fordsnake
I live for the CABE
I thought I fully understood the differences in our cultures being a product of the South, but I am getting an education with this thread and hope others are as well. Thank You for this thread & sharing your thoughts on the topic, it is greatly appreciated!!!!!
Gary
Seeing that you’re from the South, here’s a factoid most people are not familiar with; the origins of the Southern Dialect.
We all know the Southern Drawl or Accent is prevalent in the Southern region of America. What most people don’t know is that the dialect is due to the strong historical ties of African Americans.
When Blacks were transported to the New World, they came via the slave trade market. Charleston and Savannah were the most important ports in North America for the slave trade. Almost half of the enslaved Africans brought into this country came through the Charleston port.
Since persons with African origins were not English subjects they arrived speaking their indigenous native languages. They eventually assimilated to English but fused the new language with their native tongue to communicate with members of other African tribes, this broken English dialect was a code to speak to one another without the Master or the Overseer able to discern.
Over time, the slaves and their descendants lost most of their language and culture, however some vocabulary and grammatical features from the indigenous African languages remained and still flourishes today among the Gullah people, a small clan of African descendants off the coast of South Carolina. Their history is rich with traditions and customs dating back hundreds of years. They speak an English-based language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure. Today this linguistic style or dialect sometimes call Ebonics is largely associated with blacks in many parts of the U.S. and considered by many to be a substandard dialect but has social significance
I share this fact, because if you were to ask the ancestors of the early Southern forefathers if they can trace their origins? I imagine they'd proudly share that their family lineage goes back to the 16th and 18th centuries; European immigrants who arrived in the New World speaking fluent British English.
Yet over time these European immigrants lost their proper English and eventually began to model the language of the indentured servants they enslaved (the Mammies). These stoic black figures exhibited a strong influence on the Master’s household…working 24 / 7 raising all dem li'l white chilluns. As the popularity of this dialect grew, it eventually proliferated from one Southern generation to the next transitioning to a new dialect…commonly known as the "Southern Accent."
Today African Americans are still influencing the English language...just look at the Hip Hop culture and its impact on the young white suburbs in America.
