted so long ago as 1857 that a large number of Americanisms were already in use, e.g., bug, in the general sense of insect; to fix, in its numberless American senses; to guess, to locate, first-class3 and rooster,4 and his first successor, writing twenty-eight years later,5 added cars, a railroad train; drygoods, sidewalk, store, and dock, a wharf.1 In 1890 A. F. Chamberlain attempted a linguistic survey of the Dominion,2 but had to confess that there was not enough material accumulated to make it comprehensive. He noted, however, that in Ontario, which was settled in Revolutionary days by fugitive Loyalists from New York and Pennsylvania, “much that characterized the English speech of those States” was “still traceable in their descendants,” and that the speech of the Eastern Township of Quebec did not differ “to a very marked extent from that of the adjoining New England States.” Says a more recent observer:
There is practically no difference in the speech of Canada and the United States, for the intermingling of the people of the two countries is constant. Cross from Michigan into Ontario and the speech is identical. Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver are as much American as Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Seattle. The whole of the northwest of Canada is the same in speech as Minnesota, Montana and Washington, for a great number of the settlers there came from the States.3
This was rather too sweeping, for it disregarded the survival of regional dialects in the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland, the prevalence of French loans in Quebec, and the effects of social aspiration in the larger cities. The last-named is powerful indeed, for it has sufficed to keep English spelling in countenance, so that labour and centre are still in use, though the American tire, curb and jail have conquered. The fashionable private schools, as in the United States, inculcate something vaguely approximating Oxford English, and many of their teachers are Englishmen. Among the super-loyal noblesse of Montreal pram is used for baby-carriage, tin for can, sweet for dessert, level crossing for grade crossing, tram for streetcar, braces for suspenders, long holidays for Summer vacation and shallot for scallion. Also, schedule is pronounced with the sch soft, and the letter z is zed, not zee.1 But this is a class dialect, not the common speech. Among the plain people baby-carriage, street-car and the like are in everyday use.2 Moreover, the talkies, the radio and the constant travel across the border are bringing in the newest American inventions as they appear,3 and nearly all the slang in current use is unmistakably American. “The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence river,” said an observer in 1939,4 “are highways of communication rather than barriers.… Canadian is a variant of General American, but not so striking a variant as Southern American.… Canadian intonation is identical with General American, or nearly so.” There are, of course, some differences, especially in pronunciation, and this observer thinks they are sufficient “to enable Canadians and Americans usually to place one another very quickly by speech alone.” He lists some of them, e.g., cornet is accented on the first syllable, not on the second, as in the United States;5 been is bean, not bin; an intrusive y appears before u in constitution, duke, and the like; economics is eek-, not ek-; lieutenant “is always leftenant”; vacation is vuk-, not vaik-, and “a few Canadians still say clark instead of clerk.”
But such differences are obviously small, and set against them are many popular preferences for American as opposed to English usage, e.g., the r is always sounded, “if anything,” says Ayearst, “more heavily than in the Middle West”; “movies are never the cinema”; “street-car and sidewalk are never tram and pavement”; and “bloody has no more shocking significance to a Canadian than to an American.” In sum, “despite the best efforts of the pedagogue and the plaints of visiting Englishmen,… Canadian speech can only be regarded as a variant of Standard American, [and] it seems most probable that the tendency to assimilate American usage will continue.” With all this another phonological observer agrees, at least for Ontario.1 The dominant influence upon the local speech, she says, has been that of Scottish immigrants. The broad a is never heard, even in aunt and rather. The flat a, as in care and carry, often approaches the e of yet. In not, log, watch, sorry, stop, on, rotten and foggy the vowel is aw, not ah. “Most Canadians are inclined to regard American speech habits disparagingly, [but they] are no more fond of Southern British speech.”
