In the mother
countries language continued to renew itself as it flowed along, by
elisions, by the adoption and legitimatizing of slang words (as for
instance the word "cab," to which Dean Swift objected on the ground that
it was slang for "cabriolet"), and by all the other means through which
our vocabularies are forever changing. But to the colonies these changes
were not carried, and such changes as occurred in the French and English
of America were, for the most part, separate and distinct (as exampled
by such Creole words as "banquette" for "sidewalk," in place of the
French word _trottoir_, and the word "baire," whence comes the American
term "mosquito bar.") The influence of colloquial French from Canada may
also be traced in New Orleans, and the language there was further
affected by the strange jargon spoken by the Creole negro--precisely as
the English dialect of negroes in other parts of the South may be said
to have affected the speech of all the Southern States.
Between the dialect of the Louisiana Cajan and that of the French
Canadian of Quebec and northern New York there is a strong resemblance;
but the Creole negro language is a thing entirely apart, being made up,
it is said, partly from French and partly from African word sounds, just
as the "gulla" of the South Carolina coast is made up from African and
English.
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