When did Slaves in the USA learn English?

[suplex3000]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

 

[Pogo]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

They did. Many times. In fact the second independent republic in the Americas, after us, was the result of exactly that, although they spoke French (Haiti).


The logistics of the work they were brought for required that some spoken language be taught, but literacy was forbidden by law. A Virginia statute:

[E]very assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly. Any justice may issue his warrant to any office or other person, requiring him to enter any place where such assemblage may be, and seize any negro therein; and he, or any other justice, may order such negro to be punished with stripes. (Wiki)
​

Note: "Negroes", not "slaves". It was forbidding literacy for black people, literally.


Also keep in mind, with slaves having been distributed -- a few here, some down the road, others in another state --- and no mass communication methods, they were in a position of individuals or at best small groups, not large and organizable ones. So the first and most available form of "revolt" was simply the same as it would be for any prisoner -- escape. And that was an issue throughout the all times of slavery (here and everywhere else as well). And escape they did, when they could.

Actually the very first African slaves ever brought here, in the 1530s -- by some Spanish to what is now South Carolina (about 150 of them) -- were able to overpower their captors and get away. They are presumed to have found safety with native Indians and interbred with them. So revolt has always been a part of slavery.

Of course the history books we're usually given in school, being written by the victor Establishment, don't spend a whole lot of time on Establishment failures. But the stories are there if one seeks them out.

 

[squeeze berry]

looks like their descendants still have major difficulties still after all these generations

 

[Publius1787]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

they did revolt before the Civil War. Blacks still do today.

1526
The first slave revolt in continental North America was in South Carolina in 1526. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, a Spanish colonizer founded a town near the Pedee River. This settlement consisted of 500 Spaniards and 100 enslaved Africans. Illness soon hit the settlement and Ayllon died. The South Carolina Indians became hostile to the settlement, and in November the enslaved Africans revolted, killing their Spanish masters, and escaped to Indians. The surviving 150 returned to Haiti in December, 1526. [Herbert Aptheker, Negro Slave Revolts in the United States 1526-1860 pp. 16- 17; Joseph Cephas Carroll, Slave Insurrections in the United States 1800-1865. Reprinted by the Negro Universities press: Westport, Connecticut, 1971. p.13]

YORK COUNTY SERVANTS’ PLOT
1660s In Virginia York County servants plotted to rebel over their “hard usage.” Leader of the uprising, which was betrayed before it went into effect, was an indentured servant named Isaac Friend. Friend’s master, James Goodwin, had apparently restricted his servants’ diet to corn and water. Friend presided at a meeting at which they complained that they “were kept according to the law of the country,” and asked them to join in a petition to send for England to the king to have it redressed. In the meantime, Friend declared that he would lead the group to get arms and that they would fight for their liberty and freedom, and then they go through the country and kill those who made any opposition and that they would either be freed or die. [Records of York County Court,”WMQ 1st ser., XI (1902), pp. 34-37.]

INDENTURED SERVANTS PLAN REVOLT IN GLOUCESTER
1663
Disaffected servants in Gloucester County, Virginia planned to revolt. There is some evidence that the plot leaders were convicts, primarily Cromwellian soldiers: “For the poor people becoming therefore very uneasy, their murmurings were watched and fed by several mutinous and rebellious Oliverian soldiers that were sent thither as servants. A James city grand jury presented nine “laborers” of Gloucester County charged “as false Traytors against his most Excellent Prince, of Soveraigne Lored Charles ye second.” They apparently planned to break into a couple of houses to steal arms and ammunition with which they would march to the Governor to demand freedom from their contacts. [Robert Beverly, The History and present State of Virginia, New York, 1972 p.32; Also see “The Servants’ Plot of 1663,” VMHB, XV (1908), pp. 38-41.]

AFRICANS AND EUROPEAN PLAN REVOLT TOGETHER
The first serious planned uprising involving Africans in English America occurred in Virginia in 1663 on September 13th. John Berkenhead, a Black servant to Major John Smith of Gloucester County, betrayed an extensive conspiracy of African slaves and white indentured servants. Information on this incident is scanty. However, what is clear regarding this incident is that both African and White indentured servants in Gloucester County jointly planned to rebel and overthrow their masters, and, thus, secure their freedom, but the plan was betrayed by an indentured servant, John Berkenhead. An unknown number of rebels were executed, and their bloody heads placed on chimney tops. [Hening, Virginia Statutes at Large, II, p. 204.]

