Cowboys, How did they talk back then?

[Adirondack Jack, SASS #53440]

I've repeatedly heard folks describe how language was more flowery, more the oration than the day to day "plain speak" we expect of each other today.

 

According to experts, that's simply not true. An article about a current movie, "Cloud Atlas" which is another of those futuristic, Post-apocalyptic films, deals with this exact subject.

 

According to Anthony Kroch, chair of the linguistics department at the University of Pennsylvania, "There is an idea that in the past, people spoke in a more elevated way than they do now."

"That's not actually true, but people get that impression because the only samples of language that survive from previous eras are well-preserved written pieces, Kroch said. Political treaties, noblemen's letters and literature for the upper classes naturally have more sophisticated language. Shakespeare's plays still live on, but recordings of ordinary people chatting in the streets of Elizabethan England don't exist."

 

http://news.yahoo.com/cloud-atlas-sheds-light-englishs-possible-future-193253666.html

So if Kroch is correct, and I suspect he is, our cowboys of the 19th century were likely as not a half-literate, mispronouncing, simple-speaking lot.

In other words, when one of our 21st century pards "breaks bad" in "SASS cowboy", jawin' bout "shootin boolits with his pards", he's likely replicating 19th century speech more accurately than not.....

 

So mangle away fellow shootists

[Rye Miles #13621]

That's an interesting point much like today. Street talk is "like", "My bad" etc.etc. It was probably much like that back then too. The average cowboy or outlaw or lawman for that matter probably didn't go much past 4th or 5th grade if at all!

 

So yea I like really believe what they said in this article, ya know like, it's really cool man, Oh am I rambling on and on sorry, "My bad"

 

Rye

[Willy Whiskers]

Nice post. You know Mark Twain's Huck Finn was banned in some places, libraries, for its vulgarity and plain speech. But as I understand it, Twain was trying to use the idioms of the language of the times along the river. A lot can be said about what you expect to hear and what is actually heard.

Slang changes on a regular basis...just think of the things you said as a teenager which are now passe. The same can be said for the 19th century cowboy...or for the street kid in New York City. Most of what we "know" as cowboy speak is derived from literature, movies and TV. Have been reading "Riders of the Purple Sage" ca. 1900 by Zane Gray. The phases and meter ring true as if they were penned for any modern horse opera. It's not what they said in those days, but what we think/hope they said. WW

[Slowhand Bob, 24229]

Not sure about the south-west but here in the south we are still dealing with it after 100yrs of trying to educate it out of us. Shux, even them fokes at Websters has done gone and give up on winning thet battle and started adding some of our plain language into them there books. In the south we had to deal with a make-up of several African dialects, Irish, Scottish, English plain and English proper languages. From all of this we came up with not one but several southern dialects. I was shocked at how differently the people of Charleston spoke from those just a couple of hundred miles south in Georgia. I will say that over a long period of travel I am now noticing that most of us have developed a less discriminating ear towards the accents of others. I remember when the people in the smaller towns of the north would gather to listen to a southern accent, now its more like they do not even notice it! I think this owes to the mobility factor, so many people moving around so much that accents have become less distinctive.

[Adirondack Jack, SASS #53440]

Bob, are you familiar with a children's show filmed around Beaufort, SC, called "Gullah Gullah Island?" Filmed at Hunting Island State Park, it depicts the "Gullahs" of the 19th century, a population of black fishermen who lived isolated from the mainland a few miles away and developed their own language. Of course throughout the south a mix of Scots Irish and African influences, among others, are found and literacy rates were shabby, creating unque lingo in many locales.

 

Is all that worth saving and understanding? Folks like Steven Foster thought so. Those who have re-written his works, including the State of Kentucky, do us and our history a disservice.

 

Is all this fun? You dammed skippy!!!

[Noz]

There was a study done back in the early 70s that used the ENGLISH as spoken by the hill people of WV as the basis for comparison to the English as spoken in England to see how far the language had drifted.

The WV hillbillies were speaking almost pure Elizabethan English.

I know in my corner of the Ozark hills, penmanship and proper word usage and sentence construction was emphasized in everyday conversation.

You had to be from Stone County before you would use the word ain't in conversation.

 

Point being: I would think the cowboys language would be closer to "proper" English than what we use today.

[Oddnews SASS# 24779]

I heard an interesting interview a few years ago on National Public Radio with the creator of the series "Deadwood." He said he'd done a detailed study of the vulgarities of the 19th century, and ultimately elected to use the 21st century vulgarities of today. He said he'd done this because he wanted the language of the mining camp to be as shocking to a modern viewer as the language actually found in Deadwood would have been to someone from "back East."

