Chapter 20: (v.3) "Word Family Preface"

Non-Mainstream Word-Fam'lies

Preface

I ask you . . .

what in the world is that to which the English language is coming?

You know,

Gentle Reader,

the English language has been changing since and during the ‘Great Vowel Shift,’

which started in the 1500’s of the Common Era . . .

around the time the European trans-Atlantic slave trade of African human beings was far on its way toward becoming a large global industry for about 250 years, i.e. about 110 generations of 25 years each.

Technology . . .

current or maybe a technology more advanced . . .

brings the English-speaking world near a seeming tipping point whereby non-mainstream elision be mainstream.

Two examples follow in which elision takes place of the medial-vowel letter-‘i' . . .

as that vowel relates to a root-vowel letter-‘y’:

the vowel is written but not heard.

The Audio-Video system . . .

the basis for the treatise that follows . . .

believes that these two examples demonstrate that the future is now for global English and that future is a more concise,

more contextual,

and more rapid version of English than what the mainstream now knows.

The A-V system so names itself because the system aims at distinguishing between the audio and video,

that is,

the verbal and written forms,

of English.

My name is Sunil Pratap, and I am a fictional character in long novel entitled “The Keel Keens” by William Cleerfloore. Another character in the book, a man by the name of Frank Hagar, who is not a black Caucasian as am I, asks me at a language class of mine to make a series of word families for not mainstream but non-mainstream English, as he is of African-American heritage. Though I designed the Audio-Video system for my classes in the novel, I am by no means a natural non-mainstream English speaker, so “Non-Mainstream English Word-Families” necessitated that I make many, many extrapolations and interpolations based on my auditory memory of non-mainstream English pronunciations and what Mr. Hagar had told me on our stationary cruise ship. Hence, the work before you, Gentle Reader, is not a textbook for learning purposes but an opinion piece along the lines of a doctoral dissertation (without citations) that needs to face the scrutiny of its peers and be criticized and commented upon and gossiped about, though of course this project has many factual aspects. By design this booklet is for non-mainstream human families.

While I was quarantined on a desert isle in the Fiji Group of the South Pacific with a ship-wrecked stranger, two empty student notebooks, two machetes, a modest length of rope, a house, and an outhouse, I created this project.

During that time the following dream came to me of a great-grandmother and her great-granddaughter in a forest beside a tree with a hollow in which was an ordinary children’s book;

Lea-They is the great-grandmother,

and Lee-Koo is the great-granddaughter,

their speaking in a way that I can only approximate,

my using punctuation as my only heuristic:

“Lea-They: Come ‘ere chile . . . le’ me show you somepin.

Lee-Koo: What?

Lea-They: Dey calls dis stuff writin’.

De law says we ain’t a-posed to look at no writin,’

but de law juss’ bees made by peebles,

an’ dem peebles ain’t God,

who doan wan no form a slavery but lib’ration for all:

readin’ lib’rates us.

An’ yet . . .

dere bees a whole lot a tricks a dee trade,

soes I goin’s do learn you some.

But first,

I wan’s you do know dat you cain’t never let dis out to nob’dy—

in partic’lar,

like dem peebles down dee road a piece what ain’t got no lan’ and so ’pen’ on wages for income ‘n’ so dee store for food,

an’ most times eats nothin’ but cracker.

Lee-Koo: We goin’s do get in trouble,

Great-Grammy?

Lea-they: You cain’t tell nobody—

not even your moms ‘n’ daddy—

’bout none a dis.

Lee-Koo: OK.

Lea-they: Sometimes,

peebles juss gots to cut and run . . .

if poss’ble:

dis here readin’ gives us de prot’col in dee letters an’ dee words.

Dey be tree kinds a letters:

non-stops,

which say they name for ever an’ a day if’n dey wants do;

stops,

which makes dey soun’ an’ den stops;

an’ tweeners,

which gots a li’l bit a stop and li’l bit a’ non-stop to ’em.

The firs’ ones says dey names loud an’ clear;

de secon’ ones juss’ makes soun’s an’ doan’ say dey names;

de tird ones says dey nicknames . . .

in short-form.

Dis all bees in case dey makes a excape:

if’n a body gots to,

sometimes he or she goes ’lone . . .

but dat ain’t advise;

if’n a body uses dee body system,

he or she ain’t ’lone.

If’n ya’ make a break for excape,

group up into units:

dee mose’ strongest unit gots a ’tweener in dee lead,

an’ dee lease’ strongest gots a sounder at dee front and back an’ a namer,

full-name or nick-name,

in dee middlin’ . . .

juss’ like these here words in dis here book.

In dese here syll’bles be some namers an’ some sounders,

but sometimes either one a dems bees silent:

havin’ silent partners along make the unit even stronger . . .

in case ya’ get caught . . .

cause ya’ still maybe get away . . .

after a fight.