There is a considerable effort by social-minded persons of the tonier classes to put down the prevalent yielding to American example, but they are seldom clear as to what they want Canadian English to be. Sir Andrew Macphail, writing ’n 1935,2 was content to argue that “the flat vowels in our Canadian speech” – especially, I assume, the flat a – were “unpleasant”; the only remedy he had to suggest was “to take thought, to listen acutely to beautiful [British?] speech, and to listen with equal acuteness to our own.” “In England,” he continued, “a man cannot pass from the lower to the higher social scale until he has mastered the letter h, and few succeed in the attempt.… But in England there is a standard of beauty and an established correctness of speech which the wise ones strive to achieve if it is not theirs by right, and they conform with that standard when they are to the manner born.” Mr. Justice A. Rives Hall, of the Canadian Court of Appeals, delivered
many indignant pronunciamentoes on the subject during the 30s, but he was equally vague about what was to be done.1
The remoter parts of Canada, like the remoter parts of the United States, have developed local dialects that show some interesting oddities, but they are confined to small and thinly-populated areas, and give no sign of spreading. That of the Northwest is substantially identical with that of the American Northwest.2 Those of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were the subjects of a report by W. M. Tweedie, of Sackville, N. B., in Dialect Notes in 1895.3 Among the terms he listed were: abito, bito or aboideau, a sluice so arranged that water can flow through a dike at low tide; admiral, the oldest man in a settlement; barber, the vapor arising from water on a frosty day; breastner, burn or turn, a stick of firewood; Colcannon Night or Snap-Apple Night, Hallowe’en; copying, jumping from piece to piece of floating ice; cracky or gaffer, a small boy; crunnocks, kindling; dirt, bad weather; drung, a lane leading to a pasture; dunch, bread not properly baked; dwy, a sudden squall, with rain or snow; all of a floption, unawares; hand-signment, signature; huggerum buff, fish and potatoes fried in cakes; to play jig or to slunk, to play truant; leaf, the brim of a hat; livier, a merchant or trader; nippent, merry; nunny-bag, a bag for holding lunch; prog, food; puck, a blow; rampole, rampike or ranpike, the trunk of a dead tree; to establish a raw, to make a beginning; silver thaw, a sleet storm leaving trees covered with ice; slob, soft snow or ice; to spell, to gather; starigan, any small evergreen cut for firewood; tilt, a one-story house; twinly, delicate; to yap, to scold, and yarry, smart, quick. Most of these came from Newfoundland, and many of them were borrowings from various English and Scotch dialects.
In 1916 Lewis F. Mott added handy, nearby, and just now, shortly, from Newfoundland,1 and in 1925 George Allen England2 added the following, gathered in 1920 and 1922: puckerin’ or turned over, sick in bed; adurt, across; airsome, cold, stormy; andramarten, a prank; astray, different; bake or white-nose, a newcomer; batch, a fall of snow; baving, thin kindling; bedfly, a bedbug or louse; coaleys, the court cards in a pack; cockabaloo, a bullying boss; conkerbill, an icicle; corner boy, a city man; cowly, hard, severe; cozy, energetic, fast; cuffer, an incredible story; to douse, to fool; down the Labrador, the North; drop-ball, an earring; to fathom out, to explain; feller, a son; to fist, to grasp; flute, the mouth; front, the region east of Newfoundland; garagee, a free-for-all-fight; gazaroo, a boy; to glutch, to swallow; to go on the breeze, to get drunk; to go to oil, to become valueless; gobby, crazy; hang-ashore, a loafer; hardware, intoxicants; to heck it, to walk quickly; hocks, boots; humgumption, common sense; keecorn, the Adam’s apple; lassie loaf, bread and molasses; to live hard against, to have a grudge against; liverish, sick, nauseated; look-after, damages; to make fire, to make a row; to make wonder, to be surprized; merry-me-got, a bastard; moor, the root of a tree; muckered or spun out, exhausted; omaloor, an ungainly fellow; oxter, the armpit; passionate, patient in suffering; on a pig’s back, in good condition; proud, glad; rack, a haircomb; raw, a rough fellow; to saddle, to agree; scheme, mischief; scudge, a flurry; shad, a light fall of snow; sharooshed, taken aback, surprised, disappointed; all of a slam, in a hurry; slinky, thin; slovey, soft; smack, a short time; smatchy, tainted (as of meat); snaz, an old maid; stage, a wharf; streel, a slovenly woman; to vamp it, to walk, and way, home. England reported some curious pronunciations. Both sounds of th, he said, were commonly changed to t, the h was manhandled as in Cockney, a was often changed to i, and as often substituted for both short and long e, as in age for edge and ape for heap. Oil became hile; easterly, easly; empty, empt, and pneumonia, eumonia. Flipper was pronounced fipper. Jersey was joisie, as in New York City, and to murder, signifying to bother or pester, was to moider. The f often became v, as in vin for fin and vur for fur. As in the South, evening was used to designate the time from noon to 6 p.m. Morning was used for day in general, and any time after 6 o’clock was night. The preterite of to save was sove, and that of to stow was stole.1
The dialect of Labrador was discussed in papers by Mary S. Evans in 19032 and William Duncan Strong in 1931.3 Miss Evans visited Fox Harbor on Lewis Bay, the southernmost large indentation on the Labrador peninsula, during the Summer of 1926. She found surviving many words and phrases that had been reported by an early explorer, George Cartwright, in 1792. She listed, among others, to give a passage, to give a lift in a boat, however short; lop, a wave; puff-up, the birth of a child, and tickle, a narrow neck of water. He, she said, was in common use for it, as in “I’ll take he” (meaning any inanimate object). Uncle and aunt were applied to all elderly persons, every girl was a maid, and girls and boys used my son in addressing their younger brothers. Strong, who visited northern Labrador in 1927–28, added lund, quiet; tidy, swift; scrammed, almost frozen, and chronic, a gnarled tree, beside some curious names for the local fauna and flora. He said that in northern Labrador she was often used for it instead of he, as in “Put she in a bag,” referring to a struggling fish.
