64 replies to this topic

[Aaron]

You mean Quebecois? Is there a term Quebecker in English?

That's the term that Anglophones/Franglophones in Quebec use to refer to themselves.

Edited by Aaron, 16 September 2008 - 05:07 AM.

[LongMa]

Thank you for correcting my spelling... I meant Metis and giving a more exact explanation..I was not aware it referred to other mixes besides just French / Indian.

Lousiana Creole comes from a variety of sources.

I don't know what you are talking about in regard to run-away slaves.

http://en.wikipedia....people_of_color

There were slaves and also many (hundreds of gens de couleur, and affranchis: free people of color)...many of these people were mulatto, octorun, quadroon...many looked white but were just known to have black ancestory (being 1/8 blacks usually leaves someone looking pure white)...

There was also an infusion of people from Haiti who came (white, mixed, black) into Lousiana, after the revolution.

If you know many creole names, many are not French, but Spanish and GErman, a few hundred of both intergrated with the Cajuns in the swamp and the white Creole of the towns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_(New_Spain)

http://en.wikipedia....ki/German_Coast

The French called pure blacks, Africans and it was interesting that unlike the English they allowed the blacks to speak African languages. They thought it helped new slaves integrate. Well they found out in Haiti that it was pretty stupid to allow people you oppress (death rate of slaves in Haiti was high) to speak a language you can’t understand.

There were more blacks than anyone else in French Louisiana (similar to how their were more blacks (or mixed race folks) in most of the South than whites, until right after WWI in the United States).

All the folks above contributed heavily to the Creole spoken in Southern Lousiana.

My mother's side of the family is from there originally. My grandfather could speak Creole, but I only heard him speak it once with his brother...

Edited by LongMa, 16 September 2008 - 08:26 AM.

[frithbjorn]

Interesting post, I have never heard this before and I am stunned that it has been over looked. How typically arrogant of white American not to give credit where credit is due.

All you have to do is look at many American city and river names to realize how much influence the Native Americans actually had on our language.

Thank you for the compliment on my post... I think the obvious answers seem to alude us many of the time... early americans seemed to try and "segregate" the native americans, as expected this never works, in fact it often has the oposite effect... "know what Im sayin bro" get it... :-) (aluding to the african american influence of modern day america...)

[frithbjorn]

That's highly unlikely. Have you seriously read any U.S. history of colonial times?

THe reason is most Indians were not itegrated into the general white population. Most died from the disease and the majority of those that were left but a handful scattered in small communities were forced to move to places like Oklahoma even further West.

I can not imagine how there would be a critical mass among white Americans of Natives to significantly change their accent. You would have an easier time saying African Slaves changed white dialect than Natives...

American English (Mid-Atlantic dialect) is like English spoken in the South of English with some Irish or Scotch highlights...and a general softening of some of the hard pronouciation of consonants that you have in England...that's about it.

WHat you are saying is like saying Phonecians changed the way Romans spoke Latin or Jews changed the way Roman's spoke Latin or Greeks spoke Greek...highly unlikely.

The fact that many Americans kept the original INdian names from cities and rivers just means that they didn't have a name and likely traders who ventured into Indian territory just adopted the name already used, the same as many settlers adopted the SPanish names for areas in the South West and California...or in Florida. That's not shocking.

There are city names in England that are not of English origin as well, and place names in Spain that are not of SPanish/Latin origin...is that really shocking? Some place names in Japan in Northern Honshu and Hokkaido are definately of Ainu/Emishi origin.

Sorry I disagree entirely... with the whole not integrated thing... segregation has an opposite effect which is why most americans have native american in their family history.... try to keep an open mind and meet a native american or attend a native american, listen to their original accent... or rent Dances with wolves as previously suggested... its close, as I said you must tie the other influences, especially english and scandanavian tongues...

[frithbjorn]

Also I had read somewhere that in fact American English is closer to English during Shakespeare's time,i.e Middle to early Modern English, as compared to British English,and also some words which are now non-existent in British English are still alive in American English,for example crib,pavement and fall(winter).

your book is wrong... as far as I know, the euro-english accent is virtually unchanged for the past 400 years at least, and the context/syntax is entirely different.

