Most discussions of Black American English (BAE) frame it as a survival of African languages or as the product of African creolization. But if we look closer at the linguistic environment of the Atlantic world (1600s–1700s), the story points us in a different direction.
🚢 What is Maritime English?
Maritime English was the simplified contact language used aboard ships and in Atlantic ports. Crews were multinational Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scots-Irish, Londoners, Africans, Moors, even Portuguese and Dutch. (Arguably Moors and Swarts from these areas too)
To work together, they used a stripped-down English: • Simple pronouns: me for “I,” he for all genders. • Bare verbs: me go, he say, you come. • No tense markers: time shown with context. • Loanwords: sabby (“understand”), pickaninny (“child”), palaver (“talk”).
It wasn’t “bad English” — it was a functioning lingua franca that shaped how captives first encountered the language.
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🗣️ What is BAE (Black American English)?
Black American English is the heritage dialect of Black Americans, rooted in the 1600s–1800s. It has its own rules: habitual be, double negation, aspect markers (done, been), and distinctive rhythm.
It’s not “slang” or “broken English.” It’s the product of generations who took Maritime English and reshaped it in the Americas — with influence from the non-standard Englishes of Irish, Cornish, and Welsh sailors and servants.
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📜 Examples Across the Centuries
⚓ 1600s — Maritime English Stage • “Me no sabby dis talk.” • “Massa say go, me go.”
👉 Straight from shipboard pidgin: “me” for I, no verb endings.
🌾 1700s — Plantation Creole Stage • “Me done work rice field all day.” • “Dem chillun hungry.”
👉 “done” as aspect, “dem” for plural. Stabilized plantation creole (esp. Gullah).
🚜 1800s — Early Black English / AAVE Roots • “I ain’t got no shoes dis winter.” • “We gwine down by de ribba.”
👉 Double negation, “gwine” for going to, “done gone.” Looks like modern AAVE already.
🎤 1900s — Stabilized BAE / WPA Voices • “I’se been workin’ in de field since I small.” • “Dey ain’t never give us no rest.”
👉 WPA interviews preserve full dialect. Now a stable heritage variety.
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🔗 The Missing Link: Hiberno, Cornish, and Welsh English
Many BAE features have close cousins in Irish and British regional English:
Habitual “be”: • Hiberno: He does be workin’ late. • BAE: He be workin’ late.
Double negatives: • Cornish/Welsh English: I didn’t see nobody. • BAE: I ain’t seen nobody.
“Done” for completion: • West Country: He done gone already. • BAE: He done gone home.
These weren’t learned in Africa, they came from the English of poor sailors and indentured servants that Africans and Amerindians lived and worked beside.
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🧭 Moors, Indentured Servants & the Atlantic Mix
Don’t forget the Moorish sailors and indentured servants who also moved through the Atlantic. These men carried creolized Atlantic speech into the same space where Amerindians, Africans, and Irishmen mixed. The Africans sailors would’ve owned enslaved people from the group what we recognize and label as “White” today. Between the 1500s and 1700s, hundreds of thousands of Europeans (English, Irish, Spanish, French) were captured by Barbary corsairs (many of them African sailors).
The English BAs learned was
• Not King’s English. • Not purely African retention. • But a Maritime English forged by Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Cockney, various creolized African, and Moorish tongues in the chaos of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
⚓ Black American English isn’t an “African survival” in disguise. It’s a heritage dialect born in the Atlantic, out of Maritime English, with crucial input from Irish, Cornish, and Welsh English. It’s the speech of a people who learned their English from Moorish sailors, Irish servants, Cornish deckhands, and Welsh farm boys, not from Oxford professors.
That’s why it sounds the way it does.
1600s Maritime English A: Me go market now. You want someting back? B: Yes. Bring water fo’ me. Tankee.
1700s Plantation Creole A: Me gwine go store now. You wan’ someting back? B: Ya. Bring me watah. Me tankee you.
1800s Early BAE (Antebellum) A: I gwine to de store. You want me fetch you anyting? B: Yas. Fetch me some watah. Much ’blige.
1900s WPA BAE A: I’se fixin’ go to de sto’. You want somethin’? B: Yeah, bring me some wata. ’Preciate ya.
Modern BAE (21st c.) A: I’m finna go to the store. You want somethin’? B: Bet. Grab me some water. Appreciate you.
Missionary Report: John Eliot’s Work (1660s) • Eliot taught Algonquian speakers English and noted they used simplified forms. Example:
“Me want bread.” “Him no go.”