The dialect of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which was settled by Germans in the Eighteenth Century, has been studied by a competent phonologist, M. B. Emeneau, of Yale.4 German is no longer spoken there, but it is still understood by a few oldsters and its influence upon the local speech remains evident. Some of the examples cited by Emeneau are what for (Ger. was für); to make in the sense of to prepare, as a meal; to get awake (Ger. wach werden); with used as an adverb after to go and to come (Ger. mitgehen); off similarly used after verbs signifying cleaning (Ger. abwaschen); all used in place of all gone; apple-snits (Ger. schnitte); lapish, insipid (Ger. láppisch); klotsy, heavy or soggy (Ger. klotzig); to fress, to eat greedily (Ger. fressen); hexed, bewitched (Ger. hexen); to grunt, to complain (Ger. grunzen); shimmel, a very blond person (Ger. schimmel, a white mould), and Fassnakday, Shrove Tuesday (Ger. Fastnacht). Emeneau reports that all these loans show signs of dying out. The dialect has, in general, the characters of the general speech of Canada, and especially of Nova Scotia, e.g., the tendency to change the diphthong of how into one made up of o and u, so that couch and coach become homonyms. But it drops the r in nearly all situations after verbs, whereas the letter is commonly sounded in the rest of Canada.1
The speech of the Dominion, and especially of the eastern part is now being investigated in a scientific manner by Henry Alexander, professor of the English language and literature at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont., with a view to the preparation of a volume for the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada. He is the author of an excellent short manual on the development of English, “The Story of Our Language,”2 and made a preliminary report on his field work at the Chicago meeting of the American Dialect Society in December, 1945. His researches on the coast of Nova Scotia, during World War II, provided proof that even philology has its dangers, and may some day have its martyrs. His questioning of local informants aroused the suspicion of the Army and Navy patrols guarding the coast against Hitler, and when he was arrested and a copy of the International Phonetic Alphabet was found upon him it was assumed to be some sort of code. Fortunately, he was finally brought before a naval officer who recognized this sinister-looking alphabet, and when he proved that he was an Englishman by birth and an Oxford man and that he had no police record in Kingston, he was liberated with nothing worse than a warning to sin no more.3
Other Dialects
In one of his invaluable historical papers Allen Walker Read has shown that the Americans of fifty years before the Revolution were already acutely aware of the existence among them of groups speaking English with tell-tale brogues and accents.1 That awareness, indeed, must have gone back to at least a century before, for it is hard to imagine that the Indians who picked up the language of the Colonists at Plymouth and Jamestown learned to speak it correctly overnight, and before the middle of the Seventeenth Century the English were in frequent contact with Frenchmen and Dutchmen. Later came Swedes, Germans and Spaniards, and meanwhile the nascent Americans began to notice that the Scotch
, Irish and Welsh immigrants who came in,1 and even some of the English,2 spoke in ways that were not their own. By 1775 the Southern Negro began to be differentiated in speech, by 1797 the rustic Yankee, and after the War of 1812 the Westerner.3 After the great Irish immigration of the late 40s and the German immigration which followed it the Irishman4 and the German became standard types in American comedy, alongside the Negro minstrel introduced by Thomas D. Rice (1808–60) in the 30s. They were followed, in the 50s, by the Chinaman, and in later years by the Scandinavian, the Italian and the Jew. So early as 1823 James Fenimore Cooper had attempted German, French, Irish, English and Negro dialects in “The Pioneers,” though he made his Indians speak conventional English.5 But there had been an attempt to render Indian English in a serious book published in 1675, to wit:
Umh, umh, me no stawmerre fight Engis mon. Engis mon got two hed, Engis mon got two hed. If me cut off un hed, he got noder, a put on beder as dis.1
German dialect apparently got its first literary recognition in 1856, when Charles Godfrey Leland wrote the earliest of his long series of “Hans Breitmann” ballads to fill an unexpected gap in Graham’s Magazine. These ballads were very popular during the Civil War, and Leland continued to bring out volumes of them until 1895.2 They were imitated by Charles Follen Adams, with almost equal success, in a “Leedle Yawcob Strauss” series which ran from 1877 to 1910. Here is a specimen of the dialect that both used:
American Language Supplement 2 Page 31