[frithbjorn]

To an extent I must disagree. And the proper term is Native Americans, not Indians. There is quite a big difference.

While you have some valid points, it is also obvious that when we first arrived here we did NOT kill Native Americans but tried to work with them and establish harmony. (our first settlers from England) No matter what anyone says it is highly obvious that if we didn't, we would never have made it as far as we did into colonizing. We had to be on good terms with many if not all tribes in the vicinity. There numbers vastly outnumbered ours by tens of thousands irregardless of technological advantages. They could have more then amply organized and dispatched the first settlers, who did come in peace to avoid all the problems of Imperial rule and corruption of England, which ironically, we now have here again today. We must also consider the fact that without their help when we first arrived, we would never have made it, and quite obviously we were little threat to them being a comparatively small number of foreigners with limited supplies in an unknown land.
It was the Spanish and other immigrants allowed to come after us, that began warring with the Native Americans in their typical 'conquer all' mentality which thus began the great war for America. It was hard enough when we arrived to convince them we were not bloodthirsty like Columbus, or the Vikings who actually arrived before him. There was ample reason why both the Vikings and Columbus left. I think the truth of their behavior is obvious when applying logic. And war only begets war, as well as its blind causes.

If you have ever studied deeper into Native American tribes and their languages, you would see that their accents and various aspects of culture have been amalgated into ours despite the more common doctrines on striking differences. They were undeniably the very first foreign influence upon our language. And after studying the accents, It is highly probable they had an early influence to some degree when looking at the speech mannerisms of today. The clean cut tone and throat sounds are a heavy basis which is seen today in the midwest, especially around areas I live (Detroit, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, etc) As I said, while you have some valid points, I cannot help but notice the strong similarities that are apparent and nothing directly disproves their potential influence. Whether it be a considerably small or large one, I would argue that it is indeed there.

you are absolutely correct... the person to whom you reply seems a bit confused...

[frithbjorn]

This is comical. First off there is no need to do a rebuttal because I was not being mean to be insulting or at least that was not the intent. What I said was it was highly unlikely based on historical patterns of population interaction in the United States.

That's it.

You can read "one book" but as you know that does not make it a fact. It was stated by some as it was a fact and was just "ignored" by others because Native American contributions are not generally recognized. As an America I took issue with this as well.

I seriously doubt that there is any type of linguistic community consensus on the fact that Native Americans had a significant effect on American pronunciation in any region of the U.S.

I can find books by professors (one I can think of at George Washington University in America) that states China and the EU are triangulating against the United States by some unspoken alliance. This guy has been saying this for at least 5 years. No one agrees with him, well no one who is respected.

Guys... calm down... Native americans influenced the accent, what is there to argue about... I am not saying other cultures did not influence our accent (I mean obviously), just giving you a fact, may not be popular, but that doesnt matter to me, I won't be writing a book about it either... Also, did any of you bother to listen to a native american since I originally posted the comment (such as in dances with wolves), the accent is very much authentic (we know because there are still people who refuse to learn english, in order to preserve the ancient native language) I mean, we basically have a living fossil record out there, still speaking words in ancient accents... give it a listen, then argue about it... I know you will be amazed... the truth has that effect on people...

[LongMa]

Sorry I disagree entirely... with the whole not integrated thing... segregation has an opposite effect which is why most americans have native american in their family history.... try to keep an open mind and meet a native american or attend a native american, listen to their original accent... or rent Dances with wolves as previously suggested... its close, as I said you must tie the other influences, especially english and scandanavian tongues...

I have an open mind and I worked next to two Native Americans in my life (well one was 1/4 but still had a tribal card) the other was born on a reservation. Their numbers are so few I have not met any sinse.


I'm not questioning if there was an impact, but what type of amount of impact.

When you say Native American at is a broad category. Dances with Wolves does not represent all or most Native American tribes, there were many mutually unintelligible languages in the Americans, languages that appear to have no relation to each other, because Native Americans came in "waves" from Asia over about a 20,000 year period. So what native Americans are you talking about? What I question is the actual amount of influence...not if there was influence. Two different things. Sure I can point to isolated areas to show influence. I believe I mentioned North Carolina near the Appalachian foothills, also in West Virginia...I can think of examples

Most Americans (white or black) do not have Native American ancestry. That is a myth, people say it because it sounds cool.

