Dialect is, in summary, the differences between how people speak. It can be vocabulary, pronunciation, or phonology, and typically has to do with where they come from. During my reading of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I noticed several differences between each character’s dialect. Several characters were from different parts of the states, which affected their dialect. The biggest difference of all was between Huck and Jim.
Jim is a slave working for Huck’s guardians, the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson. Jim grew up without an education or anybody around him that he could learn even a little bit from. Consequently, Jim grew up with his speech distinct from a white male, since they typically went to school and got a basic education. Granted, there weren’t many educated slaves during this time period. A lot of people were born into slavery or have been in slavery so long they don’t know anything else. To illustrate, if another slave was talking to Jim, they wouldn’t think anything of the way he speaks. Had anyone like Huck’s dad or Huck himself been having a conversation with Jim, they would have to closely examine his words and his sayings.
Huck is a young
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Jim’s speech is usually scrambled, some words may even be missing. They sometimes lack actual proper conjunctions, much like Huck’s. Huck’s accent isn’t over powerful, while Jim’s can alter the way his words are formed. For example, “How you gwne to git ‘m? You can’t slip up on um en grab um; en how’s a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? How could a body do it in de night? En I warn’t gwyne to show myself on de bank in de daytime…” (Chapter 8, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain) This quote shows how Jim’s thick southern accent can create a more difficult dialect to follow. Instead of using words like “them” and “going to” his dialect causes the words to run