into it
very few words of their native dialects, but something of the native
construction, and certain euphonic peculiarities. It is interesting to
trace their love of alliteration and a concord of sounds in this mongrel
French, which became a new colonial language. The bright and sparkling
French appears as if submitted to great heat and just on the point of
running together. There is a great family of African dialects in which
a principal sound, or the chief sound of a leading word, appears in
all the words of a sentence, from no grammatical reason at all, but to
satisfy a sweetish ear. It is like the charming gabble of children, who
love to follow the first key that the tongue strikes. Mr. Grout[L] and
other missionaries note examples of this: _Abantu bake bonke abakoluayo
ba hlala ba de ba be ba quedile_, is a sentence to illustrate this
native disposition. The alliteration is sometimes obscured by elisions
and contractions, but never quite disappears. Mr. Grout says: "So
strong is the influence of this inclination to concord produced by the
repetition of initials, that it controls the distinction of number, and
quite subordinates that of gender, and tends to mould the pronoun after
the likeness of the initial element of the noun to which it refers; as,
_Izintombi zake zi ya hamba_, 'The daughters of him they do walk.'"
These characteristics appear in the formation of the Creole French, in
connection with another childlike habit of the negro, who loves to put
himself in the objective case, and to say _me_ instead of _I_, as if he
knew that he had to be a chattel.

[Footnote K: In Cuba, the slave who had lived upon the island long
enough to learn the language was called _Ladino_, "versed in an idiom."]

[Footnote L: _American Oriental Society_, Vol. I. p. 423, _et seq._]

The article _un, une_, could not have been pronounced by a negro. It
became in his mouth _nion_. The personal pronouns _je, tu, il_, were
converted into _mo, to, ly_, and the possessive _mon, ton, son_ into
_a moue, a toue, a ly_, and were placed after the noun, which negro
dialects generally start their sentences with. Possessive pronouns had
the unmeaning syllable _quien_ before them, as, _Nous gagne quien a
nous_, for _Nous avons les notres_; and demonstrative pronouns were
changed in this way: _Mo voir z'animaux la yo_, for _J'ai vu ces
animaux_, and _Ci la yo qui te vivre,_ for _Ceux qui ont vecu._ A few
more examples will suffice to make oth