**** Pidgins--references to them in colonial North America

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UP: <[LINK]> <[LINK]>

Gerald Mullin, in his PhD dissertation, ????, spent a portion of one chapter examining the reports of language styles of runaway slaves as reported in runaway advertisements. Often these descriptions were linked to an African ethnicity and remarks about the language used. Occasionally mention of English regional dialectal features would be made. Mullin and others have demonstrated that most runaways were not creole, but African-born. They most likely spoke pidgins. The varieties were heterogenous, and differed significantly from modern varieties of North American Black English and colonial varieties of European English. The latter difference is substantiated by the fact that these features were considered distinctive enough to identify individual slaves by. This implies that the differences varied among individual enslaved Africans and also between the white and black communities.

-- Evidence of an African origin for these varieties <[LINK]>

............................................ \/PgDn\/ for sources

............................................... /\PgUp/\ for text

Mullin, PhD thesis (pp??) and Flight and Rebellion

Runaway ads

Littlefield for ethnicity and place of birth