The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1901-09-27
SURPRISES Foa THE COLONEL:
. AKentRtsCyG entIema mn Who Thought

IS AL NEGROES SpOke AlIkes
~ "Brougfit TIP IN Kentucky as L was"
said a 'ffian who gets around some, sit
never occurred to me that negro could
speak any other language than his mas
ter Had taught him, and as his master
was always plain American 1t was rat
,urai that he should speak the language Of
the Americans. The first time l went to
New Orleans and heard the colored roust-
abouts and stevedores on the wharfs and
the nurses with their white charges on
the street .iabbering away in French l
could Scarcely realize that the Louisiana
darby was of the same ton as his Ken
lucky. confrere, although quite as apt as
not the parents of the French speaking
roustabouts in New Orleans had been
!" born in Kentucky and sold south.
!, 'Atithat time first heard the joke,
that--as current along the Ohio and Mis-
/; sissppi about THE German immigrant
ste9mboat:. About the second day of his
I, added to the crew, and as the raw Ger
man listened to his talk in establishment
his felld w deckhands told him that the
blaek-man used to be as white as he was,
but that two or three trips in southern
waters always turned Dutchman black,
and at the very next landing the immi-
grant slipped ashore and disappeared.
y "ORcG in Venice when / was pretty
hungry to see something American saw
black man who looked as natural as if he
. we're fresh from the blue, grass, and l
hailed him as a man nndsbrother, quite
regardless of the fact that ne have Jim
! Crow cars in Kentucky. Instead, how
ever. Of his talking to me in my own lam
guage bsSsfaEted- in on some unknown
tongue apd Eat once lie seemed to meA to
be quite the barbarian, and. I got away
= from him as fastsas could. Laters 1
learned that be was sailor from
Greek ship In the harbor. He looked like
a home darky, just the same.
; But il is in New York city that / have
found the oldest specimens. Sometimes
black, but oftener yellow, these darkies
! are at work ms walters. elevator boys and
at other light labor, and ! had frequently
. heard them talk with an accent which
: was accounted for by the fact that they
were ,frppiTthss West Indies, / supposed
their broken English was the result of
: their efforts to get away from their moth
er tongue. but recent inquiry develops the
fact that ihrH great many instances they
know only broken, English and had been
taught to speak 1t so. or rather they had
not been taught at all, BIZ; had picked up
the language as they heard it spoken by
their paienrs and 'elders.i y 40 raI
The last one, ] talked to. was an ele-
vator boy, and he appeared to speak with
such an effort that began to question
him how long he had been in the United
States Gndr-where he had come from.
Antigua owas his Home. 6f' had beer, in
the United States a year. and lie only
knew brokenia English and had never
known any other language. l could hard
ly believe him and watched closely to
catch him lapsing into his mother tongue,
but he daf mot? <sim ptyobecadse broken
English WAS all he knew. He had an ex-
cellent cdnFland of that. but excellence
in this regard is hattlly TO be, commended,
I think. It's noticeable that these West
India colofed people do not talk after the
fashion of our southern negroes, and they
use the r aslfteely 7as do northern peo-
ple."-Detroit Free Press.