This column is a journey through time and distance. The journey takes us to one of the most shameful episodes in Spanish history, that of slavery. Even if it can be complicated, let’s try to put ourselves in a situation: we are in a Latin American country during the colonial era, in the barracks of a mine or a sugar cane plantation, for example. Hundreds of people live there, crowded together. They are African slaves and must learn the language of their masters. That’s how he was born muzzle speecha kind of marginal and very rudimentary Spanish.
Let’s first stop at the word muzzle. This term referred contemptuously to the black man born in Africa who had acquired almost nothing of European culture in the late 15th or early 16th centuries. By transferring slavery terminology to the Spanish-American colonies, the word muzzle It also began to be used, more specifically, to name slaves born in Africa who spoke Spanish with difficulty.
Also known as half tonguespeech muzzle It was, in short, the reduced language of those learning Spanish for the first time, under difficult conditions and without completely mastering grammar or pronunciation. “In the slave barracks, Africans had virtually no contact with native speakers. Their contacts were with foremen or overseers, who tended to be mestizos and not all of them were indigenous, so this linguistic distance from Spanish was maintained,” he says. Archiletters John M. Lipski, American linguist and professor, specialist on the subject.
Some scholars argue that the Bozal language may have been a stable language and, in some way, a precursor to today’s Caribbean Spanish. Germán de Granda, a late Spanish philologist, postulated that “it was not unthinkable that the word which served as a vehicle of normal communication between the inhabitants of the barracks of slaves imported from Africa had survived, from generation to generation, through a process of uninterrupted continuity, renewed with each new case of incorporation of black muzzles.
But today, it is not easy to prove. Lipski argues that time – two generations (between 1820 and the abolition of slavery around 1880) – is not enough: “I believe it brought several characteristics to the speech. It is possible that Africans did not cause the change in consonants or their pronunciation, but they contributed to it. My point of view is that the African gave a little boost to other characteristics that already existed.
Muzzled speech was widespread, particularly on the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, places where new shipments of slaves continually arrived directly from Africa. Lipski adds Peru and the ports of Buenos Aires and Montevideo to the list and adds that “what is interesting in these countries is that there were black writers who commented and reproduced the speech of the mouth and did not did not do it in a parodic way because they were of black nationality. the same race. Instead, white writers’ texts imitated the language purely to mock.
Santeros in trance and songs
For Lipski, a very precious testimony was that of the Cuban writer Lydia Cabrera. Born into a family of landowners, she listened to Africans as a child and, “as if she were a self-taught anthropologist, she collected abundant testimonies in several books based on conversations with black muzzles.” I was lucky enough to meet her and, already being a 90-year-old woman, I could still reproduce her language quite authentically.
Cuba also provides other clues to this “Africanized Spaniard” through Santeria. More precisely, through the Afro-Cuban palo mayombe ritual language. Apparently the santeros, when in a trance, say that they reproduce the speech of their ancestors, which is the snout.
Likewise, in Cuban music, many songs from the first half of the 20th century show characteristics of this language. For example, the verb are: “I areWe are”. Another way is Sheinstead of he either She.
Snout on the Peninsula?
We remain in doubt as to the penetration of muzzled speech in the Iberian Peninsula, and Professor Lipski’s explanation convinces us: “It is unlikely that it was present in Spain. There were no barracks or farms. They worked mainly as servants or as assistants to some craftsman.
According to his research, it seems that the Spanish peninsular bozal was a transitional phenomenon that did not meet the sociodemographic conditions to become something more. In general, blacks born in Spain acquired Spanish in the regions where they lived, although some elements may have been preserved in the speech of the most marginalized blacks – for example in the infamous black neighborhoods of Seville – or in the activities of black people. brotherhoods.