Also,

if’n ya’ got a voice wiph out no body . . .

like a haint . . .

that gain advantage, too,

’cause your party soun’s larger than it bees for reals.

Sometimes a non-stop can turn into a stop an’ jine with ’nother stop to make a whole new body . . .

like a ‘t’ an’ a ‘i' to a ‘t’ an’ a ‘y’ to a ‘ch’ an’ den to a ‘sh’,

so dat dem patty-rollers doan’ know if’n dey be lookin’ at a body or a bush.

Dat’s all for now, chile.

I tell you again ’nother time.

Lee-Koo: I looks forward to it, Great-Grammy!

Lea-They: Wait . . . dey is more dan juss’ dee excape prot’col.

Dee language bees dee hist’ry a how our peebles got cotched.

You cain’t get alone but gots to stick with your others.

In Af’ca dee toubob cotched lots a Af’cans.

In our language,

when a toubob catch a body,

dee toubob make a soun’ . . .

‘uh’ . . .

then dee body it dis’pear.

Our language tells dee story a how what maybe some 12 million bodies done dis’pear from Af’ca.

Dee language dareby bees dee obverse ‘n’ dee reverse a dee same coin . . .

how do get away ‘n’ how so many got cotched.

Lee-Koo: Oh, my heavens.

Lea-They: Dat’s right . . . ‘Oh my  heavens!’”

Then the dream ended. Who knows what all that means? S. P.

  Kelli: Okay, I didn’t want to do this before October 14th, when our party breaks up after the partial annular solar eclipse, but trip has come to fall, so to speak, so the carpet has to be replaced, and because hardwood flooring is the replacement, the old hardwood has to be removed before an all-new floor goes down . . .

tomorrow.

You’re all going to have to stay in your bedrooms or be out all day.

-Dom’nic: Until we become aware of a public decision on the Individual Restitution Accounts, I recommend that people double up if outside for the day.

Ricky: I’ll go back to Portland.

-Dom’nick: Do you mind if I join you, Ricky?

Ricky: Not at all.

’Chelle: How about you, Matilda, and I go to our place and clean up some, Wyatt?

Wyatt: Sounds like chores.

Aunt Willamaina: Sis, how about you and I go do some chores at our place?

Aunt Carrie Lynn: Sounds fine.

Ms. Butterfly Pratap II: Seck and Kelli, why not come to my place in Astoria? We might have some tea and lunch and watch an old movie or two.

Seck & Kelli: Sure.

Frankie: That just leaves you and me, Claude.

Uncle Claude: Be that an invite to go a-toolin,’ Little Lady?

Frankie: You ain’t got no car!

Uncle Claude: Cousin Dom got two. Ain’t that right, Cuz?

-Dom’nic: Subaru Foresters . . . 2005 and 2014, the latter having better air conditioning and the former having better gas mileage. Whichever car you want, you have to replenish the gas you use. Uncle Claude: Frankie?

Frankie: The better A/C . . . course: the gas money come out a your pocket.

Kelli: So, the flooring outfit comes early tomorrow. Here’s Pratap.

Aunt Willamaina: I have some indelible memories that I want to say something about . . . what I don’t know.

The school district I attended had junior high school students view many times a French black and white and color documentary filmed in 1945 and 1955 called “Night and Fog. ”

The many images of cachectic corpses bulldozed into mounds I have never been able to forget . . .

more than 50 years later . . .

even right now.

In my opinion, similar images contributed to the formation in 1948 of the state of Israel as a refuge for the survivors of the Holocaust.

Many hollow bodies were the result of anti-Semitism . . . this much I know.

On the one hand,

my brother’s assessment of the American experience is to have one of the parties in the Holy Land exit . . .

until peace arrives;

on the other hand,

Pratap’s readings suggest that both parties in the Holy Land stay . . .

whether by separate states or not.

The third option that comes to mind for me is that both parties in the Holy Land exit . . . for whatever reason.

I want that no people ever again . . .

whether on the Palestinian side or the Israeli side. . .

experience as seen in 1945 . . .

at locations of mass cachexia and industrialized murder.

The hollow bodies haunt me.

Ricky:

Less than 10 years ago, the film “Night and Fog”,

almost 60 years after its release, rated as the fourth best documentary of all time.

The title refers to the schedule for abductions . . . “night and fog.”

  Kelli: OK, the flooring outfit arrived early this morning, and all of us soon left the house in two’s or three’s . . .

as recommended by my older brother, Dom, for protection against potential animosity—

because of our intention to rid ourselves of almost $2Trillion inherited from Papa Richards’ faro winnings and Sunil Pratap’s entrepreneurship, 

followed by astute investing for more than 100 years at home and abroad . . .

and because of our will to give $40,000 to every man, woman, and child in the United States of African-American descent in recognition that one or more of their ancestors may have been part of a body of 10 generations over 250 years who did not ever get paid a day’s wage for a day’s work—

by law.

