Re: dialect songs

[Danny]

...I have a question about the performance of Work's songs that I'm hoping one of you musicians can help me with... massively "incorrect" dialect lyrics ... wouldn't this have undercut sales in the day? Not because they were considered offensive, but it seems way harder to memorize lyrics that consist half of nonsense versions of corrupted English. Do you think people might have more or less substituted real English for some passages? Just curious.

Pvt Schnapps raises a good question. I tend to agree with Carl though, that it’s likely P/E/C that most folk would have had little trouble with the Minstrel dialects if they wanted to sing them that way, especially the younger ones (common soldiers included). For those that couldn't pick it up by ear the original sheet music clearly spelled out the words phoenetically. ( and btw, teens today - your teens - commonly repeat shotgun rap lyrics verbatim, and i-tunes and mp3's don't even come with printed lyrics).

Still, dialect songs were uncomfortable to some. Researchers of Stephen Foster suspect he sold authorship of one of his early dialect songs "Old Folks at Home" to the stage Minstrel E.P. Christy in part to preserve his own name for his more refined songs. Not realizing how popular that song would become, Foster sold it for five bucks. He only later realized what a financial mistake he had made, especially since people in-the-know knew he had written it anyway. He penned a note to Christy asking that authorship of the music be returned to him, to no avail.

Lesson learned, still Foster would (as he explained to Christy) try to “reform” minstrelsy by writing more refined lyrics, not "trashy and really offensive words." That gave us ‘Nelly Was A Lady” and the like later on.

Dan Wykes
Fat Neck Mess

[Crockett]

Re: dialect songs

"Do you think people might have more or less substituted real English for some passages? Just curious."

I am curious as to what someone's definition of "real English" is first. I content that there is no such thing.

Joe Mode

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: dialect songs

"Do you think people might have more or less substituted real English for some passages? Just curious."

I am curious as to what someone's definition of "real English" is first. I content that there is no such thing.

Joe Mode

Well, having given us the example of "content" for "contend," you do make a point. ;)

But actually, dialect depends on some consistency in the language it riffs on. If people don't consistently use the word "the," for example, then "de" loses some of its ethnic humor.

The problem that I had in looking at some pieces, like "Corporal Schnapps" -- a little less with "Babylon Is Fallen" -- is slight inconsistencies in the dialect. In blackface minstrelry there seems to be a convention where "v" becomes "b" and "th" becomes "d." In "dutch" songs you get "p" for "b" and "sh" for "s" (at least at the start of words).

But look at a passage like this:

They kives me hart-pred, tougher as a rock
It almost preaks mine zhaw;
I schplits him some-times mit an iron wedge
And cuts him up mit a saw.
Dey kives me peef, so ferry ferry salt
Like Sodom's wife, you know;
I surely tinks dey put him in der prine
Von hundred years ago.

Py'n py we takes von city in der South
We schtays there von whole year,
I kits me sour krout much as I can eat,
And plenty loccar pier.
I meets von lady repel in der schtreet
So handsome ef fer I see;
I makes to her von ferry callant pow
Put ah! she schpits on me.

Here "wedge" is spelled straight up, though maybe it should be "vetch", and the "d" stays soft in "hundred," but "lager" becomes "loccar." Not quite the same sounds, but similar.

Similar little things crop up in other dialect songs -- not surprising when you have Anglo-Saxon authors trying to convey the humor of dialects they don't actually speak. It's just enough to complicate things a little.

There's nothing wrong in this, and I wasn't thinking it vulgar. If anything, I could see songs like this presenting a kind of culturally acceptable parlor-vulgarity. But I know that I've had problems remembering exactly how to mangle the English that underlies "Year of Jubilo" and I was just wondering if others did, too, both now and then.

It's no big thing, really. I just get curious about stuff.

[Crockett]

Re: dialect songs

Michael,

I wasn't making an example, I was making a typo.

My point stems from this odd belief from some that their particular dialect or form of English is correct or right as compared to other's dialect or form of speech. Southerners in particular catch hell all of the time in this regard.

As for the dialect found in certain songs, I find that some authors or composers try too hard at times to create something they have no knowledge of, whether in song lyrics or in story form. Sut Lovingood comes to mind by G.W. Harris. This one is grossly exaggerated. The 2nd South Carolina String Band seem to do a pretty good job with the dialect of the times.

On a side note, if you have ever read slave interviews or slave narratives one can see a more authentic rendition of the dialect or at least an attempt to record said dialect by the interviewer. And boy, sometimes it is awfully hard to read.
Also, my great aunt was dutch and other than substituting her Vs for her Ws, she didn't use any of the variations mentioned in the Corporal Schnapps song. She may have before she had a sound grasp of English though.
Joe Mode

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: dialect songs

Your points are well taken. Sorry about the tease on the typo.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: dialect songs

Hallo!

"Also, my great aunt was dutch and other than substituting her Vs for her Ws, she didn't use any of the variations mentioned in the Corporal Schnapps song. She may have before she had a sound grasp of English though."

As a "student of dialect" (particularly 19th and 20th century Germen regional dialects and their decline and rescuing...)...

Question...

Only "V's" and "W's?" I am curious about the "th's," "j's", and particularly soft ""ch's?"

IMHO, how far into regionalisms, regional affectations, accents, pronounciations, and even true "dialects" can be a matter of:

1. the "intent" of the writer as to ridicule, cartooning/lampooning, class humor, social commentary or social effect

2. a Real World factor driven by the person's acculturation and education, and the living away from the language or the "accented" affectations.

