Its extremely well documented in the history of English.
And its very common sense. Emotions aside, the region was flooded with non English speaking Africans, who had to learn commands from the whites.
A close interaction blended words and accents. The north didn’t experience this so much until much later.
A large number of West African words came into Standard American through the medium of Black English: bug (bugu = annoy), dig (degu/ understand), tote bag (tota = carry in Kikonga), hip (Wolof hepicat one who has his eyes wide open), voodoo (obosum, guardian spirit) mumbo jumbo (from name of a West African god), jazz (? Bantu from Arabic jazib one who allures), banjo (mbanza), chigger (jigger/ bloodsucking mite), goober (nguba /Bantu), okra (nkruman/ Bantu), yam (njami/ Senegal), banana (Wolof). Also, the phrases: sweet talking, every which way; to bad-mouth, high-five are from Black English—seem to be either American innovations or loan translations from West African languages.
The speech of African Americans gradually became more like the speech of their southern white neighbors—a process called decreolization. And the speech of the whites became slightly more like that of the blacks.
“The north didn’t experience this so much until much later.”
When they bought and ran their own plantations down south...don’t try to educate me...Take a trip to Natchez, MS and see where all the plantation owners were from....Don’t you yankee asses ever claim to not have your hands dirty in the whole plantation system...Where do you think the money went for cotton specualtion? I absolutely refuse your premise that my southern drawl comes from africans...my city that i live in is 53% black....I DO NOT talk like them....but thanks for replying and bless your heart.
As a 7th generation Floridan, I totally disagree. What did we call chiggers before slavery? Or banjos? We certainly had them here.
There were very few slave owners in this neck of the woods and people didn’t move around much then. Generations lived in one spot and saw very few people in a years time.
So, since I’ve never lived anyplace else, I speak very much as my ancestors did....with a definite Piney Woods Southern accent.