In Twain's short story, the first linguistic feature that jumped out at me was in the letters, and lack thereof, in certain words. The most consistent and obvious to me was how any "th" was replaced by a "d" or was left off entirely. Likewise, many consonant endings such as the 'g' in "ing" were simply dropped while the vowel beginnings of some words were also dropped.
Other than sounds of words, syntactical things of note included very long, repetitive sentences; the word "and" (spelled "an'") was used again and again in a single sentence. Similarly to most English dialects, Aunt Rachel primarily used sentence with a subject-first, verb-after structure.
I also noticed the use of reflexive pronouns more frequently than I am used to hearing. For example, "De Gen'l he tole me...." (Twain).
The differences between the way I speak English and the way Aunt Rachel did are many. I am sure there are many more that I missed, did not understand, or did not know how to describe and explain. I look forward to learning more about why African American slaves in writing frequently are recorded as speaking in this particular dialect that is not completely different from that of Southern Americans today.
Twain does simplify his writing style to reflect the language. He captures the language by using the way the people actually speak instead of how they should speak. Reflexive pronouns are commonly used which happens regularly in southern language; even more so in past years. This could be attributed to the lack of importance put on education; especially for the African-American community.
ReplyDelete