Below I've listed some "vocab words" that help show (shew?) the mid 18th century dialect that might have been common in southern New England. (On the right is the modern spelling and the left is the 18th century spelling.)
Ancient - Antient
Choice - Choise
Choose - Chuse
Choosing - Chusing
Concerning - Conserning
Dropped - Dropt
Entirely - Intirely
Fearful - Fereful
Hazard - Haszard
Health - Helth
Indian - Indine
Joined - Joyned
Major - Majior
Many - Meny
People - Peopel
Showed - Shewed
Spoke - Spake
Their - Thire
Thursday - Thursdy
Told - Tould
Touro (as in Touro Street) - Tauro
Triple - Treble
Vicious - Visious
These examples are from The Literary Diary of Eztra Stiles Volume 1. If you're wondering who Ezra Stiles was, here are a few sources to learn more about his life...
- An article from the Redwood Library where he was a librarian.
- A brief history from Yale where he served as the college's seventh president.
- A short biography from Princeton.
Miniature portrait of The Reverend Dr. Ezra Stiles c.1770
Metropolitan Museum of Art Accession Number 68.222.26
A photograph of Ezra Stiles home on Clark Street in Newport, RI
Newport Historical Society Catalog Number P8866
What a great list!
ReplyDeleteI particularly love a letter from John Brown to his daughter Sally, in which he writes that her sister Abby is helping "your Mar bake pyes." There's the local floating 'R' sound, written out. It persists; my friend from Greenville says "drawring," for drawing, when she is tired.