There has been genetic testing.

http://pmsol3.wordpr...black-ancestry/

http://backintyme.co...e/shriver01.pdf

White Americans are: "Thirty percent is correct for the fraction of White folks with African ancestry, but the fraction with Native American ancestry is higher. In the first study of this kind, the DNA taken from 187 White Americans from State College, PA, was examined for ancestry-informative markers (informative as to ancestry within the past half-millennium or so).

Approximately 96.1 percent of their DNA was of European origin, 3.2 percent was of Native American origin, and 0.7 percent was of African origin."

Black Americans are only 2-3% Native American ancestry on average. This is mainly due to slaves running away to Indian territory in the past.

If you surveyed black Americans, probably 25-40% would say they have Native American ancestry. This is usually family myth because they don't want to admit they have white ancestry because they believe it comes from rape during slavery.

A lot of whites just say that to sound exotic or because someone in their family is a little darker than normal (when it is sometimes just "black Irish" or Welsh ancestry).

What you see is that the ancestry in whites and blacks is too small to be a direct descendant in each family. If 40% of Americans have "Indian ancestry" and the percentage is that scattered and low, that suggest that it was a result of marrying mixed race people or 1/4 Native people, etc. Most people can not have a direct ancestor that was Native with % that low. If that was true, white Americans would look like Mexicans.

Reality is, after the first 50-100 years of colonization, in most areas of the Americas there just weren't many left...due to disease.

The Spanish (as I already said) did not have a significant military advantage in Meso America, their advantage (as they themselves chronicled) came because, for example, half the Aztec Empire was dying already. The Inca were already collapsing and dying before the Spanish came because they contracted Eurasian diseases from other Natives they traded with who had contact with the Spaniards and it spread like wild fire. Same happened in North America.

Today they are only about 1% of the population for a reason. Millions of them could not have been absorbed by white or black Americans as we would be a Mestizo country...

They died from these diseases:

the most devastating disease was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis (whooping cough).

How many?

I hate to use Wiki but I don't have time.

Estimates of how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus arrived have varied tremendously; 20th century scholarly estimates ranged from a low of 8.4 million to a high of 112.5 million persons. Given the fragmentary nature of the evidence, precise pre-Columbian population figures are impossible to obtain, and estimates are often produced by extrapolation from comparatively small bits of data. In 1976, geographer William Denevan used these various estimates to derive a "consensus count" of about 54 million people, although some recent estimates are lower than that.[1] On an estimate of approximately 50 million people in 1492 (including 25 million in the Aztec Empire and 12 million in the Inca Empire), the lowest estimates give a death toll of 80% at the end of the 16th century (8 million people in 1650).[2] Latin America would only reattain this level at the turn of the 20th century, with 17 million in 1800;[2] 30 million in 1850;[2] 61 million in 1900;[2] 105 million in 1930;[2] 218 million in 1960;[2] 361 million in 1980, and 563 million in 2005.[2] In the last thirty years of the 16th century, the Mexican population highly decreased to attain the low level of one million people in 1600.[2] The Maya population is today estimated at 6 million, which is the same level as at the end of the 15th century.[2] In what is now Brazil, the indigenous population has declined from a pre-Columbian high of an estimated 4 million to some 300,000.

http://en.wikipedia....on_from_disease

So you got about... 54 million people....almost half of who lived in the Inca, Aztec, Mayan areas.

So that means in the rest of the entire Americas there were about 55-60% scattered over such a huge area.

If you read the link you will see in many areas up to 80-90% were wiped out by disease.

Think about this for a minute in terms of population density.

This is why I doubt there could be a significant shift in national accent (in the 13 colonies or later) from Native Americans...there just weren't that many left.

There were far more blacks in 1776 than Native Americans in vicinity of the colonies. In most Southern states blacks were the majority until the early 1900's.

I'm not trying to argue Native Vs black.

