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Tut Language, American Speech

The article discusses the author's introduction to TUT Language, a phonetic language learned from her mother, which was historically used by African slaves in America to communicate secretly. The author explains how TUT Language was developed as a method for slaves to spell and read without being caught, and it may have originated from the sounds heard from owners' children. The piece also touches on the personal history of the author's family with TUT Language and its implications for safety and identity.

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3K views2 pages

Tut Language, American Speech

The article discusses the author's introduction to TUT Language, a phonetic language learned from her mother, which was historically used by African slaves in America to communicate secretly. The author explains how TUT Language was developed as a method for slaves to spell and read without being caught, and it may have originated from the sounds heard from owners' children. The piece also touches on the personal history of the author's family with TUT Language and its implications for safety and identity.

Uploaded by

doc
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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TUT LANGUAGE (the Phonetic Symbols below used only for this

article)
Article

My introduction to TUT Language began when I happened to be the


only child at home on a day that my mother’s sister came to visit.
While they were talking, I could hear recognizable sounds, but not
words.

Later, when I asked my mother about the sounds, she told me that
what they had been speaking was called TUT Language. She spoke
the sounds , then told me to sound the consonants
and speak the vowel. (See table 1.) She said if I could figure it out,
she would help me learn TUT. I did. It spelled candy. She taught me
to speak the sounds ‘hello’ (the word square is said
before a double letter).

My mother told me she had learned TUT Language from her mother,
who said it was a method devised by some African slaves in America
to teach each other to spell — therefore, to read — at a time when
reading by slaves was against the law, and the punishment, if they
were caught, was severe. She told me that perhaps some slaves
made a language game from the sounds they heard repeated by the
owners’ children who were being taught to read. So, it may have
been those alphabet sounds that were memorized and, with a few
additions, called TUT Language.

In 1969 I was told by my aunt that her father (who could read and
write English) had referred to TUT Language as a “disguised
language” that could have got him killed; thus, as a grown man he
refused to speak it.

The word TUT may have originated from the word talk.

GLORIA MCILWAIN
San Francisco, California

American Speech Journal


University of Alabama Press.

Copyright © by Gloria E. McIlwain, All rights reserved

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