The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-06-10
One Of Our Dialects.
v who is North, who is South.


Two words like finger-pos beckon-
For as soon as 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 g American language y
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 mentionedD whose very ex-
istence is not widely known outside of
their respective districts. One of these
is spoken by certain class of the popu-
lation in large part of Maryland, and
especially in the city of Baltimore. No
works of the Sam Slick, Hosea Bigelow,
Artemus Ward, or Mosis Albums order
illustrate this lingual 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 small parcel by the
former, will give some idea of its chief
features:
"Say, looggayur, wurrbowtz DIS she
live atP'
80, not fur. Jist up yurr' Fait-
strit" Fayette Street,, "next to the
church.
''Ye don't call that fur, don't We? wy,
Bowltmer-strit's'' Baltimore Street) 80
graidle'' great deaD ''fu' Their n l want
to lug all that air truck. Say, wurr-
bowtz's my overcoat got to? Some per.
sons went an hid it.
mo, some person amt went an hid
yer overcoat, nuther. Eff ye'd a. went an
looked wurr we ought to look, out n the
passidge' (halD, pbehind the steps,
(stairs), eyed "a found it a-hangin' up
on the nail' (peg). "Ye jis' takes an
chucks it down anywurz wen ye comes
| i'm
well, looggayurr, now, wy can't
Billee take these yurr blame things the
seev'nin" (this afternoon) ''w'en he
comes home FIN schoolp"
"Billee don't never git home till pooty
nigh on to five, an that'd be too late fei
Missiz Jinkins to git EN-. Wy don't
we jis' take the bunn'l an go? 'Tain't
s'orful heavy"
II amt never said it was heavy yit,
am Ip''
"Well, we talks like as eff it was"
II never. Not wunst Yurr, gimme
the things, can't ye? Women is SIGH a
norful bother. They al ays has so much
to say bout nothin'.''
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 to be
the better one as far as 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 the
upper part of the State was settled. II
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 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
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