My German mother, an English speaker for 60 years, still have not mastered
the English, and her "accent" is riddled with "wayse" for vase, "shirts" for church," "chelly" for jelly, "wit" for with, etc.
My mom also speaks German Modern Hessian Dialect, and understands but can only speak some of the Old Hessian Dialect spoken by her parents and grandparents.
I dabble in High German, Modern Hessian, Modern Bavarian, and Modern Saxon. And have a devil of time with WWI German reenactors who only look to High German and do not grasp that a pre WWI Bavarian would not have likley understood a Schlesian.

And who, living in Ireland, took a while to understand that "De't' to traiturs!"
was not "Debt to traitors!"

One, two, tree!

;)

Curt

[Danny]

Re: dialect songs

The problem that I had in looking at some pieces... is slight inconsistencies in the dialect. In blackface minstrelry there seems to be a convention where "v" becomes "b" and "th" becomes "d." ...It's no big thing, really. I just get curious about stuff.

Michael - Let's hope curious is still ok.

On the Dutch dialect I have nothing, Curt seems to be tracking it. But, keep or toss, I can point to quite a good analysis of slave dialect speech - the kind that professional Minstrels were attempting to mimic for comic effect. It's in a book made from first-hand wartime notes on slaves of the Port Royal Islands, among the first to be liberated (or stolen, depending on how you look at it) during the CW.

The book is "Slave Songs of the United States", 1867, William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison (large parts donated by Col. Higginson, the Union officer commanding the area who was fascinated by the culture and made copius notes on it). If interested, the whole book is at this link below; the lower half of page xxiii is where the dialect discussion starts:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LHktAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=SLAVE+SONGS+OF+THE+UNITED+STATES#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Dan Wykes
Fat Neck Mess

[Danny]

Re: dialect songs

Hallo! "Also, my great aunt was dutch and other than substituting her Vs for her Ws, she didn't use any of the variations mentioned in the Corporal Schnapps song. She may have before she had a sound grasp of English though."... As a "student of dialect" (particularly 19th and 20th century Germen regional dialects and their decline and rescuing. I dabble in High German, Modern Hessian, Modern Bavarian, and Modern Saxon... Curt

Curt -

Our Concertina player's researching 32nd Indiana (v. inf) and it's German-speaking conscripts, his great grandfather for one. If you have any recommendations on 19th century G. dialect would appreciate a p.m.

At the same time, Fat Necks trying to piece together a cannon drill in German, not for our legacy unit but authentic to others we might muster with.

Gott Mit Uns.

Dan Wykes
Fat Neck Mess

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: dialect songs

Hallo!

Herr Dan...

It might would be hijacking the thread, but in my heresies (that pre-WWII German reenactors don't want to hear) it is largely impossible to adopt the
regional dialects (and not just accents) because they have largely died out several generations ago.

There is an effort underway in some of parts of Germany to dig out and preserve what dialects can still be found, and teach them in school or adult classes.

But, short of being in Germany, in those areas... the best German reenactors can do is to hope to use as much of the modern "High German" as they can and ignore the actual, factual history.

Dialects were a problem in old Germany and the 19th century pre unification of twenty some (26? without counting) German states, duchies, free cities, etc. "High German" was an attempt to get around the problem of one dialect speaker not being able to understand a different dialect speaker.
It was a clever idea, but was dependent upon formal education which did not reach out in the hinterland or out of cities.
During WWI, the Germans recruited and grouped their armies by region so the troops had a chance are understanding one another.

An example would be how the modern dialects handle final "g's" whether a "k's," hard "g's," or even soft "g's" that sound like "sh."

"Alte" dialect is worse. For example... "Guten Morgen." in Old Hessian sounds like "moya." Or the Main River, pronounced in modern Hessian as "mine," in old Hessian was "mar."

In 2006 I was in the countryside Franken, once a co-kingdom of Bavaria, where the locals still speak old Franconian. My friend, a Bavarian living half an hour away, stopped a farmer asking for directions. When he came back, we asked what did he say? My friend said he only understood about one word in ten, and did not know.

Perhaps not so oddly enough, Germans are much like Americans in that they
tease, rib, insult, and put-down the dialects/accents of other German states.
Particularly the Bavarians as the Southern "hillbillies" or the Prussians "aristocrats" who talk looking down the high held noses.

IMHO, not knowing the ethno-regional make-up of the German unit, it is likely that any unit was either a cluster of regional folks, or possibly a composite of Germans from different sections of Pre-Germany united by the appeal of a "German-speaking" unit, or having enlisted together say from a Turner Verein.

With so much lost to history and time, the best lads can do is to try to learn some modern High German and ignore the historic authentic regional dialects. While one can odern regionalize a dialect, and be "closer" than High German, trying to learn and use lost dialects is hopeless.

But then I get in trouble for challenging the use of modern U.S. Southern accents in place of their actual historical Civil War era ones...

;) :)

Curt

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: dialect songs

Hallo!

Just an aside, and perhaps nothing more than a reflection on the Modern Era.

When I wrote my book, set in the mid 18th century, my agent had a fit with my use of written "dialect" for the different nationalities, ethnicities, and educational levels of the period characters.

She said it was amateurish and poor form, and rather than write out what the listener would hear, I should write normally and let the readers' imaginations do the accents in their heads.

:)

Curt

[David Lanier]

Re: dialect songs

Guess it's better to use a smidgen of dialect and be understood,

than to use quite a lot and do lots of 'splainin'. Hoi'st mi'?