Creoles
One contribution per person please!
Name a creole, its lexifier language and the socio-cultural background of its formation. Don’t forget to quote your sources.
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January 6, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The creole I decided to put up here is called:
“Jamaican Creole” – there are numerous alternate names (e.g. Patois or Patwa, Bongo Talk, Southwestern Caribbean Creole English, etc.), but linguists call it this way!
First of all, one should mention that JC is not to be confused with Jamaican English, which some of you might know from the German Reggae musician “Gentleman”.
Take this link in order to give you an idea of how JC sounds:
http://www.jamaicans.com/speakja/sound.htm
The lexifier language of JC is, quite obviously, English (but also African to some extend). It started emerging in the middle of the 17th century, when British colonists began to settle in Jamaica building large sugar plantations which urgently caused a need for a lot of slaves.
These slaves where mainly taken from many different African countries with very different mother tongues. This fact implicated a badly need for coming up with a new language – most practically, it was an English-based (plantation) pidgin variety, which was not only used as a lingua franca amongst the slaves, but also between slave traders!
In the next two centuries JC was sustainably developing until Jamaica finally gained independence in 1948 and was no longer a British colony. During this period JC was passing through all the stages of generic creole development and became stable. Standard English, however, still is their official language (e.g. being taught at school) while Jamaican Creole remains as the language spoken in everyday interaction, but with lower prestige.
Sources:
http://www.eng.umu.se/city/weronica/linguistic_paper/British_Black_English.htm
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=jam
January 7, 2008 at 6:12 pm
The Creole I want to introduce is Palenquero or also called Palenque. It is a Spanish-based Creole spoken in a village named San Basilio de Palenque, which is placed in the North of Columbia, more exactly in the northern jungle of Columbia.
In the 16th and 17th century runaway slaves and Native Americans founded several colonies to which San Basilio de Palenque belonged.
Palenquero is based on Spanish and also on some strong influences from Portuguese and Kikongo, the language of Congo and Angola. Nevertheless Spanish speakers are not really able to understand it because its grammar differs too much from the Spanish one.
Still today Palenquero can be spoken by approximately half of the habitants of San Basilio de Palenque. Till 1967 one could only reach the village by foot or on horse, so it was somehow isolated from the rest of the world. This is the reason why Palenquero could endure for so long.
As linguists say, Palenquero is the only known Spanish-based Creole in Latin America.
To see the differences between Spanish and Palenquero, I added the Lord’s Prayer in both languages:
Palenquero:
Tatá suto lo ke ta riba sielo, santifikaro sendá nombre si, miní a reino sí, asé ño boluntá sí, aí tiela kumo a sielo.
Nda suto agué pan ri to ma ría, peddona ma fata suto, asina kumo suto a se peddoná, lo ke se fatá suto. Nu rejá sujo kaí andí tentasión nu, librá suto ri má. Amén.
Spanish:
Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre. Venga tu Reino. Hágase tu voluntad, así en la tierra como en el cielo. El pan nuestro de cada día, dánosle hoy y perdónanos nuestras deudas, así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores. Y no nos dejes caer en la tentación, mas líbranos de mal. Amén.
Sources:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palenquero
http://www.haitiwebs.com/forums/world_news/47319-palenquero_only_spanish_based_creole_language_latin_america_columbia.html
January 9, 2008 at 10:54 am
The Creole I want to present here is called ‘Australian Kriol’. Its lexifier language is English, and it is spoken today in large parts of northern Australia. It slowly developed after Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory, had been founded in 1870. From then on, many settlers from Queensland and Southern Australia moved into the Northern Territory. The permanent European settlement made it possible that a Pidgin English developed as a lingua franca between the Larrakia Aborigines and the European settlers. First it was chiefly used on pastoral properties and in frontier towns, but today it is the major language in many Aboriginal communities. In most of these communities, it is spoken as a mother tongue by two generations, in some of them even by four, and it has become both an oral and a written medium.
January 9, 2008 at 11:00 am
Sorry, forgot to add my source!
Tryon, D.T. & Charpentier, J-M. (2004) “Pacific Pidgins and Creoles: Origins, Growth and Development.” Berlin / NY: Mouton de Gruyter.
January 10, 2008 at 10:04 am
I am going to present the following English-based creole language:
Saramaccan!
This creole is the language of Surinam the smallest independent country of South-America.
In linguistic studies concerning creoles SRM has always played an important role, as this creole is claimed to be the purest (even if it involves a mixture of two lexifier languages), deepest and the most radical creole. Furthermore, SRM is – as far as grammar is concerned – the most deviant from its lexifier languages English and Portuguese.