What I'm trying to point out is the Native population was quite small and colonization quickly pushed the Natives West of the Appalacia. ..there were only a hand of big tribes left East of the Appalacia in 1776, the "Civilized Tribes"...but they were forced to leave as well (most of them by 1839). Some survived by running off into isolated areas.

http://en.wikipedia....ivilized_Tribes

If white Americans were so "mixed" with Natives I seriously doubt they would allow politicians to remove their relatives hundreds of miles by foot in such a way to kill a large number of them. That makes little sense. In places where people mixed with Natives, they really mixed, tended to be the white father married a native woman and you can see this all over Latin America. Those folks tended to take on "European culture" and the actual segregation of Natives in society was not by physical proximity but by social discrimination.

To remove a population implies something altogether different. This tells me their was an assumption that they could not be assimiliated or it was bad to do so.

The fact only 1% Natives still exist and their genes are spread so thin in the two oldest non-Native populations in the U.S. tells me they were not absorbed in mass.

As far as being amazed by the truth, I have not seen any yet.

To sum this up

1) I don't think their enough Native Americans in North America to make a significant impact on American English but at some small regional level.

2) Genetic evidence does not point to wide scale immigration among white Americans. And no later immigration did not hide it, most white Americans are still WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and always have been, despite infusions from Eastern and Southern Europe (mostly in the late 1800's and early 1900's)

3) I have no clue what Native American language or languages you are referring to. The way you speak it is as if they all spoke from the same narrow language group (like Romance Languages). Not so. Some of these groups appear to be isolates. IT could be they are related but so many tribes went extinct that we have no way of telling, all were illiterate until contact with Europeans.




I just don't see strong evidence.

Plus, I'm not sure if you are talking about "standard" Mid-Atlantic American English or not.

3) REmoval of Natives to far off places tells me that whites did not think they could "integrate or civilize" them in Mass, unlike Latin America where mixing was common and resulted in the adoption of European cultural norms (for the most part).

4) I think the best candidate for what you believe is some areas of the MidWest and Great Plains. I would especially say the Great PLains, I would also look at Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Many of these places were not settled until the late 1800's though so I doubt there was much of an impact back East.

Edited by LongMa, 17 September 2008 - 07:54 AM.

[yehzhaofeng]

Yeah, I think America has very distinct accents of its own. California seems to be developing some sort of accent since everyone else says I have a Californian accent.

Oh, I wonder why in New York/New Jersey area, they don't pronounce the r's?

[frithbjorn]

I have an open mind and I worked next to two Native Americans in my life (well one was 1/4 but still had a tribal card) the other was born on a reservation. Their numbers are so few I have not met any sinse.


I'm not questioning if there was an impact, but what type of amount of impact.

When you say Native American at is a broad category. Dances with Wolves does not represent all or most Native American tribes, there were many mutually unintelligible languages in the Americans, languages that appear to have no relation to each other, because Native Americans came in "waves" from Asia over about a 20,000 year period. So what native Americans are you talking about? What I question is the actual amount of influence...not if there was influence. Two different things. Sure I can point to isolated areas to show influence. I believe I mentioned North Carolina near the Appalachian foothills, also in West Virginia...I can think of examples

Most Americans (white or black) do not have Native American ancestry. That is a myth, people say it because it sounds cool.

There has been genetic testing.

http://pmsol3.wordpr...black-ancestry/

http://backintyme.co...e/shriver01.pdf

White Americans are: "Thirty percent is correct for the fraction of White folks with African ancestry, but the fraction with Native American ancestry is higher. In the first study of this kind, the DNA taken from 187 White Americans from State College, PA, was examined for ancestry-informative markers (informative as to ancestry within the past half-millennium or so).

Approximately 96.1 percent of their DNA was of European origin, 3.2 percent was of Native American origin, and 0.7 percent was of African origin."

Black Americans are only 2-3% Native American ancestry on average. This is mainly due to slaves running away to Indian territory in the past.

If you surveyed black Americans, probably 25-40% would say they have Native American ancestry. This is usually family myth because they don't want to admit they have white ancestry because they believe it comes from rape during slavery.

A lot of whites just say that to sound exotic or because someone in their family is a little darker than normal (when it is sometimes just "black Irish" or Welsh ancestry).

What you see is that the ancestry in whites and blacks is too small to be a direct descendant in each family. If 40% of Americans have "Indian ancestry" and the percentage is that scattered and low, that suggest that it was a result of marrying mixed race people or 1/4 Native people, etc. Most people can not have a direct ancestor that was Native with % that low. If that was true, white Americans would look like Mexicans.