 

He noted that his investigation into the language showed that when 19th century Americans cursed, they used more blasphemy and less scatology and sexual references than people today use. "God daxx it to Hexx" was a harsh curse. He said this led to any entire sublanguage of lesser curse words, "Gosh darn it to heck," in lieu of the harsher language. Ultimately, he said he'd almost had to use modern cursing to make the show palatable to modern viewers. "Otherwise, they'd have thought everyone was trying to talk like Yosemite Sam, and failing," is how he put it.

[Flush Draw]

I just kindly figgerd that back then thay werent much fer spellin and half the foke didnt never went to scull. So the kerect ways of speech wernt never tot to most uv em. Kno what I meen?

[Adirondack Jack, SASS #53440]

I've puzzled on this since I was 12, and moved a few short miles to a town off the railroad back in the day, and interbred and whatnot a whole lot than the more european style "city" of my birth. Lingo is far different even 15 miles "into the sticks".

Later, a nearly year-long stint in the USVI exposed me to "Cruzian Creole", a dialect developed by the majority, descended from slaves, of St Croix. The most salient feature of which is, like street "ebonics" heard in Rap on the mainland, it is first person singular, present tense, and loses much of the richness and ability to draw precise meaning if used for a written message....

"Non'tall go so" can mean, among about five other things, "It ain't like that" or "it never was like that", or "That won't happen." It's almost a single word, and derives, if you haven't figured it out, from the phrase "None at all go so"....

[Griff]

As a young boy growin' up in a household that included a Dad that was 10+ years removed and a Grandmother direct from the hills of E. Tenn, a Mom from New Zealand, all now livin' in the heart of conservative Orange County, CA, accents were distinctive. Learning Spanish at the insistence of the local school, talking with the local Hispanic kids and their parents, of varying lengths of residency in the US, and from differing parts of Hispanola. Talk about differences!

 

Local differences are probably less so as Slowhand Bob notes... however, regional differences can still be as distinct as ever. Depending on just how much contact the locals have with folks from other regions. In ND right now, and yep, they have accents... at least to this now Texas boy... tho' they probably think I have one!

 

[Cheyenne Ranger, 48747L]

As the river boats and Iron Horse allowed further movement within the U.S. people were exposed to different accents.

 

Another consideration is the introduction of radio, and later TV, that allowed more of the population to hear dialetics from around the country.

[Bottom Dealin Mike, SASS #22273]

If you read Owen Wister's book "The Virginian". It shows that cowboys came from all over the country... Virginia, Massacusetts, Indiana, are just a few of the states characters in the book originally hailed from. I suspect folks talked a lot like they did back "home".

[Grizzly Dave]

ah dun no whut ju tawkin bout, ah talks gud merican tawk.

[Marauder SASS #13056]

Things were definitely different back then. There was a lot more regional differences in the language use. A lot of local idioms that we rarely even remember. I remember my great Uncle from Southern Missoura used a lot of them, like "wouldn't that cock yer pistol," That's a corker, etc.

 

My high school English teach got a kick out of how I used many of such phrases and even borrowed many.

 

With radio and TV we see a lot more uniformity in language and loss of some of the fun, colorful differences.

 

Back in the day, the education level also varied quite a bit and that reflected in the language. The "general population" evidently was quite literate even with a lot of home schooling. They used some basic readers (which were quite good) where they could afford them. If not, they used the family Bible which included good English but may have been spoken with the local accents. As such, the "general population" of today has a much more limited vocabulary compared to 100 or 200 years ago.

 

I remember my Grandmother (born in late 1800's) using good English and discouraging using slang. Both my great grandmothers (born in the mid-1800's) were both very well spoken and they all said that swearing was evidence of a lack of vocabulary. But they also noted that people of their generation were much better at giving eloquent "curses" against others that "needed it." They included attributes about their ancestry, their character and their actions that were quite detailed and often very humorous.

 

PS

As an interesting note, at the beginning of the 1900's, the literacy level varied very widely. In some rural areas, especially in more isolated areas and portions of the South the education levels had apparently dropped in a couple of generations. It was so noted that preparing for the World War that the military established a large effort to ensure that all new recruits be able to read. They felt that was a very important contribution they could make for our country.

[Jabez Cowboy,SASS # 50129]

Cowboys/ Cattlemen came from all walks of life and from many and varied countries of origin ...... And talked much like they was brought-up talking .... But Cowboy terms came into the picture as ways and tools were developed in the life of working cattle and living in the open ....

