The evolution of the various languages depended on the geographical location of the speakers and interactions with different language speakers.Ī language develops according to the precise needs of the people who live in the geographic location at the time, and they share a way of life and culture (Finkelman, 2006). The African American English and the American English developed continuously throughout the colonial era and could never be summed up as a single type, style, or variety. At times, it is convenient to generalize African American speech, but sometimes it is significant to remember that African Americans have never spoken in a uniform language. It is believed that since the African Americans from Samana and Nova Scotia remained rather isolated from those early settlements, their speech still holds features of earlier African American English which were lost in other varieties (Kautzsch, 2002). They populated North Preston and Samana Peninsula, presently the Dominican Republic together with former slaves. The slaves in South Carolina and Georgia developed Gullah dialect, while Caribbean creoles influenced African American speech all over their colonies during the eighteenth century.īritish Generals released several black loyalists during the revolutionary war who later settled in Nova Scotia around 1815 (Finkelman, 2006). The slaves from Northern and southern colonies learned English from the English speakers from their regions in the seventeenth century. This language varied considerably since slaves came from all over with different linguistic features. An example is a double negation, which characterized most West African languages, and it still exists in the African American language. Language is of more than words, and Creoles as well as African Language elements most likely influenced the structure of African American English during the colonial era in ways still evident to present. The African American English possesses features of native, African languages and the American language introduced during the colonial era and handed down through generations as part of a common cultural heritage. This is how African American Vernacular English was born. The slaves did not have any reason to adhere closely to Standard English, and so they adopted what they heard and combined it with some grammatical rules from their native languages. The English speakers perceived these people as free labor rather than humans, and, therefore, as long as they understood enough to take their orders, there was no need to teach them proper English. They needed to communicate therefore, they adopted English as their common language, which was their masters’ language. The slaves came from all over West Africa, and they spoke diverse languages. | title= Handbook of Pidgin English : Aboriginal and South Sea IslandsĬitations are automatically generated and may require some modification to conform to exact standards.Pidgin is a simplified, improvised language that develops to accomplish the communication requirements of people who do not have a common language but are brought together by circumstances, which force them to communicate (Dillard, 1980). 1941, Handbook of Pidgin English : Aboriginal and South Sea Islands Military Board, Melbourne viewed Wikipedia citation Handbook of Pidgin English : Aboriginal and South Sea Islands Melbourne: Military Board, 1941. Handbook of Pidgin English : Aboriginal and South Sea Islands Retrieved May 28, 2023, from MLA citationĪustralia.
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