language retentions

Other research revealed beyond Hollaways focus on names was how Africans begin to speak English if they all ready didn't know it when they came here. Most Africans new English or a little English that was coming from west Indies or central Africa, the African along the coast was speaking Creole or pidgin. Most of the Africans had to learn English and fast because they were house servants; they picked up English faster because they interacted with the Europeans more then the field slaves.

Hollaways talks about how younger slaves learned how to speak and learn English before the adult slaves. The Africans that was born here had little trouble learning English than the ones that was not. The adult slaves would either speak no English or bad English, unlike their children. There were still generations of interactions with African speech patterns produced with the white Southern accent.

Asante's argument about Language retentions

The problem and weakness that I see about Asante's theory, is that Asante did not realize that Africans had their own way of speaking way before the came over to North America. Asante stated that most words from the African origin are either misspelled or African words interpreted as English words that blacks could not pronounce. Since Asante and other white American linguists failed to realize that Africans brought their own way of speaking habits with them; so they all think it's broken down or washed down English.

Asante also believe this is true because of slavery. He think during slavery, blacks lost their form of previous cultures. Asante says that slaveholders prohibit slaves from participating in traditional ceremonies and rituals; so Africans did not develop complete and formal art form. Then Turner says that no displaced of people have ever completely lost the forms or their previous culture and black retained basic components of the African rather than specific artifacts.