PLAN TO EXTERMINATE WHITES
1687
There was a large-scale plan for rebellion in the Northern Neck region of Virginia. This plan called for the extermination of whites, but the plan was discovered, and the leaders arrested and executed. Afterwards, the Council placed a ban upon public funerals for dead slaves, and the House of Burgesses passed stricter laws for the prevention of insurrections. [McIlwaine, H. ed., Executive Journals, Council of the Colony of Virginia, I, pp. 85-87.]

BLACK CONVICTED OF PROMOTING AN INSURRECTION
1688
A Maryland slave, Sam, belonging to Richard Metcalfe was tried as the leader behind conspiracies aimed at rebellion. The only available details regarding this event are that he was convicted of having “several times endeavored to promote a Negro Insurrection in this Colony." For this crime against the state, he was severely beaten and forced to wear, for life, “a strong iron collar affixed about his neck” with the death penalty for its removal. [William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, X p. 177.]

BLACKS AND NATIVE AMERICANS PLAN REBELLION
1690
In 1690, Mr. Isaac Morril of New Jersey came to Newbury, Massachusetts, and attempted to get the African and Indian slaves to flee to the French in Canada and then join the latter in an attack upon the English. One Black, a slave of Mr. Moody, as well as another Jersey person, George Major, were implicated, but their fate is not known. [William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, X, p. 177].

LARGE NUMBER OF SLAVES RAVAGED PLANTATIONS
1691
A slave named Mingoe, who had fled his master in Middlesex County, Virginia, gathered a large number of followers and ravaged plantations, particularly in Rappahannock County. These Negroes not only took cattle and hogs, but “two guns, a Carbyne & other things.” What became of this incident of rebellion in not recorded. [MS. Order Book, Middlesex County, 1680-1694, pp. 526-27.]


GENERAL BUTLER REPORTS SLAVE INSURRECTION
General Butler, while stationed in New Orleans reported a slave insurrection on August 2, 1862: “An insurrection broke out among the negroes, a few miles up the river, which caused the women of that neighborhood to apply to an armed boat, belonging to us, passing down, for aid; and the incipient revolt was stopped by informing the negroes that we should repel an attack by them upon the women and children.” [New York Daily Tribune, August 14, 1862].



EDITED FOR LENGTH. This was a ridiculously long post.

 

[buddhallah_the_christ]

Did they fantastically learn English or were they taught? Sometimes I am not sure that they have succeed in that task. If this really hindered the Civil War who and why did teach them? English might to be a language for elite.

 

[Pogo]

Did they fantastically learn English or were they taught? Sometimes I am not sure that they have succeed in that task. If this really hindered the Civil War who and why did teach them? English might to be a language for elite.

Considering the way this post is worded.... yeah you might to point have.
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[Shotgun_Sammy]

Where do you think the southern accent or draw came from?

Slaves learning a new language.

I love the irony.

 

[Pogo]

Where do you think the southern accent or draw came from?

Slaves learning a new language.

I love the irony.

Hehe, no it doesn't work that way. Slaves simply learned the accent that was around them already. And btw "Southern accent" is more than one accent anyway. It would be quite rare, for instance to hear a black person speaking with the one used around here in Appalachia. It happens, but when it does it's startling.

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

Anthropologist have tracked the southern draw to the slaves. When you a couple hundred thousand people learning a new language.

I know there are several accent variants in the English language.

Same way Jamaican English evolved.

 

[Carla_Danger]

looks like their descendants still have major difficulties still after all these generations

 

[Pogo]

Anthropologist have tracked the southern draw to the slaves. When you a couple hundred thousand people learning a new language.

I know there are several accent variants in the English language.

Same way Jamaican English evolved.

Complete Bullshit. I'm a linguist pal, don't try to snow me.

Slaves, like anyone learning the language around them, picked up what they heard. A regional accent does not change because some new element is in the area, many of which don't even HAVE slaves. Rather, the new speakers mimic what they hear. They have to --- it's all they have for a reference.

Jamaican English would have been established by the English-speaking settlers that arrived there, which in the case of that island and neighboring West Indies involved a lot of Irish slaves (indentured servants). Again, the Irish brought what was already established (in Ireland). It wasn't formed from Africans who didn't even speak English. That's absurd.

African influence would manifest in the AAVE (African American Vernacular English) dialect in the form of distinctly separate devices such as its idiosyncratic verb tenses and double negatives. But those are distinct and separate from Standard Southern English or Standard American English. What they have in common as distinct from the North, like vowel sounds, are picked up (received) from the original source -- which would be the white Southerers who were speaking English first. The cart cannot lead the horse here. Linear time works the same way in the South as it does in the North. Or anywhere else.

