Afro-American Folksongs - online book

A Study In Racial And National Music, With Sample Sheet Music & Lyrics.

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	SONGS OF THE BLACK CREOLES
	negroes in the same sense in which it was employed long ago in France: etre apres faire quelque chose, to be after doing something—a locution found in Languedoc.1 The creole negro takes the word indicating a state of being and prefixes the pronoun:
	Mo—Je suis—I am To—Tu es—Thou art Li—II est—He is Nou—Nous sommes—We are Vou—Vous etes—You are Ye—lis sont—They are			malade—ill.
				[ malades—ill.
	To express an act in the course of accomplishment re­course is had to the pronoun joined to the preposition apres (ape) which is followed by the infinitive: Moi apres, i. e., Mo ape, which is contracted into mape, and so on with the rest:
	Mape Tape Lope Nape rape Yape	dinin.
	the equivalent of
	Jesuis Tues II est Nous sommes Vous etes Ussont		apres diner.
	Nothing remains of the pronoun, except the sound of the initial letter, and these people having no written language, even the letter does not exist for them. When the black slave heard his master speak of things in the past tense it was the sound te which fell most frequently and persistently into his ear: J'etais, tu etais, il etait, ils etaient. Upon this te the negro seized as representing or figuring the past, and joining it to the pronoun he formed his imperfect indicative of the verb etre: Afof-T'etais. Tote—Tu Stais. Lite—11 6tait. j/Vo«'£—Nous etions. Poute—Vous etiez. Yete—Ils etaiexxt. 1 I might add that it is a form with which the English language has been enriched by an Irish idiom. [ 131]