— paraphrases recorded in Eliot’s Letters to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
From their own words:
🔍 WPA / Slave Narrative Quotes from Various States
- National Humanities Center – “Enslaved Family: Selections from the WPA Narratives”• Lucinda Davis, enslaved in Oklahoma: “I don’t know where I been born. Nobody never did tell me. But my mammy and pappy git me after de War and I know den whose child I is.”
- National Humanities Center – “Emancipation: The WPA interviews of formerly enslaved African Americans”• Former slaves from South Carolina (1860s / 1930s recollection):
“We was free. Just like that, we was free.” 
Also in that batch:
“‘Abe Lincoln freed the nigger With the gun and the trigger; And I ain’t goin’ to get whipped any more.’” 
3. Mississippi – WPA Slave Narratives • James Lucas (Adams County, Mississippi, born 1833): “[Sharecropping] wuzn’t much diffent from slavery. We lived in quarters, used de white folks horses en ploughs en helped raise our own food. We just change a marster for a boss.” 
• Virginia Harris (Coahoma County, Mississippi):
“When you is a slave, you ain’t got no mo’ chance than a bullfrog.” 
4. Missouri – “Slavery’s Echoes: Interviews with Former Missouri Slaves”
• Tishey Taylor, Poplar Bluff, MO:
“I wusn’t very old during slave time, but I worked, yes sir, I did. And my por’ mammy chile’, it was from daylight ta dark … Mammy used to card wool and cotton, and spin, then she would weave goods.” 
• Rachel Goings, Cape Girardeau, MO:
“My master let us come and go pretty much as we pleased. In fact, we had much more freedom dan most of de slaves in those days.” 
5. Virginia Memory / Virginia WPA Narratives • (From “Voices: WPA Narratives” series): … the narratives include interviews “with former slaves … showing speech with heavy dialect” in recounting stories of life under slavery and freedom. 
1. Lucinda Davis (Oklahoma, Chickasaw Freedwoman)
“I don’t know where I been born. Nobody never did tell me. But my mammy and pappy git me after de War and I know den whose child I is.”
2. Frances Banks (Oklahoma, Choctaw Freedwoman)
“After de War I was what you call a freedman.”
3. Frances Banks
“De Indians had to give all dey slaves forty acres of land.”
4. Frances Banks
“I’se allus lived on dis land which jines dat of Ole Master’s and I’se never stayed away from it long at a time.”
5. James Lucas (Mississippi, born 1833)
“[Sharecropping] wuzn’t much diffent from slavery. We lived in quarters, used de white folks horses en ploughs en helped raise our own food. We just change a marster for a boss.”
6. Virginia Harris (Mississippi)
“When you is a slave, you ain’t got no mo’ chance than a bullfrog.”
7. Unidentified (South Carolina WPA narrative)
“We was free. Just like that, we was free.”
8. South Carolina WPA verse
“‘Abe Lincoln freed the nigger With the gun and the trigger; And I ain’t goin’ to get whipped any more.’”
9. Tishey Taylor (Missouri, Poplar Bluff)
“I wusn’t very old during slave time, but I worked, yes sir, I did. And my por’ mammy chile’, it was from daylight ta dark.”
10. Tishey Taylor
“Mammy used to card wool and cotton, and spin, then she would weave goods.”
11. Rachel Goings (Missouri, Cape Girardeau)
“My master let us come and go pretty much as we pleased. In fact, we had much more freedom dan most of de slaves in those days.”
12. Charles Grandy (Virginia WPA)
“I b’longed to Marse Billy Grandy. He was good to his slaves, but he sho’ made ’em work.”
13. Unidentified (Alabama WPA)
“De marster blow de horn ’fore daylight, and us better git out dat bed and be in de field ’fore sun-up.”
14. Henry Brown (Texas WPA)
“I seed de Yankees when dey come. I was standin’ in de yard, and dey rid up and say, ‘You is free now.’”
15. Millie Evans (North Carolina WPA)
“I know I was treated good. My old missus, she learned me my catechism and my prayers.”
16. Silas Jackson (Georgia WPA)
“When de marster die, dey put all de niggers in de big house yard and read de will.”
17. Hannah Irwin (Alabama WPA)
“I ‘members de pateroles, dey come at night lookin’ fo’ runaway niggers.”
18. Jeff Calhoun (Texas WPA)
“I didn’t know nothin’ ’bout freedom till de Yankees come and tell us we was free.”
