Tutnese

Last updated
Gloria Mcilwain saying "Circle" in Tutnese (Southern Dialect)
Gloria Mcilwain saying "Welcome" in Tutnese (Southern Dialect)
Gloria Mcilwain saying "Bubbles" in Tutnese (Southern Dialect)

Tutnese (also known as Tut) is an argot created by enslaved African Americans based on African-American Vernacular English as a method to covertly teach and learn spelling and reading.

Contents

Language rules

In Tutnese, vowels are pronounced normally, [1] or pronounced as their letter name, but each consonant is replaced with a different syllable. The linguistics journal American Speech published the following table detailing syllables that replace consonants in Tutnese: [2] [3]

LetterTut syllableLetterTut syllableLetterTut syllable
BbubKkakSsus
CcutLlulTtut
DdudMmumVvuv
FfufNnunWwax
GgugPpupXex
HhashQquackYyak
JjagRrut*Zzuz

*When spoken before /dud/, /rut/ is changed to /rud/

A different set of syllables for the language game had appeared in The New York Times Magazine several decades earlier, and the author noted the similarities between the "Tutahash" and the "Double Dutch" language game, which he claimed to be the third most widely spoken language game in the United States when he was writing in 1944, but he also indicated several differences between the two, detailed in the following table: [4]

LetterTutahashDouble Dutch (if different)LetterTutahashDouble Dutch (if different)LetterTutahashDouble Dutch (if different)
BbubKkukSsus
CcuscashLlulTtut
DdudMmumVvuv
FfufNnunWwwash
GgugPpupXexxux
HhashhutchQquackYyumyub
JjugRrurrugZzuzzub

Double letters in a word, rather than being repeated, are preceded by the syllable square [1] [3] or squa[ citation needed ] to indicate doubling. For doubled vowels, the prefix becomes squat instead—thus, OO would be spoken as squat-oh.[ citation needed ]

For example, "tree" becomes "Tutrugsquatee" and "I took a walk to the park yesterday" becomes "I tutsquatohkuck a wackalulkuck tuto tuthashe pubarugkuck yubesustuterugdudayub."

While spaces between words are always ignored, at least one "dialect" of the language requires that the first syllable of the name of any given punctuation mark be spoken, thus a full stop (period) is Per, a question mark is Que (Kway or Kay, varies), and a comma is Com.[ citation needed ]

History

Enslaved African Americans were not permitted to read or write, and could be severely punished if they were discovered to be literate. African Americans in the southeastern United States created Tutnese to covertly teach spelling and reading. [3] Some used it in the presence of authority figures, such as slave masters or police.[ citation needed ]

In the mid-1990s, Gloria McIlwain published an academic article and a book on the Tut language. In 2021, Tutnese gained traction on social media platforms including Discord, Google Classroom and TikTok. For some social media users, learning Tutnese was a way to preserve African American traditions and culture. The social media discourse around Tutnese also saw debate over gatekeeping the language game, with some advocating for its being shared only in closed groups among African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States while others promoted public sharing of Tut and its rules among as many African Americans as possible. [5]

There is a version used in some parts of the United States called Yuckish or Yukkish, which uses more or less the same constructs.[ citation needed ]

Literary mentions

In Ernest Thompson Seton's book Two Little Savages, the protagonist, Yan, learns the "Tutnee" language from another boy at camp and tries to teach it to his friends Sam and Giles. [6] :57:385 Seton presents Tutnee alongside many Native American stereotypes but does not mention its African American origin. [7] :60:101

Maya Angelou mentions learning Tutnese as a child in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , the first volume of her series of autobiographies. She and her friend Louise "spent tedious hours teaching ourselves the Tut language. You (yak oh you) know (kack nug oh wug) what (wack hash a tut). Since all the other children spoke Pig Latin, we were superior because Tut was hard to speak and even harder to understand. At last I began to understand what girls giggled about. Louise would rattle off a few sentences to me in the unintelligible Tut language and would laugh. Naturally I laughed too. Snickered, really, understanding nothing. I don't think she understood half of what she was saying herself, but, after all, girls have to giggle..." [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khmer language</span> Austroasiatic language of Cambodia

Khmer is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people. This language is an official language and national language of Cambodia. The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan, Thailand, also in Southeast and Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and [b], pronounced with the lips; and [d], pronounced with the front of the tongue; and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue;, pronounced throughout the vocal tract;, [v], and, pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and, which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Most consonants are pulmonic, using air pressure from the lungs to generate a sound. Very few natural languages are non-pulmonic, making use of ejectives, implosives, and clicks. Contrasting with consonants are vowels.

A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.

Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard Finnish, which is based on the dialect spoken in the former Häme Province in central south Finland. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such as reporters and news presenters on television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zulu language</span> Nguni language of eastern South Africa and neighbouring countries

Zulu, or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken and indigenous to Southern Africa. It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 13.56 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The word "KwaZulu-Natal" translates into English as "Home of the Zulu Nation is Natal". Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa, and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 12 official languages in 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glottal stop</span> Sound made by stopping airflow in the glottis

The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩.

A mora is a smallest unit of timing, equal to or shorter than a syllable, that theoretically or perceptually exists in some spoken languages in which phonetic length matters significantly. For example, in the Japanese language, the name of the city Ōsaka (おおさか) consists of three syllables (O-sa-ka) but four morae, since the first syllable, Ō, is pronounced with a long vowel. Thus, a short vowel contains one mora and is called monomoraic, while a long vowel contains two and is called bimoraic. Extra-long syllables with three morae (trimoraic) are relatively rare. Such metrics based on syllables are also referred to as syllable weight. In Japanese, certain consonants also stand on their own as individual morae and thus are monomoraic.