Expectations were a smooth ride for all . . .

any exceptions?

Group: (Silence.)

Frankie: I had a un-smooth ride.

Group: (Laughter.)

Frankie: I’m -sear’yous, you all! Claude done a 360 on the freeway . . . ‘cause he had do! I -doan’ know where we -wuz or what road we -wuz on, but I got me lots a -pi’chures in my head a the steps long the way.

Kelli: Did anyone get hurt?

Frankie: No, thank goodness!

Kelli: Any crashes?

Frankie: Not a one.

Kelli: Please tell us the pictures you have in mind.

Frankie: So, we is drivin’ west whare the phone say thare be a Winco store -cuz we wanted some lunch that weren’t spendy.

Pi’chure Number One: the road west climbs a grade, and a off- ramp veer right.

Pi’chure Number Two: we be on a bridge with a high-speed road below.

Pi’chure Number Three: the bridge keep on over lots a railroad tracks while the far right got a jack lane.

Kelli: What is a jack lane?

Frankie: It be a lane that start from a on-ramp an’ end as a off- ramp.

Pi’chure Number Four: The bridge keep on as we pass the first jack lane and the highway veer leff’.

Pi’chure Number Five: As the bridge come to ground a off-ramp turn right and straight ahead is another jack lane . . . the seconn’ much longer that the firss’.

Pi’chure Number Six: the highway makes a 90 d’gree turn to the leff’ to run even with the jack lane.

Pi’chure Number Seven: To the side a the hi-way be a sign that say Winco this exit even tho we see the store on the other side a the hi-way.

That’s the -mose’ a my part. Claude, take your turn.

Uncle Claude: We -wuz doin’ freeway speed with the back windows a the 2014 Forester down.

There -wuz only one other car on our side a the highway . . . the driver with thick medium length hair . . . maybe a woman . . . maybe a young guy . . . the car ’mer’cun- made . . . long hood . . . long trunk . . .

Frankie tell me to take the jack lane to exit an’ turn leff’ at the nexx’ cross street under the hi-way.

I’m in the right lane,

an’ the other car be in the leff’ lane when I signal right.

I -wuz lucky that the sky behind us was full a dark clouds,

’cuz as I signal,

I see a flash in the rear view mirror,

which I -dit’n -no what the flash -wuz, but I do now . . .

sunshine on the only other car as that car change lanes from my leff’ to ‘hind me to my right, ’cept I dit’n -no it.

Whare that other car had been hangin’ off my leff’ flank at my speed . . . steady . . . I heard that car’s engine rev hi thru our open back windows.

That other car beat me to the jack lane an’ -wuz in my right side blindspot, but Frankie seen it an’ done yell, “No, Claude!”

So I cut the wheel hard to the leff, an’ -forch’nate we dit'n roll a  -cuz a the allwheeldrive on the Forester.

If’n Frankie ain’t yell, I’d a knock that other car right off the road.

We ain’t never -’gen see that other car no how no way.

Wyatt: Right-side passing is one of the most dangerous maneuvers a driver can undertake . . . at any speed, and changing two lanes at once is so dangerous it is against the law.

Non-Mainstream Word-Fam'lies

Preface

I ask you . . .

what in the world is that to which the English language is coming?

You know,

Gentle Reader,

the English language has been changing since and during the ‘Great Vowel Shift,’

which started in the 1500’s of the Common Era . . .

around the time the European trans-Atlantic slave trade of African human beings was far on its way toward becoming a large global industry for about 250 years, i.e. about 110 generations of 25 years each.

Technology . . .

current or maybe a technology more advanced . . .

brings the English-speaking world near a seeming tipping point whereby non-mainstream elision be mainstream.

Two examples follow in which elision takes place of the medial-vowel letter-‘i' . . .

as that vowel relates to a root-vowel letter-‘y’:

the vowel is written but not heard.

The Audio-Video system . . .

the basis for the treatise that follows . . .

believes that these two examples demonstrate that the future is now for global English and that future is a more concise,

more contextual,

and more rapid version of English than what the mainstream now knows.

The A-V system so names itself because the system aims at distinguishing between the audio and video,

that is,

the verbal and written forms,

of English.

