Happily Ever Arter

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1:03From Books Mart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language. I'm Mike Folo with a brief introduction to this bonus episode by John McWordor, who will discuss Arter, ARTER. It's a word that Jim uses in Mark Twain's adventures of Huckleberry Finn. John will tell you what it means. I associate it with a different character looking after this, a Miss Avablea Allen. And I'll tell you who in a few minutes. Something else about what Black English was like in the 1800s. Especially regarding Huckleberry Finn being spoken of so often these days because of one the use of the N word. But then also the thick and rather to us peculiar seeming Black dialect that Jim is speaking. Some people think of that as a distortion. We associate that rendition of Black English with minstrel shows and the like. The truth is that his dialect is quite accurate in terms of how many Southern Black people spoke

2:08at the time. There's one word in particular which if you ask me is almost as interesting as the N word, and it's the way Jim says after. It's always Arter. And so you read the first time and you think it's a typo. Actually he always says Arter. Maybe you think why can't Jim pronounce after? Is this some little joke that Twain is playing? But no, actually Arter was something real. And it's something that I only ran across by accident 10 or 15 years ago when I was at a linguistics conference and during one coffee session I happened to be talking to some British people and they weren't from London. They had grown up upstate so to speak. And they were talking about the things that their elders had sometimes said to them, the sayings and the warnings that were in the local dialects. And one of the things, I forget what Anthony said, but something that one of his elders said ended in Arter. Like you do that and I'll be coming after your author or something like that. And I asked him, wait a minute, you said Arter, right?

3:09And he said yeah. And I said, is that after in the dialect you grew up in? And he said yeah, exactly. It's after instead of after. And first you think, well that's strange. Then it also makes something make sense. One, it's why Jim is saying Arter. But then again, you could have just known because think about Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pale of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. That's never really made any sense. You kind of think is that really the best they can do? I mean, is it that medieval people weren't really as smart as us because it's not as much history had happened or they weren't as clean or something like that? But no, medieval people were actually more scrupulous when it came to rhyming than we are today in some ways. And so why is that after? Think about it. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pale of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. And so especially with the British accent, Walter, that rhymes.

4:11And so the after is a kind of fix for us because we don't say Arter, but clearly that's what the original rhyme was. So when Jim is saying Arter, what he is saying is the kind of thing that the people who created Black English would have learned from the whites who they learned English from. And it was not whites who spoke like Henry Higgins. If you were that kind of person, you didn't go across the ocean and you know, rest plantations out of the land. It was white people of lowly station who were often indentured servants. It was kind of a variation on slavery in many ways. And those are the people who a generation of Black people created Black English by working alongside I've been learning their English. These are people who would have said, otter rather than after. And that's why a Jim would have. That drops out of the language in America because nobody says Arter, but for a while it would have held on. And so Huckleberry Finn is interesting for not only the N word, but also this A word. And it also makes a very peculiar nursery rhyme.

5:14Make some damn sense. This is Mike Volo again. I first encountered Arter in Huck Finn in high school for sure. But then I encountered it again and again. And again when I started reading Dickens, Sykes uses it in Oliver Twist. You see it in great expectations. David Copperfield, Nickelbee. I'm not sure there's a Dickens novel in which it's not used at least once or twice by some character. And the one that uses it the most I would think is the great Sam Weller from the Pickwick papers. It comes out of his mouth dozens of times and he will always be the fictional person that I associate most with Arter. Mexican Valley is produced by Livia Bloom Ingram. Bob and I will be back next week until then. This has never happened before.

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