The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-11-01
NEGRO DIALECT.


We wish Mr.. Carnegie or some other
rich admirer of Americana would es-
tablish a Chair of Negro Dialect. BY
that means we might eventually have
established as the officially correct
thing dialect approximating
| that which is spoIxen by the
! typical colored people of the South
and in which prospective writer's of
negro dialect stories could receive in
! structions. There is need for some
! thing of the sort, otherwise the soft,
mellow speech of the plantation blacks
will be forever lost to literature. Ger
! tain it is that nine-tenths of the
stuff" that is palmed off on the read
! ing public as negro dialect is a base
| imitation. 1t is merely a corruption
of the English language in such man
ner as some persons ignorant of negro
characteristics imagine ignorant ne
groes would corrupt it. 1t no more
resembles the spoken language of the
Southern plantation darkies than WEIGH
or Russian resembles the liquid Ital-
ian-"the language of love"
Some days ago the New York Trib-
une attributed the following bit of
dialect to a Richmond, Va, darkey:
Dat, sab. am not a fact'ry. Dat am
SIN Johns Episcopal Church. where
Marse Patrick Henry done get up an
ak de Lawd to glib him liberty or glib
him deaf"
That is a fair sample of the North
ern-made negro dialect. 1t is of a
piece with the alleged dialect that is
written into coon" and "rag-t time"
songs, or spoken on the stage by So
called negro minstrels," who are
Northern white men with blackened
faces In the quotation from the Trib-
une the Southern-bred man will de-
tect not less than half a dozen de-
partures from the real dialect of the
negroes. The Southern negro has
extremely little use for the r; he never
employees the hard or rolling +; gut
terals and harsh aspirates are unknown
to him; there are no sharp or rasping
corners to his speech; whenever he
finds it absolutely necessary to make
the sound he does it so gently that
the consonant has more the sound of
a vowel followed by h.
1t is true that there are variations
OF the negro dialect, according to sit
uation and environment. Joel Chand-
led Harris employs one dialect, Polk
Miller another and Paul Dunbar still
another. Oddly enough, Dunhar's dia-
lect is not better than that of the aver
age white man, who attempts to write
it. 1t seems that education puts an
edge on the negroes tongue, or at least
on his photography, and leaves him
incapable of phonetic rendition of his
races characteristic speech. Messrs.
Harris and Miller may nearly ap-
proach the dialect of the blacks of
the sections in which they reside; we
have no doubt they do. But that dia-
lect is one that has been somewhat cor
rupted, or altered, by associations with
white men whom the blacks have en-
deavored to copy. The characteristic
lingo" of the blacks is to be found
only in the Underwater sections Of the
South. We do not mean that the
"gullah" of the sea islands should
be considered the characteristic dia-
lect, but it is a much nearer approach
to it than the made in New York"
variety. Between the "gullah" and
the dialect of the foothills, which lat
ter is largely the white mans, there
ought to be "a medium that could be
called characteristic. A Chair of Ne
gro Dialect such as we have suggest
ed might find that medium and give
instructions in it, to the infinite relief
of those who try to read negro dia-
lect stories but are compelled to put
them down in disgust for their libels
on the limpid language in which black
mammies crooned their charges to
sleep.