My name is Sunil Pratap, and I am a fictional character in long novel entitled “The Keel Keens” by William Cleerfloore. Another character in the book, a man by the name of Frank Hagar, who is not a black Caucasian as am I, asks me at a language class of mine to make a series of word families for not mainstream but non-mainstream English, as he is of African-American heritage. Though I designed the Audio-Video system for my classes in the novel, I am by no means a natural non-mainstream English speaker, so “Non-Mainstream English Word-Families” necessitated that I make many, many extrapolations and interpolations based on my auditory memory of non-mainstream English pronunciations and what Mr. Hagar had told me on our stationary cruise ship. Hence, the work before you, Gentle Reader, is not a textbook for learning purposes but an opinion piece along the lines of a doctoral dissertation (without citations) that needs to face the scrutiny of its peers and be criticized and commented upon and gossiped about, though of course this project has many factual aspects. By design this booklet is for non-mainstream human families.

While I was quarantined on a desert isle in the Fiji Group of the South Pacific with a ship-wrecked stranger, two empty student notebooks, two machetes, a modest length of rope, a house, and an outhouse, I created this project.

During that time the following dream came to me of a great-grandmother and her great-granddaughter in a forest beside a tree with a hollow in which was an ordinary children’s book;

Lea-They is the great-grandmother,

and Lee-Koo is the great-granddaughter,

their speaking in a way that I can only approximate,

my using punctuation as my only heuristic:

“Lea-They: Come ‘ere chile . . . le’ me show you somepin.

Lee-Koo: What?

Lea-They: Dey calls dis stuff writin’.

De law says we ain’t a-posed to look at no writin,’

but de law juss’ bees made by peebles,

an’ dem peebles ain’t God,

who doan wan no form a slavery but lib’ration for all:

readin’ lib’rates us.

An’ yet . . .

dere bees a whole lot a tricks a dee trade,

soes I goin’s do learn you some.

But first,

I wan’s you do know dat you cain’t never let dis out to nob’dy—

in partic’lar,

like dem peebles down dee road a piece what ain’t got no lan’ and so ’pen’ on wages for income ‘n’ so dee store for food,

an’ most times eats nothin’ but cracker.

Lee-Koo: We goin’s do get in trouble,

Great-Grammy?

Lea-they: You cain’t tell nobody—

not even your moms ‘n’ daddy—

’bout none a dis.

Lee-Koo: OK.

Lea-they: Sometimes,

peebles juss gots to cut and run . . .

if poss’ble:

dis here readin’ gives us de prot’col in dee letters an’ dee words.

Dey be tree kinds a letters:

non-stops,

which say they name for ever an’ a day if’n dey wants do;

stops,

which makes dey soun’ an’ den stops;

an’ tweeners,

which gots a li’l bit a stop and li’l bit a’ non-stop to ’em.

The firs’ ones says dey names loud an’ clear;

de secon’ ones juss’ makes soun’s an’ doan’ say dey names;

de tird ones says dey nicknames . . .

in short-form.

Dis all bees in case dey makes a excape:

if’n a body gots to,

sometimes he or she goes ’lone . . .

but dat ain’t advise;

if’n a body uses dee body system,

he or she ain’t ’lone.

If’n ya’ make a break for excape,

group up into units:

dee mose’ strongest unit gots a ’tweener in dee lead,

an’ dee lease’ strongest gots a sounder at dee front and back an’ a namer,

full-name or nick-name,

in dee middlin’ . . .

juss’ like these here words in dis here book.

In dese here syll’bles be some namers an’ some sounders,

but sometimes either one a dems bees silent:

havin’ silent partners along make the unit even stronger . . .

in case ya’ get caught . . .

cause ya’ still maybe get away . . .

after a fight.

Also,

if’n ya’ got a voice wiph out no body . . .

like a haint . . .

that gain advantage, too,

’cause your party soun’s larger than it bees for reals.

Sometimes a non-stop can turn into a stop an’ jine with ’nother stop to make a whole new body . . .

like a ‘t’ an’ a ‘i' to a ‘t’ an’ a ‘y’ to a ‘ch’ an’ den to a ‘sh’,

so dat dem patty-rollers doan’ know if’n dey be lookin’ at a body or a bush.

Dat’s all for now, chile.

I tell you again ’nother time.

Lee-Koo: I looks forward to it, Great-Grammy!

Lea-They: Wait . . . dey is more dan juss’ dee excape prot’col.

Dee language bees dee hist’ry a how our peebles got cotched.

You cain’t get alone but gots to stick with your others.

In Af’ca dee toubob cotched lots a Af’cans.

In our language,

when a toubob catch a body,

dee toubob make a soun’ . . .

‘uh’ . . .

then dee body it dis’pear.

Our language tells dee story a how what maybe some 12 million bodies done dis’pear from Af’ca.

Dee language dareby bees dee obverse ‘n’ dee reverse a dee same coin . . .

how do get away ‘n’ how so many got cotched.

Lee-Koo: Oh, my heavens.

Lea-They: Dat’s right . . . ‘Oh my  heavens!’”

Then the dream ended. Who knows what all that means? S. P.