 

My Grandad on Mom's side was a Scotish Lord that left Scotland in a hurry ,,, sailed to the Americas ,,,, headed west into what is now Texas/Mexico and then North into "The North West Territories of Alberta" Arriving there in 1870 ... Having aquired and herd of cattle along the way ...

He wrote Journels of his life's happenings in a mix of English of the day , Cowboy phrases ,with more than a few Proper phrases as would Bespeak a Scotish Gentleman ....

He was in all ways a product of Scotland and the Northern Plains !!!

My mother was taught the imporance of speaking Proper English, her father insisted that education was required ....

He taught my mothers Mom from Norway his second wife (she was a Mail Order Bride) to speak English ...

Though in latter years she reverted back to the langauge of her youth when her mind started to go ...

 

 

Jabez Cowboy

[Peso Bill SR 54015]

Our home in kansas City Mo was a working horse ranch and my dad hired riders as they were needed in the seasons so I was exposed to people from all over with diffirent levels of education and diffirent area of the US, my dad only went to the second grade born and raised in AK in the mountians but my grandmother(who was full blood Sioux) made sure he spoke perfect english along with her language and he was self educated in later years and didnt speak like the stereotype backwood hillbilly. My moms folks were from Germany and had come to the US in the early 1800s, again she had very little education because she had to quit school to help take care of a very large family but she spoke perfect english and was self educated, so in my home growing up we spoke a mixture of English, German and Sioux and visitors to our home were very confused when they caught day to day talk between family members, half of which they had no idea of what we were talking about. I think each family including mone had words we used piscked up from diffirent people that wasnt normally used in all areas and would seem strange to an outsider, some real and some made up ;.) I think this is a story that was quite common back in the early days of our country when people were coming from all parts fo the world to make a new life, the stupid back woods people that the TV shows like Gunsmoke show so many to be back then was just that TV hype and made a story fun and easier to belive but had no basis in reality. Much like the was they protrayed Indians back then in TV and the movies, so far from the truth that it hurts to thinkk about it. The lauguage of the native Americans that they use is so bad and silly it makes them out to be idiots and blood thirty savages which is also far from the truth but it made the horrible treatment of the Native Americans seem justified. we play the part in SASS like the TV version of what the old west was like along with the colorful lauguage the TV stars used but the reality of the old west was far from that as well as the lauguage used at the time, it was a hard life with a very short life span for most due to bad food, bad medicine(if any) poor heating in the winter, exposure working in all kinds of weather with poor clothing, lack of clean water most of the time just to name a few hazards of "The real Old West" life. SASS is a game and a fun distraction for us in a world to busy but to compare it with reality of the past is not living in reality, its fun to shoot guns, dress up like our TV cowboy heroes and talk funny but it has no real basis in what the lauguage of the era and what day to day life was really like in the 1800s. Just my two pesos worth, you all have a great day!

[Cheyenne Culpepper 32827]

Ize dun bin vinteecatid!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Shyannie Coolpeppah

[Grizzly Dave]

Ize dun bin vinteecatid!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Shyannie Coolpeppah

 

Did it hurt?

[Subdeacon Joe]

I've read a considerable number of letters written by soldiers during the Late Unpleasantness and have seen a great variety in the language used in them. Everything from college professor formal to things that are barely English as we know it with localisms, vulgarisms, spelling loosely based on received pronunciation, erratic spelling of the same word in one letter. Interesting stuff.

 

ADDED:

 

Hey! It posted! I thought I had lost it when I got a 404 error message. (I know, I know, I lost it long before the 404 error was discovered...there, now shut up! )

[Four-Eyed Buck,SASS #14795]

I agree, SDJ. Some are pretty clear, language wise, others.......I believe that it mostly depended on location and social strata.As Victorians, though, I believe that most tried to be as literate as they could depending on their level of education.

[Gunner Gatlin, SASS 10274L]

They didnt talk...they just.....looked at ya.

 

GG ~

[S. Quentin Quale, Esq. SASS 9953]

A good friend of mine has a transcript of a diary kept by an ancestor who was a school teacher in Morgan Co., TN. He went North in 1862 to join the Union Army. The language is quite plain. It is neither foul nor crude. The man had a solid, basic education. I doubt his formal education extended much past the mid-high school level.

 

He was a keen observer of the world around him. He detailed his journey from Nashville back to Morgan Co. in the late fall of 1864 after his regiment was discharged. That was a bit of a surprise, as I thought that all enlistments by then were for the duration, but apparently not.