19. Polly Colbert (Oklahoma, Chickasaw Freedwoman)
“I was born in Chickasaw Nation. My folks belong to de Colbert family. I was raised in de Nation and talk Chickasaw too.”
20. Unidentified (Florida WPA)
“We make shoes out of rawhide, and if de weather was bad, we wrap our feet in rags.”
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The pronouns & verb forms ( “I’se” / “I is” instead of “I am.” “Us” sometimes used for “we” (“us better git out dat bed”). We see Bare verbs: “he go,” “they come,” “we make” (no -s endings) which matches Maritime English and Amerindians-learned English simplifications. We also see double negatives ( “ain’t got no mo’ chance”, “don’t know nothin’.” Ain’t” replacing isn’t / haven’t / didn’t) this is a universal feature in BAE, already seen in 18th century creoles English. The aspect and tense markers (“Done” as perfective marker: “he done gone” (not in the 20 I listed, but common in WPA). “Gwine / gwine to” = going to (future marker). “Fixin’ to” = about to (Southern & Black speech). All of this shows a continuity of creole aspect markers (time shown by context words rather than inflections). The phonological features (Th → d/t: “de,” “dat,” “dem” (the, that, them). The R-dropping (“sto’” for store, “wata” for water) and the final consonant dropping: “chil’” for child, “ole” for old line up with West Country, Hiberno-, and Creole/Maritime pronunciations!
Even with the rhythm & structure found in the parataxis: “I seed de Yankees when dey come. I was standin’ in de yard, and dey rid up and say, ‘You is free now.’” We see formulaic phrases (“Yes sir, I did,” “dat time,” “allus lived.”) and the repetition of call-and-response cadence in songs and verses (“Abe Lincoln freed the ni**er / With the gun and the trigger”) (Rapping has always been with Black Americans!)
It matches up nearly with Maritime English
There’s plenty of counter arguments to make honestly. Especially in regards to the West African substrate. The primary evidence disproving the claim that BAE’s systematic grammar can only be explained by a West African substrate comes from two categories:
Sociolinguistic History and Structural Linguistics.
The claim fails by ignoring the multi-ethnic environment in which English was first acquire. Non-Exclusive features like the BAE’s headline features like Zero Copula, Double Negation, and the use of Done were not unique to Africans.
Thet are attested in non-standard British/Irish dialects (like Hiberno-English) and L2 contact English used by Native Americans (documented in 17th- and 18th-century mission records).
Primary sources (Eliot, Zeisberger, colonial codes) confirm the existence of a widespread, simplified Colonial L2 English template (Me go, him no go) that pre-dates the peak of African imports. This register, not a specific tribal grammar, was the common linguistic pool for all non-elite language learners.
Legal documents (Virginia 1705 Slave Code) and treaties (1866 Five Nations) prove sustained, intimate cohabitation between the enslaved population and Amerindians, demonstrating a shared social crucible for language transmission (vertical acquisition by children).
The smoking gun isbtge Lexifier Constraint Mapping as the unbreakable piece of evidence that prevents BAE’s grammar from being explained by an external substrate (African or otherwise) is the demonstration that its core grammatical constraints are internal to the English language.
The “smoking gun” then is the systematic mapping of BAE deletion rules onto Standard English contraction rules.
Labov’s Contraction Principle is evident In Black American English, the copula (is or are) can only be deleted (Zero Copula) in the exact contexts where the equivalent form in Standard English can be contracted (‘s or ‘re).BAE cannot use the Zero Copula in contexts where Standard English cannot contract the verb.
“I know who you at.” (The copula are cannot be contracted in that clause-final position in Standard English: *I know who you’re is ungrammatical.)
She (insert to be) smart. (The copula is can be contracted in Standard English: She’s smart.)
If BAE’s grammar were built on a purely external substrate (like Yoruba or Ewe), the language would follow the rules of that substrate, not the obscure, complex, and highly phonological constraints of the English lexifier.
The fact that the systematicity of the BAE’s Zero Copula is perfectly predicted by English phonology and syntax is decisive proof that the vernacular is a form of English that has undergone reanalysis and grammaticalization (a feature known as decreolization or dialect divergence), but is fundamentally constrained by its lexical source language.
Black Americans are creole population in North America (formerly classified as Americans Negroes) who predominantly speak Black American English (BAE: A creolized language derivative of Maritime English) and whose culture is deeply rooted in the USA. Black Americans are an amalgamated ethnic group featuring who delineate by area. There are many sub-heritages and sub-lineages and variations of Black American Culture. Yet tied by shared language, history, and identity.
