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Chapter 12. Memoirs from Central America

A linguistic analysis of personal recollections of West Indian laborers in the construction of the Panama Canal

Abstract

This chapter introduces and linguistically evaluates a hitherto unexplored source of earlier Caribbean vernacular English. It comprises more than one hundred letters written in 1963 by former Panama Canal workers as part of a competition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Canal. I first provide an overview of some of the non-standard features evident in the letters and then zoom in on a single variable, i.e., past inflection. Applying the principles of comparative sociolinguistics (cf. Tagliamonte 2013), I demonstrate that the abstract patterning of variation observed for this variable greatly resembles that found in previous studies of Caribbean English-lexifier creoles and related varieties, such as African American Vernacular English. All in all, the pilot study presented here provides impressive evidence of the value of the “Panama letters” as a window on vernacular usage in the late nineteenth-century Anglophone Caribbean.

Abstract

This chapter introduces and linguistically evaluates a hitherto unexplored source of earlier Caribbean vernacular English. It comprises more than one hundred letters written in 1963 by former Panama Canal workers as part of a competition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Canal. I first provide an overview of some of the non-standard features evident in the letters and then zoom in on a single variable, i.e., past inflection. Applying the principles of comparative sociolinguistics (cf. Tagliamonte 2013), I demonstrate that the abstract patterning of variation observed for this variable greatly resembles that found in previous studies of Caribbean English-lexifier creoles and related varieties, such as African American Vernacular English. All in all, the pilot study presented here provides impressive evidence of the value of the “Panama letters” as a window on vernacular usage in the late nineteenth-century Anglophone Caribbean.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Chapter 1. Mining emigrant correspondence for linguistic insights 1
  6. Part I. The language of emigrant correspondence
  7. Chapter 2. Wisconsin immigrant letters 27
  8. Chapter 3. ‘I hope you will excuse my bad writing’ 43
  9. Chapter 4. Singular, plural, or collective? 67
  10. Part II. The language of the Irish emigrant experience
  11. Chapter 5. Homesickness, recollections and reunions 87
  12. Chapter 6. ‘I have not time to say more at present’ 119
  13. Chapter 7. ‘Matt & Mrs Connor is with me now. They are only beginning to learn the work of the camp’ 139
  14. Chapter 8. Grammatical variation in nineteenth-century Irish Australian letters 163
  15. Chapter 9. ‘[S]eas may divide and oceans roll between but Friends is Friends whatever intervene’ 185
  16. Part III. Vernacular correspondence
  17. Chapter 10. ‘[T]his is all answer soon’ 213
  18. Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic features in earlier African American English 239
  19. Chapter 12. Memoirs from Central America 261
  20. Index 287
Keeping in Touch
This chapter is in the book Keeping in Touch
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.10.12hac

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Chapter 1. Mining emigrant correspondence for linguistic insights 1
  6. Part I. The language of emigrant correspondence
  7. Chapter 2. Wisconsin immigrant letters 27
  8. Chapter 3. ‘I hope you will excuse my bad writing’ 43
  9. Chapter 4. Singular, plural, or collective? 67
  10. Part II. The language of the Irish emigrant experience
  11. Chapter 5. Homesickness, recollections and reunions 87
  12. Chapter 6. ‘I have not time to say more at present’ 119
  13. Chapter 7. ‘Matt & Mrs Connor is with me now. They are only beginning to learn the work of the camp’ 139
  14. Chapter 8. Grammatical variation in nineteenth-century Irish Australian letters 163
  15. Chapter 9. ‘[S]eas may divide and oceans roll between but Friends is Friends whatever intervene’ 185
  16. Part III. Vernacular correspondence
  17. Chapter 10. ‘[T]his is all answer soon’ 213
  18. Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic features in earlier African American English 239
  19. Chapter 12. Memoirs from Central America 261
  20. Index 287
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