Yoruba is a Niger-Congo language that is spoken in West Africa, primarily in Southwestern and Central Nigeria. It is spoken by the Yoruba people. Yoruba speakers number roughly 47 million, including about 2 million second-language speakers. As a pluricentric language, it is primarily spoken in a dialectal area spanning Nigeria, Benin, and Togo with smaller migrated communities in Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sinhala language</span> Indo-Aryan language native to Sri Lanka

Sinhala, sometimes called Sinhalese, is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script, which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India.

Nǁng or Nǁŋǃke, commonly known by the name of its only spoken dialect Nǀuu, is a moribund Tuu language once spoken in South Africa. It is no longer spoken on a daily basis, as the speakers live in different villages. The ǀʼAuni name for the Nǀuu, ǂKhomani, is used by the South African government. As of June 2021, only one speaker of the Nǀuu dialect remains, the rest of the population having shifted to Khoekhoe and Afrikaans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neapolitan language</span> Italo-Romance language spoken in southern Italy

Neapolitan is a Romance language of the Italo-Romance group spoken in Naples and most of continental Southern Italy. It is named after the Kingdom of Naples, which once covered most of the area, and the city of Naples was its capital. On 14 October 2008, a law by the Region of Campania stated that Neapolitan was to be protected.

English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yupik languages</span> Languages of the Yupik natives of Alaska

The Yupik languages are a family of languages spoken by the Yupik peoples of western and south-central Alaska and Chukotka. The Yupik languages differ enough from one another that they are not mutually intelligible, although speakers of one of the languages may understand the general idea of a conversation of speakers of another of the languages. One of them, Sirenik, has been extinct since 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miskito language</span> Misumalpan language spoken in Honduras and Nicaragua

Miskito is a Misumalpan language spoken by the Miskito people in northeastern Nicaragua, especially in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region, and in eastern Honduras.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mandombe script</span> Congolese writing system

Mandombe or Mandombé is a script proposed in 1978 in Mbanza-Ngungu in the Bas-Congo province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Wabeladio Payi, who related that it was revealed to him in a dream by Simon Kimbangu, the prophet of the Kimbanguist Church. Mandombe is based on the sacred shapes and , and intended for writing African languages such as Kikongo, as well as the four national languages of the Congo, Kikongo ya leta, Lingala, Tshiluba and Swahili, though it does not have enough vowels to write Lingala fully. It is taught in Kimbanguist church schools in Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also promoted by the Kimbanguist Centre de l’Écriture Négro-Africaine (CENA). The Mandombe Academy at CENA is currently working on transcribing other African languages in the script. It has been classified as the third most viable indigenous script of recent indigenous west African scripts, behind only the Vai syllabary and the N'Ko alphabet.

Kera is an East Chadic language spoken by 45,000 people in Southwest Chad and 6,000 people in North Cameroon.

The Kaingang language is a Southern Jê language spoken by the Kaingang people of southern Brazil. The Kaingang nation has about 30,000 people, and about 60–65% speak the language. Most also speak Portuguese.

A language game is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to an untrained listener. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their conversations from others. Some common examples are Pig Latin; the Gibberish family, prevalent in the United States and Sweden; and Verlan, spoken in France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelabit language</span> Austronesian language spoken on Borneo

Kelabit is one of the most remote languages of Borneo, on the Sarawak–North Kalimantan border. It is spoken by one of the smallest ethnicities in Borneo, the Kelabit people.

Koro is a language spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India. It is typically classified as a Sino-Tibetan language, and has some resemblances to Tani farther to the east. It has been argued that Koro is actually part of the Greater Siangic family, independent from but influenced by the Sino-Tibetan family. Koro is spoken by about 1,500 people in the Koro-Aka tribe who are found in East Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India. Few speakers are under 20 years old. The majority of Koro speakers live in bilingual households in which one or more members speak Ako or another indigenous language rather than Koro. The Koro-Aka tribe lives among the Aka (Hruso) tribe. However, the Koro-Aka people speak a very distantly related language from the remaining Aka tribe who speak Hruso-Aka. Researchers hypothesize Koro may have originated from a group of people enslaved and brought to the area.

References

  1. 1 2 Milberg, Alan (1976). Street Games. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 80. ISBN   9780070419155.
  2. McIlwain, Gloria (1995). Tut language. San Francisco, CA (P.O. Box 210679, San Francisco 94121): Tut Language Co. ISBN   0-9647705-0-4. OCLC   37673070.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  3. 1 2 3 McIlwain, Gloria (1994). "Tut Language". American Speech . 69 (1): 111–112. JSTOR   455958.
  4. Bender, James F. (December 31, 1944). "Ourway Ecretsay Anguageslay; That means 'our secret languages' in Pig Latin, one of several synthetic tongues used by some 50,000,000 Americans". The New York Times Magazine. New York. Retrieved April 22, 2022.
  5. Brutus, Bianca (August 21, 2021). "This forgotten language is seeing a revival thanks to TikTok". NBC News. Retrieved May 8, 2022.
  6. Seton, Ernest Thompson (1903). Two Little Savages: Being the Adventures of Two Boys who Lived as Indians and what They Learned. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.
  7. Kidd, Kenneth B. (2004). Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN   0816642958.
  8. Angelou, Maya (1969). I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House. p. 119-120. ISBN   978-0-375-50789-2.