Notes by an editor on dialect usage in
accounts by interviews with ex-slaves. (To be used in
conjunction with Supplementary Instructions 9E.)
Simplicity in recording the dialect is to be desired in
order to hold the interest and attention of the readers. It
seems to me that readers are repelled by pages sprinkled
with misspellings, commas and apostrophes. The value of
exact phonetic transcription is, of course, a great one. But
few artists attempt this completely. Thomas Nelson Page was
meticulous in his dialect; Joel Chandler Harris less
meticulous but in my opinion even more accurate. But the
values they sought are different from the values that I
believe this book of slave narratives should have. Present
day readers are less ready for the over-stress of phonetic
spelling than in the days of local color. Authors realize
this: Julia Peterkin uses a modified Gullah instead of
Gonzales' carefully spelled out Gullah. Howard Odum has
questioned the use of goin' for going since the g is seldom
pronounced even by the educated.
Truth to idiom is more important, I believe, than truth to
pronunciation. Erskine Caldwell in his stories of Georgia,
Ruth Suckow in stories of Iowa, and Nora Neale Hurston in
stories of Florida Negroes get a truth to the manner of
speaking without excessive misspellings. In order to make
this volume of slave narratives more appealing and less
difficult for the average reader, I recommend that truth to
idiom be paramount, and exact truth to pronunciation
secondary.
I appreciate the fact that many of the writers have recorded
sensitively. The writer who wrote "ret" for right is
probably as accurate as the one who spelled it "raght." But
in a single publication, not devoted to a study of local
speech, the reader may conceivably be puzzled by different
spellings of the same word. The words "whafolks," "whufolks,"
"whi'foiks," etc., can all be heard in the South. But "whitefolks"
is easier for the reader, and the word itself is suggestive
of the setting and the attitude.
Words that definitely have a notably different pronunciation
from the usual should be recorded as heard. More important
is the recording of words with a different local meaning.
Most important, however, are the turns of phrase that have
flavor and vividness. Examples occurring in the copy I read
are:
durin' of de war
outmen my daddy (good, but unnecessarily put into quotes)
piddled in de fields
skit of woods
kinder chillish
There are, of course, questionable
words, for which it may be hard to set up a single standard.
Such words are:
paddyrollers, padrollers, pattyrollers for patrollers
missis, mistess for mistress
marsa, massa, maussa, mastuh for master
ter, tuh, teh for to
I believe that there should be, for this book, a uniform
word for each of these.
The following list is composed of words which I think should
not be used. These are merely samples of certain faults:
1. ah for I
2. bawn for born
3. capper for caper
4. com' for come
5. do for dough
6. ebry, ev'ry for every
7. hawd for hard
8. muh for my
9. nekid for naked
10. ole, ol' for old
11. ret, raght for right
12. sneik for snake
13. sowd for sword
14. sto' for store
15. teh for tell
16. twon't for twan't
17. useter, useta for used to
18. uv for of
19. waggin for wagon
20. whi' for white
21. wuz for was
I should like to recommend that the stories be told in the
language of the ex-slave, without excessive editorializing
and "artistic" introductions on the part of the interviewer.
The contrast between the directness of the ex-slave speech
and the roundabout and at times pompous comments of the
interviewer is frequently glaring. Care should be taken lest
expressions such as the following creep in: "inflicting
wounds from which he never fully recovered" (supposed to be
spoken by an ex-slave).
Finally, I should like to recommend that the words darky and
nigger and such expressions as "a comical little old black
woman" be omitted from the editorial writing. Where the
ex-slave himself uses these, they should be retained.
Slave Narratives, 1941