Reality is, after the first 50-100 years of colonization, in most areas of the Americas there just weren't many left...due to disease.

The Spanish (as I already said) did not have a significant military advantage in Meso America, their advantage (as they themselves chronicled) came because, for example, half the Aztec Empire was dying already. The Inca were already collapsing and dying before the Spanish came because they contracted Eurasian diseases from other Natives they traded with who had contact with the Spaniards and it spread like wild fire. Same happened in North America.

Today they are only about 1% of the population for a reason. Millions of them could not have been absorbed by white or black Americans as we would be a Mestizo country...

They died from these diseases:

the most devastating disease was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis (whooping cough).

How many?

I hate to use Wiki but I don't have time.


http://en.wikipedia....on_from_disease

So you got about... 54 million people....almost half of who lived in the Inca, Aztec, Mayan areas.

So that means in the rest of the entire Americas there were about 55-60% scattered over such a huge area.

If you read the link you will see in many areas up to 80-90% were wiped out by disease.

Think about this for a minute in terms of population density.

This is why I doubt there could be a significant shift in national accent (in the 13 colonies or later) from Native Americans...there just weren't that many left.

There were far more blacks in 1776 than Native Americans in vicinity of the colonies. In most Southern states blacks were the majority until the early 1900's.

I'm not trying to argue Native Vs black.

What I'm trying to point out is the Native population was quite small and colonization quickly pushed the Natives West of the Appalacia. ..there were only a hand of big tribes left East of the Appalacia in 1776, the "Civilized Tribes"...but they were forced to leave as well (most of them by 1839). Some survived by running off into isolated areas.

http://en.wikipedia....ivilized_Tribes

If white Americans were so "mixed" with Natives I seriously doubt they would allow politicians to remove their relatives hundreds of miles by foot in such a way to kill a large number of them. That makes little sense. In places where people mixed with Natives, they really mixed, tended to be the white father married a native woman and you can see this all over Latin America. Those folks tended to take on "European culture" and the actual segregation of Natives in society was not by physical proximity but by social discrimination.

To remove a population implies something altogether different. This tells me their was an assumption that they could not be assimiliated or it was bad to do so.

The fact only 1% Natives still exist and their genes are spread so thin in the two oldest non-Native populations in the U.S. tells me they were not absorbed in mass.

As far as being amazed by the truth, I have not seen any yet.

To sum this up

1) I don't think their enough Native Americans in North America to make a significant impact on American English but at some small regional level.

2) Genetic evidence does not point to wide scale immigration among white Americans. And no later immigration did not hide it, most white Americans are still WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) and always have been, despite infusions from Eastern and Southern Europe (mostly in the late 1800's and early 1900's)

3) I have no clue what Native American language or languages you are referring to. The way you speak it is as if they all spoke from the same narrow language group (like Romance Languages). Not so. Some of these groups appear to be isolates. IT could be they are related but so many tribes went extinct that we have no way of telling, all were illiterate until contact with Europeans.




I just don't see strong evidence.

Plus, I'm not sure if you are talking about "standard" Mid-Atlantic American English or not.

3) REmoval of Natives to far off places tells me that whites did not think they could "integrate or civilize" them in Mass, unlike Latin America where mixing was common and resulted in the adoption of European cultural norms (for the most part).

4) I think the best candidate for what you believe is some areas of the MidWest and Great Plains. I would especially say the Great PLains, I would also look at Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Many of these places were not settled until the late 1800's though so I doubt there was much of an impact back East.

OK, check it.... most African americans... are not African at all, in fact the black folks we call African American are actually Native American... not to say there were not those that were in fact "imported" during the Spanish slave trade, but it makes more since that the blacks were brought from South America, not Africa at all.... I mean, there were plenty of Native American Blacks (I'm talkin African skin and hair) already native to south America at the time, still are many "black" tribal aboriginals in south America.... Ok, did not intend on switching to race mode, but you brought up DNA testing, which proves nothing... Back to the accent... most native tongues have the same basic tenet... naturally, the "dry" accent americans have compared to the European "english" is due to these native tongues, because when the natives were taught to speak english, they kept this "dry" native accent... even the black native americans... with that being said, its going to be impossible to base anything on DNA...

