Nebraska advertiser., 1882-06-29
One OF Our Dialects.

To show who is North, who is South,
Two words like n fngerpost backon-
For Ms soon "a he opens his mouth,
One will guess and the other will reckon"
This old rhyme furnishes shibboleths
by which we may recognize two great
divisions of the e" American language"
They may be called the New England
and Virginia dialects, though each is
spoken with more or less purity, in 9th
er localities Both of them are too well
known to need any description. But
there are other provincial forms of Amer
lean speech (not subdivisions of either
of those Just mentioned) whose very ex-
istence is not widely known outside Of
their respective districts. One of these,
is spoken by certain class of the popu-
laton in large part of Maryland, and
especially in the city of Baltimore. No
works of the Sam Slick, Hosea Bigelow,
Artemus Ward, or Mosis Addums order
illustrate this lngual offshoot of our
common tongue, and yet it displays pc
culiarities which are quite as striking as
those heard farther north, south or west.
The following short dialogue between
Baltimore husband and wife, relative
to the carrying of a small parcel by the
former, will give Jome idea of its chief
features:
Say, looggayurr, wurrbowtz DIS She
live at?"
80, not fur. Jist up yurrn Fait-
strit'' (Fayette street,, "next to the
church"
"Ye don't call that fur, don't ye? wy,
Bowltmer-strit's Baltimore Streea) "a,
graidle' (great dea) "fu ther'n | want
to lug all that air truck Say, wIIsr-
l,.,.,tta'. 30
sons went an hid it.
mo, some person amt went an hid
yer overcoat, nuther. Ef ye' a went an
looked wurr ye ought to look, out'n the
passidge' (halD, "bchnd the steps,
(stairs), 'ye'd n found it a-hangin' up
on the nail'' peg). "Ye jis' takes an
chucks it down anywurz wen ye comes
in."
"Well, looggayurr, now, wy can't
Billee take these yurr blame things the
seev'nin" Qhis afternoon) ''w'en he
comes home FIN school?'
"Billee don't never git home till pooty
nigh on to five, an that'd be too late fer
Missiz Jinkins to git EN-. Wy don't
We jis' take the bunn'l an goP 'Tain't
s'orful heavy"
al amt never said it was heavy yit,
am I?'
"Well, ye talks like as eff it was"
81 never. Not wunst. Yurr, gimme
the things, cant we? Women is sich a
norful bother. They al avs has 50 much
to say bout nothn'."
Here the slamming of the ''frun-door'
behind the mans departing form cuts
off a somewhat vehement retort by that
half of him which he well knows 10 be
the better one as far as a ready flow Of
language is concerned.
Just how this Maryland dialect arose
it would be hard to say. 1t is not of
recent growth, but seems to have come
into existence at the time when tho
upper part of the State was settled. 1t
resembles in many respects the one
spoken by the lower classes in the Eng
lish counties south of the Thames, and is
not unlike what the Cockney mode Of
speech would be if the letter h were
allowed to keep its proper place. A
majority of the natives of Baltimore are
the children of people who came to that
city from other parts of the country or
from Europe. But this appears to have
made no perceptible difference in the
general form of the dialect, although it
is, like all similar relics of by-gone days
in the United States, fast dying out. In
fact, dialects are anomalies in our coun-
try, and public schools, serials, libraries,
railroads, and the various forms of bust
ness enterprise are swiftly and surely
making them things of the past In a
few more decades the public-school grad
uate, the printing office employe, or the
young commercial traveller who has
"worked his way up'' will not be likely
to say to himself: II wish father and
mother didn't have such common way
of speaking. LippincoWs Mlgazine.