 

He spent a fair amount of his mustering out pay buying civilian clothes in Nashville and he lists his purchases. His trip took several days by train. He married upon his return and that's where the journal ends. According for family history, he taught school for many more years and died in his 70s.

 

SQQ

[JD_Kid]

Howdy Ya'll

 

a lot would have depended on the class of people coming out from the old countrys kiwis ockers people from the USA most of them have handle on english few local words sayings and a slight twang for local areas

 

so here is an intresting take on things most of the older teachers in these countrys would have been from england and being teachers come from higher class bloodlines .church people shop owners etc would have come from more well off areas as well so most people cowboys had to interact with may have spoken good english .

part of that shows up if the early settlers stayed in the same area as landing some areas still have a strong irish acent even tho they got off the boat 200 years ago and may not have had english teachers

 

the early scots that come to NZ some of them could not speak english at all 3-4 gen's later unless they say they have a scotish background there is nothing to give it away

 

 

most of the cowboys would have picked up talking going to school or not just interacting with people would get speach , maths ,writeing , spelling or reading may not have been as good i knew alot of older guys that left school early could not read or write my grandfather could only sign his name

 

 

 

the realy intresting thing is english programs on TV some news reports have had subtitles under them as you could not understand a word they were saying very lazy talking

[Possum Skinner, SASS#60697]

I'll ask my wife...

[Shooting Bull]

I'll ask my wife...

 

I hope she lets you live long enough to come back and give us a full report.

[Brimstone Bill Willson]

A good friend of mine has a transcript of a diary kept by an ancestor who was a school teacher in Morgan Co., TN. He went North in 1862 to join the Union Army. The language is quite plain. It is neither foul nor crude. The man had a solid, basic education. I doubt his formal education extended much past the mid-high school level.

 

He was a keen observer of the world around him. He detailed his journey from Nashville back to Morgan Co. in the late fall of 1864 after his regiment was discharged. That was a bit of a surprise, as I thought that all enlistments by then were for the duration, but apparently not.

 

He spent a fair amount of his mustering out pay buying civilian clothes in Nashville and he lists his purchases. His trip took several days by train. He married upon his return and that's where the journal ends. According for family history, he taught school for many more years and died in his 70s.

 

SQQ

 

 

That is cool, my mom's family was/is from Morgon Co. They have been there since early 1800's, I bet he taught some of my kin.

[Rooster Ron Wayne]

My guess is like the movie Deadwood ?

[Guest Jess Money]

I've repeatedly heard folks describe how language was more flowery, more the oration than the day to day "plain speak" we expect of each other today.

 

According to experts, that's simply not true. An article about a current movie, "Cloud Atlas" which is another of those futuristic, Post-apocalyptic films, deals with this exact subject.

 

According to Anthony Kroch, chair of the linguistics department at the University of Pennsylvania, "There is an idea that in the past, people spoke in a more elevated way than they do now."

"That's not actually true, but people get that impression because the only samples of language that survive from previous eras are well-preserved written pieces, Kroch said. Political treaties, noblemen's letters and literature for the upper classes naturally have more sophisticated language. Shakespeare's plays still live on, but recordings of ordinary people chatting in the streets of Elizabethan England don't exist."

 

http://news.yahoo.com/cloud-atlas-sheds-light-englishs-possible-future-193253666.html

So if Kroch is correct, and I suspect he is, our cowboys of the 19th century were likely as not a half-literate, mispronouncing, simple-speaking lot.

In other words, when one of our 21st century pards "breaks bad" in "SASS cowboy", jawin' bout "shootin boolits with his pards", he's likely replicating 19th century speech more accurately than not.....

 

So mangle away fellow shootists

[Adirondack Jack, SASS #53440]

I got thinking about this again recently, living in FL (which is decidedly a Northeaster State), and travelling to GA and SC often. My GF is from the same county I lived in most of my life back home, but she's been in the south many years.

It surprises us both when we use expressions that were common enough "up home" but never heard here, along with a goodly bit of "Low Country" dialect.

 

I've gotten a lot more polite in conversation with store clerks and such, as the "rude" northern way is not well-tolerated here. "You damned skippy you best start with "good mornin'" at the gas station while paying for your coffee or sweet tea, and expect to be addressed as "sugah" or some such....

 

Even when she asks me a question, I might answer "Yes Ma'am", as the habits have changed with the environment.......

 

I think the point about how COWBOYS spoke is most of them were not high born or well educated, and lacked the HEARING TV or radio we have today, etc. So by the end of a cattle drive they might well pick up bits and pieces of lingo from all over the place, with the "alpha" guys spreading their dialect and the "betas" adapting, etc.