 

[Moonglow]

looks like their descendants still have major difficulties still after all these generations

Yeah, them whites have a hard time pronouncing English correctly in the South and the NE....

 

[Pogo]

looks like their descendants still have major difficulties still after all these generations

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Now that's much more like the Appalachian-Southern accent I have around here. You'd almost never hear a black using it (since there weren't many slaves in these here parts). But here again, you've got one flavor of Southern accent forming without African influence. Because Africa is not where it comes from -- England is where it comes from.

Say, how come Lincoln Chafee is driving that tractor?

 

[Shotgun_Sammy]

Say whatever you want linguist. The southern draw originate with the slaves

 

[Pogo]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

Back to the OP question -- slave traders when they went to load up human cargo, would deliberately pick an assortment from different tribes which had mutually unintelligible languages, exactly for that purpose -- to make intercommunication between them difficult so that they couldn't plan insurrections.

Kind of ironic since on one hand they're telling themselves their cargo are sub-human and unintelligent in order to justify sub-human practices --- yet on the other had actively working to prevent communication since they recognize their captives are indeed intelligent enough to do it. And once they developed a common language (a pidgin would have come first) -- they did.

 

[Pogo]

Say whatever you want linguist. The southern draw originate with the slaves

Horseshit. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Why don't black people in England have that accent? Why don't Spanish-speaking blacks in Cuba or French-speaking blacks in Haiti have it?

Because, again, they picked up what they heard. When you're learning a new language, you don't get to dictate what it sounds like. You take what you're given.

 

[Muhammed]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

Probably because most of them had no interest in revolting.

 

[Pogo]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

Probably because most of them had no interest in revolting.

That's absurd. They revolted, rose up, and escaped whenever they could, from the very first Africans brought here five hundred years ago. As has already been documented here. Wtf do you think the Underground Railroad was? A city tourist trap in Atlanta? Why would there be laws all over the place about fugitive slaves? Why was it made illegal to teach blacks English?? Why did slave traders deliberately select mutually nonintelligible language groups and group them together?

All to try to control slave revolts, that's why.

And again, the second independent republic in the Americas was born out of a slave revolt. that would be 1803.

 

[Muhammed]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

Probably because most of them had no interest in revolting.

That's absurd. They revolted, rose up, and escaped whenever they could, from the very first Africans brought here five hundred years ago. As has already been documented here. Wtf do you think the Underground Railroad was? A city tourist trap in Atlanta? Why would there be laws all over the place about fugitive slaves? Why was it made illegal to teach blacks English?? Why did slave traders deliberately select mutually nonintelligible language groups and group them together?

All to try to control slave revolts, that's why.

And again, the second independent republic in the Americas was born out of a slave revolt. that would be 1803.

I call bullshit. Less than 1% revolted.

You see here in America they had adequate food and shelter. And they could go to sleep without worrying that a neighboring tribe was going to raid their villiage and slaughter half the people in the middle of the night. Actually, most of the African slaves brought here were POWs.

 

[Pogo]

I just finished a part of the book "The Americas" by Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood which describes how slaves found it hard to communicate due to cultural and language barriers between them. These barriers persisted which helped the white slave owners since the slaves couldn't organize and revolt.
So the question is when and how did the slaves learn English, and if they did before the Civil War why didnt they revolt?

Probably because most of them had no interest in revolting.

That's absurd. They revolted, rose up, and escaped whenever they could, from the very first Africans brought here five hundred years ago. As has already been documented here. Wtf do you think the Underground Railroad was? A city tourist trap in Atlanta? Why would there be laws all over the place about fugitive slaves? Why was it made illegal to teach blacks English?? Why did slave traders deliberately select mutually nonintelligible language groups and group them together?

All to try to control slave revolts, that's why.

And again, the second independent republic in the Americas was born out of a slave revolt. that would be 1803.

I call bullshit. Less than 1% revolted.

You see here in America they had adequate food and shelter. And they could go to sleep without worrying that a neighboring tribe was going to raid their villiage and slaughter half the people in the middle of the night.

I see you have a troubled relationship with historical fact. What the hell gives you the idea that life in bondage, dehumanization, being sold like cattle, being whipped into submission, having one's family torn apart, being murdered and raped with regularity and impunity, let alone being worked into the ground, would be preferable to your inane fantasy idea of "village raids in the middle of the night"?

Oh and while we're at it --- LINK for your "less than 1%" is where?