Ok, now let me prove this black native american thing... look at this
http://greenupgrader...e-amazon-tribe/

get back to me after you see this...

[kaiselin]

LongMa,

You state that very few of us have Indian heritage...

I totally disagree with you.
Over my many years I have known many friends and co workers who were part Native American. The majority of their Indian lineage was from Eastern Tribes (except when I lived in Arizona which of course their lineage was mostly from western tribes so there would have been more that did look more like western Natives and hence a little more like Western Tribes or Mexican as you would say ... I'd also like to say your assumption that we would all look more Mexican if we all had more Indian blood is ludicrous ) Indians have a great deal of different features they do not all look like Mexicans then all Mexicans look alike or any more the all Africans or all Chinese look alike. I am surprised at you for making such a blanket racist statement.

My husband and I both have Indian ancestry. neither of us look Mexican. I look Scottish and my husband looks Irish.

In my current circle of friends I can count three who have grandparents or great grandparents who were full blood Indians. And 5 or 6 others who also have Indian ancestry in there family trees. Out of all of them the only one that looks like an Indian at all is my sister who gets mistaken for a full blood all the time.

Edited by kaiselin, 17 September 2008 - 07:53 PM.

[LongMa]

LongMa,

You state that very few of us have Indian heritage...

I totally disagree with you.
Over my many years I have known many friends and co workers who were part Native American. The majority of their Indian lineage was from Eastern Tribes (except when I lived in Arizona which of course their lineage was mostly from western tribes so there would have been more that did look more like western Natives and hence a little more like Western Tribes or Mexican as you would say ... I'd also like to say your assumption that we would all look more Mexican if we all had more Indian blood is ludicrous ) Indians have a great deal of different features they do not all look like Mexicans then all Mexicans look alike or any more the all Africans or all Chinese look alike. I am surprised at you for making such a blanket racist statement.

My husband and I both have Indian ancestry. neither of us look Mexican. I look Scottish and my husband looks Irish.

In my current circle of friends I can count three who have grandparents or great grandparents who were full blood Indians. And 5 or 6 others who also have Indian ancestry in there family trees. Out of all of them the only one that looks like an Indian at all is my sister who gets mistaken for a full blood all the time.

KEY WORDS: "In my current circle of friends"...

I will get back to this statement, but that only tells me that this is a bias sample based on what you see in your limited area. That has nothing to do with what I said. I gave figures from a study trying to access a national average...not some community or even just a state. Unless you think the communities your "circle of friends" come from was so significant to American history that it changed the national language.

Don't you think you are being a little extreme by saying someone has made a racist statement??

I admit Mexican was not a good term. Since I lived in Texas for 2 years I tend to associate Hispanics with Mexicans. In Texas the terms Tejano, Mexican, HIspanic are pretty much synonomus because almost all HIspanics are of Mexican descent and almost all Mexicans (in Texas) are Mestizo (and yes I know their are pure white, Native, and even black Mexicans in Mexico). What my meaning was is "Mestizo".

Yes, I'm well aware that all Native American did not look the same, but it is not strange that, even people who are half East Asian/White tend to look "Hispanic" on average...with dominance on one side of the other. Aztec definately did not look like Inca but you can still get a general recognizable "Mestizo" look in Latin America, although down there various native groups are not identical in appearance. That does not mean there is no "range in appearance". African blacks do have a range in appearance that does not overlap with anyone else (well besides Negritos in the Pacific). To say that is not racist. It speaks to variation but also says you can group people as well. I've been to enough Peruvian Chicken places, owned by real Peruvians to know they tend to look Mestizo, but taller than Mexicans with more prominent noses (on average)...still on the street most Americans would say HIspanic (which really means Mestizo).

You have people on this site who seem to believe all Native Americans speak similar languages and have the same accent, therefore the same effect on American English...but you did not call that racist. That is a blanket statement that is less true.

Do you want pictures as evidence?

I see no reason to be insulting. If you are actually surprised, and not just trying to be vindictive...then maybe you should ask me to clarify what I have said or say that might "come off as racist, is this what you mean?" I know...I know...I ask too much.


