NEGRO ENGLISH, WITH REFERENCE 
PARTICULARLY TO BARBADOS. 
By J. GRAHAM CRUICKSHANK. 
But, planter, from what coast soe’er they sail, 
Buy not the old ; they ever sullen prove ; 
With heartfelt anguish they lament their home ; 
They will not, cannot work ; they never learn 
Thy native language. 
—The Sugar Cane (1764). 
An old planter, speaking of the empoldering of the Guiana coastland, said they 
had to teach the slaves not only how to work but how to talk. The remark bears 
out the poetic injunction of Dr. Grainger. To learn English was the first mental 
effort of the African transported to British America. 
There were two causes at work. In the first place, on the slave-ship and after- 
wards on the plantation, everything was done to discourage the African dialects. 
The small number of Whites felt that they lived, as it were, in a powder magazine. 
If the preponderating Blacks spoke a language known only to themselves 
the risk of ignition was greater. Surgeon John Atkins points out in his 
*“ Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies ” (1736) what extraordinary 
caution was necessary when the “ lading ”’ of a slaver “* was of one language.” 
Therefore he advises the mixture of dialects. And Richard Ligon—the delightful, 
humorous, yet faithful Ligon—in “ A True and Exact History of the Island of 
Barbados * (1657) notes as one of the main reasons which “ stop all designs of 
massacre by the Negroes upon the Christians ” in that plantation, that the 
Negroes are “fetch’d from severall parts of Africa, who speake several languages, 
and by that means one of them understands not another.” 
Thus discouraged, the African dialects were bound to fall into decay. They 
had been kept alive not in books but orally. When they became unin- 
telligible orally and fell into disuse there was nothing to keep them from being 
forgotten. 
Nor did the Negroes apparently make any effort to remember them. Old books 
tell us that the “‘ Creole” Negroes—those of the type neither Carib nor African but 
true Barbadian born—were amused at the rude jargon, eked out by intonation 
and gesticulation, of the “ salt waters.” ‘ Monk’ Lewis, the quaint, kind-hearted 
Jamaica proprietor, distributing presents to his Negroes in January, 1816, noted 
how delighted beyond measure the “‘ Creoles ’’ were when some of the ‘“ African 
rude negroes ” made a low curtsey in intimation of their gratitude, and exclaimed 
“T’ank massa!’ Doubtless the “‘ African rude negroes” were particularly 
pleased with themselves. 
Even generally by the African himself, no effort was made to retain the African 
dialects. On the contrary the African, with his wonderful imitative and assimila- 
tive faculty, rapidly became philologically a Briton. 
