greaser

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:14:46 -0400, Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:

>On Jul 27, 2005, at 6:06 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
>> -----
>> The Living Age, Volume 14, Issue 176, Sep. 25, 1847
>> "The Battle of Monterey", p. 619/2
>>
>> Perhaps I did feel a little weak in the jints when I seed the officers
>> unbuttonin their shirt collars, and the men throwin away their canteens
>> and haversacks, as they was marchin rite strait up to them ar works,
>> whar the greasers was waitin for us, every devil with his gun pinted
>> and his finger on the trigger; I know'd they was
>
>> gwine
>
>> to let us have it, and I felt monstrous uneasy till it cum.
>>
>>http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?frames=1&coll=moa&view=50&root=%2Fmoa%2Flivn%2Flivn0014%2F&tif=00625.TIF
>> -----
>
>Does this mean that "gwine" was once a feature of at least one dialect
>of European-American English? Or was the speaker black?

The speaker is described simply as "a Western volunteer, recently returned
from Mexico." I know there were "freedmen" who served in the Mexican
American War, but given the speaker's "unmarked" status in the narrative,
I think we can safely assume he was intended to be Euro-American.

Mark Twain is quoted in the OED as telling his publisher in 1882, "I's
gwyne to sen' you de stuff," but that looks like it's merely a bit of
dialect-minstrelsy.


--Ben Zimmer