1) I can't speak to your personal situation and I have no idea what the situation is in your specific area.


What I said is, on average, genetic test do not show that.

I have already expressed the belief that there was isolated influence in some areas.

2I also spoke about the average. If you bothered to read all of what I written before making accusations of racism you will see that there are a significant (but not a majority) of white Americans with Native Ancestry but the genes are spread very thin over the population. This has implications as well, which I expressed. None of this means individuals do not possess significant Native ancestry.


I think you are taking this very personal and not looking at this objective, I could be wrong, but there is no reason to make offensive accusations.

3This is an intellectual site, or supposed to be. I have a belief and I backed it up with evidence I have, based on my knowledge of U.S. history and from that I formulated a scenario that I believe is most likely.

4This is not a direct assault on your family or your beliefs about your ancestry.

What I can say is that your situation or your friends is not close to average in the United States and I have backed that up.

5If you believe otherwise than please make less offensive statements and show evidence.

6In all of this I have still failed to see one shred of evidence from any respectable source (preferably 2) that shows any Native American language group has had a significant effect on American standard English (Mid-Atlantic).

I took about 20 minutes yesterday and tried to find out what I could google.

I found nothing but some isolated case of accents common in New Mexico and part of Arizona.

I have already admitted that there is likely REGIONAL affect.

7 I will use a personal example. My wife and I took genetic test about 2 years ago, at my earging. Her test were not as interesting as my own. :-) She is Japanese, so East Asian, no admixture outside of that and her MtDNA was M*, which actually originated in Southeast Asia, by way of India...some 30,000 years ago. That was it.

I'm 3% Native American, 8% white, and the rest SubSahara African.

So I'm exactly as Native as the average black American and I'm less white than the average black American. I believe all the admixture comes from my mother's side...Louisiana Creole...my father's side looks like almost unmixed black West Africans.

In any case, talking to my grandfather before he died and some other older folks, they confirmed my great grandmother was half Native American.

This is the family legend.

My great great grandfather was not a slave, he was a "Free Person of Color" in Louisiana. There was still racial discrimination though, so he became a middle man trader for a "white" Creole. He was basically a wagon driver, and he was armed (this area was quite dangerous at the time, one of the most dangerous in America all the way until the Civil War).

He would trade with the Koasati (Coushatta), on their "territory". He eventually married one of them and they had my great grandmother. We have pictures of her (not of her parents) and she looks something like Tiger Woods, but a female version with long hair tied up in a bun (she was much older)...it is a black and white picture but she looks mixed. My great great grandfather was also mixed to some extent...most of the "Free People of Color" were some mix of white and black.

In any case, that means my great great grandmother was Native American. Out of all my direct ancestors, only 1. That also means that none of my other direct ancestors had any significant Native heritage...which is statistically similar to most blacks. Whites have more but not much more...as I have pointed out.

If you do the math I should be about the % of Native I am (genes they track for these test do not always come out perfectly even, but close enough).

Do you think she effected the language of my family? I doubt it. I'm sure they effected her as had to "learn Creole" and English.

The point of all this is only to show that whatever admixture there is or whatever the population of Natives that were left and where, the evidence (at least to me) does not indicate that in most areas they would have a significant impact on Standard American English. Sorry, don't buy it without significant evidence.

Also, no I don't consider myself Native because I have one distant ancestor who name I can't even remember.

Conclusion: Maybe you feel insulted and are lashing out because someone does not take your speculation at face value and challenges it.

I'm interested in the truth, because I think the topic is interesting enough to warrant my time.

I'm not interested in having ridiculous conversation based on people being more interested in throwing insult and speaking with "moral" authority based on weak foundation to boost their ego than discussing and debating and issue, or worst yet, ethnic cheerleading.

Not interested, no thanks. If someone does not have firm evidence I will consider any further speculation as that, speculation. I though you were reasonable kaiselin, but I guess not.

Edited by LongMa, 18 September 2008 - 07:46 AM.

[kaiselin]

Edit

Edited by kaiselin, 18 September 2008 - 10:23 AM.

[yehzhaofeng]

You guys should pm each other about this...I don't think this is appopriate.

[kaiselin]

You guys should pm each other about this...I don't think this is appopriate.

I agree, thank you for your reminder