The Pidgin English is essentially as old as any other variety of speech in Northern America (Finkelman, 2006). African American English is a variety of English influenced by African languages through the colonial age, but not primarily from African languages and later influenced by American English. The connection between African American speech, African languages, and mainstream American English has been difficult to prove because of the little evidence of African languages spoken during the colonial epoch. The slaves imported from Africa West Indies, Europe, and other places differed immensely in their linguistic solutions, which played a crucial role in the development of Pidgin English.
Pidgin is a simplified, improvised language that develops to accomplish the communication requirements of people who do not have a common language but are brought together by circumstances, which force them to communicate (Dillard, 1980). The slaves came from all over West Africa, and they spoke diverse languages. They needed to communicate; therefore, they adopted English as their common language, which was their masters’ language. The English speakers perceived these people as free labor rather than humans, and, therefore, as long as they understood enough to take their orders, there was no need to teach them proper English. The slaves did not have any reason to adhere closely to Standard English, and so they adopted what they heard and combined it with some grammatical rules from their native languages. This is how African American Vernacular English was born. The African American English possesses features of native, African languages and the American language introduced during the colonial era and handed down through generations as part of a common cultural heritage.
Language is of more than words, and Creoles as well as African Language elements most likely influenced the structure of African American English during the colonial era in ways still evident to present. An example is a double negation, which characterized most West African languages, and it still exists in the African American language. This language varied considerably since slaves came from all over with different linguistic features. The slaves from Northern and southern colonies learned English from the English speakers from their regions in the seventeenth century. The slaves in South Carolina and Georgia developed Gullah dialect, while Caribbean creoles influenced African American speech all over their colonies during the eighteenth century.
British Generals released several black loyalists during the revolutionary war who later settled in Nova Scotia around 1815 (Finkelman, 2006). They populated North Preston and Samana Peninsula, presently the Dominican Republic together with former slaves. It is believed that since the African Americans from Samana and Nova Scotia remained rather isolated from those early settlements, their speech still holds features of earlier African American English which were lost in other varieties (Kautzsch, 2002). At times, it is convenient to generalize African American speech, but sometimes it is significant to remember that African Americans have never spoken in a uniform language. The African American English and the American English developed continuously throughout the colonial era and could never be summed up as a single type, style, or variety. The evolution of the various languages depended on the geographical location of the speakers and interactions with different language speakers.
A language develops according to the precise needs of the people who live in the geographic location at the time, and they share a way of life and culture (Finkelman, 2006). The language these people use intertwines them with their identity and culture, and ultimately shapes them. It gives them the richness of communication which is lost if an individual is unable to speak their language. Human beings are social and, therefore, have to communicate even if there is no common language to use. This is what happened to the slaves, transported from halfway across the world with their respective cultures and confined to a single location. They had to find a unifying factor because they faced similar predicaments even though they were essentially different.
A group of people cannot survive without having a common language to bind them. The slaves never learned English from the English speakers, but only knew a few words, which were commonly used on them while taking orders. These slaves had their own native languages, which were diverse, but they had to develop a common language, which they would all understand as well as understand their masters.
Identity is an accomplishment; it is fragmentary which can be changed to suit peoples’ present conditions (Kautzsch, 2002). The African Americans had to assign themselves a new identity in tandem with their present conditions. Apart from just communicating, which would otherwise suffice when done by sign language, they needed to have an identity, which shaped how they thought and organized themselves. They embraced their new location and had to evolve for survival. It is through the power of language and identity seeking that the African American language developed and evolved over the years. Language is conclusively a centrally unifying element of civilization.
References
Dillard, J. L. (1980). Perspectives on American English. The Hague: Mouton.
Finkelman, P. (2006). Encyclopedia of African American history: 1619-1895 : from the colonial period to the age of Frederick Douglass. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Kautzsch, A. (2002). The historical evolution of earlier African American English: An empirical comparison of early sources. Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.