 

If'n the trail boss was from the woods in KY, ya'll could expect his camp to talk different than the camp of a New Englander....

 

What we would not expect, as we don't now, is folks in every day talk to sound like the London or NY times.

 

FWIW "standard" American speech today is often the midwest dialect of many in the radio (and now TV) news business, with a fair number of Canadians (who tend to enunciate well) in the mix.

[Driftwood Johnson, SASS #38283]

Political treaties, noblemen's letters and literature for the upper classes naturally have more sophisticated language. Shakespeare's plays still live on, but recordings of ordinary people chatting in the streets of Elizabethan England don't exist."

 

Howdy

 

Completely untrue. Shakespeare was not writing for the upper classes, he was writing for everybody, including the peasants who stood on the floor of the theater. Shakespeare always included plenty of low humor for the lower classes. If you want to hear how common people actually spoke in Elizabethan England, read your Shakespeare.

 

The bit about hill people in the Appalachians speaking something close to Elizabethan English is completely true. Just a case of cultural isolation. Many of the hill people were of English/Scot ancestry, and since they did not have much contact with the outside world, more modern speech did not seep into their speech.

 

As a matter of fact, there was an English Folklorist named Cecil Sharp who came to Appalachia in the early 1900s and was astonished to find the locals singing songs that were almost unchanged from their English antecedents.

 

All languages evolve and change over time, they are not static. Same with American English. And just as today, you would have heard all kinds of speech used in a trade that was practiced by men from all over the country and other countries.

 

Another thing that has changed is oration. People would travel for miles to hear the great orators of the day speak for hours. Yes, hours. It was considered great entertainment. When Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, it was unusually short for the day. Only ten sentences, just a few minutes long. He shared the stage with other orators that day who went on at great length, as was the custom. Lincoln at first thought his address was a failure because the audience was not expecting something so short.

[Tom Bullweed]

'WYATT EARP SPEAKS' by John Richard Stephens is a book with newspaper, interview, courtroom and other excerpts from 1877 to the 1920s from Wyatt, Doc, Bat and others you would recognize. Doc had a college education; Bat was intellegent (and later wrote for teh NY Times, but most of these guys were of average education. Here are some quotes:

- My experience out there (in Tombstone) has been very unfortunate as to my health and badly injured me as to money matters - none of the results have been satisactory. (Will McLaury three years after the OK corral fight).

- Wyatt Earp, the former Las Vegas slumgullion, got his stomach full of buckshot at Tombstone three or four days ago, and has been planted for worm feed. A Las Vegas, NM news article in error when reporting the shooting of Virgil Earp

- I'd like it first-rate. Bat Masterson to Wyatt Earp's invitiation to join the police force in Dodge City

- You are looked upon in this part of the country as a bad man, and if I give you back your money you would say as soon as I left town, that you made me do it, and for that reason I will keep the money. W. Earp to Ike Morris, a gambler caught cheating.

The language is different but not flowery. It is is short and to the point with occassional imagery. I like it but believe that it would get many strange stares in our world today.

[Lone Dog, SASS #20401]

Some spoke like o my gracious Doc. Some tawked don'tcha see like Festus.

[Tango Mike 20653]

Actually, in Texas it may have been different. Since the best educated, most highly motivated, smartest, and toughest Americans moved to Texas from the beginning in 1823 until 1900, their language was pretty precise, and colorful. Now, those that came after 1900 might be different.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

Bob, are you familiar with a children's show filmed around Beaufort, SC, called "Gullah Gullah Island?" Filmed at Hunting Island State Park, it depicts the "Gullahs" of the 19th century, a population of black fishermen who lived isolated from the mainland a few miles away and developed their own language. Of course throughout the south a mix of Scots Irish and African influences, among others, are found and literacy rates were shabby, creating unque lingo in many locales.

 

Is all that worth saving and understanding? Folks like Steven Foster thought so. Those who have re-written his works, including the State of Kentucky, do us and our history a disservice.

 

Is all this fun? You dammed skippy!!!

 

As recently as 1972-1973 you could drive out of Beaufort across to St. Helena's Island to the town of Frogmore, or to Lady's Island and some of the others (a few accessible only by boat) and find people there who spoke gullah and couldn't understand much South Carolina English at all. It was like visiting a foreign country of an earlier century.

 

Voodoo was still widely practiced and may still be.

 

Visiting by outsiders after dark was strongly discouraged, even by official channels. (My wife was bookkeeper and "paymaster" for the county sheriff's department.)

[Long Branch Louie]

I think they talked like Festus Hagen in "Gunsmoke"....