The socio-cultural background:
In 1651, the first English colony settled in Suriname. But the dominance of the English did not last long as Suriname was taken over by the Dutch in 1667.
From 1690 on until 1712 there was a high influx of escaped slaves from Africa who worked on plantations with Portuguese masters.
When they came to Suriname, they founded the Saramaccan tribe.
The first mixed language that appeared in this tribe was the pidgin Dju-tongo (meaning Jew Language).
Today, SRM is spoken by approximately 24,000 in Suriname and 2,000 people in French Guiana.
The lexicon:
Despite the fact that the rule of the English colonies was relatively short, we talk about SRM as generally being an English-lexifier creole.
As already mentioned above, SRM is also a Portuguese-lexifier creole. This is due to the fact that the slaves who came to Suriname worked on plantations with Portuguese masters.
It also consists of words from African languages (e.g. Bantu languages) and Dutch.
50% of the Saramaccan vocabulary is derived from English and 35% from Portuguese.
SRM has, to give another statistical fact, the highest proportion of African languages, i.e. 5%. This is due to the fact, that most of the slaves in Surinam were Africans.
Sources:
Bakker, Peter. “Saramaccan” Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994. 165-78.
Click to access jcgood-LoanwordsInSaramaccan.pdf
January 15, 2008 at 6:14 pm
The Cape Verde Creole
In the 1460’s the Portuguese arrived on the islands of Cape Verde. Until then there were not really people living there. The islands then became an important slave trade post between Africa and America.
The Cape Verde Islands can be found about 400 miles off the west coast of Africa. The official language is Portuguese but locals speak the Cape Verde Creole.
It is a mixture of Portuguese and several West African languages.
Here are some examples:
Branku – White
Pretu-Black
Verdi- Green
Burmedju- Red
Three- Tres
Four- Kuarto
Five- Sinku
Sources:
http://www.everyculture.com/Bo-Co/Cape-Verde.html
http://www.tanzaniaodyssey.com/www.africanet.com/countries/capeverde.htm
http://www.henry.k12.ga.us/pges/instruction/kid-pages/islands/capeverde/chart.html
January 18, 2008 at 10:50 am
I want to introduce Haitian Creole. It derived directly from French. It is the official language in Haiti, but it is also spoken in Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Cayman Islands etc.
Throughout the 17th century there were many “battles” between the French, Spanish and English over who controlled Hispaniola(today Haiti and the Domonican Republic)
In 1697, the French officially occupied St.Domingue,of the island of Hispaniola that used to be a Spanish possession.
Sugar plantations led to the importing of a great number of enslaved people to Haiti, taken from Africa for labour purposes, these people were forced to work the land. As a result, there is a high percentage of Creole speakers in Haiti and in 1961, Haitian Creole became the official language.
Sources:www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp??code=hat
http://www.ahadonline.org/eLibrary/creoleconnection/Number20/haitiancreole.htm
http://saxakali.com/caribbean/LanahL.htm#History
January 20, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I am going to introduce the Belizean Creole.
It is an English-based creole of the nation of Belize (fromally British Honduras). The young nation of Belize is located at the intersection of Central America with the Caribbean. It is the only country in Central America with English as its official language, but there is a growing Spanish-speaking population.
The Creole of Belize share a common ancestry, they are the offspring of African slaves imported to work the logging camps and European adventurers. Most of the slaves came from West African (between the present countries of Senegal and Angola) by way of Jamaica. Many of the Europeans came from Scotland and North Britain. While the majority of the Creole population claim a slave/European ancestry, East indians, Mestizos, Asians and Garinagu have all intermarried with Creoles and have adapted the Creole culture.
The Lexicon:
All creole languages, because of the circumstances and processes of their formation, deriive their lexicon from a number of sources. A great deal of the Belizean lexicon is retained from the English spoken at the time of colonialism with later influence first from British English, and now American English.
There are also a number of secondary sources from which Belizean Creole lexical items are derived. African (because most vocabulary items derived from the regions in Africa from which the enslaved populations were taken), Spanish (due to heavy immigration of refugees in the western districts of Guatemala), Mayan and Garifuna word help to comprise modern Belizean Creole.
Overview on Belizean Creole lexicon, based on a survey of 1,500 BC terms:
English
January 20, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I am going to introduce the Belizean Creole.
It is an English-based creole of the nation of Belize (fromally British Honduras). The young nation of Belize is located at the intersection of Central America with the Caribbean. It is the only country in Central America with English as its official language, but there is a growing Spanish-speaking population.
The Creole of Belize share a common ancestry, they are the offspring of African slaves imported to work the logging camps and European adventurers. Most of the slaves came from West African (between the present countries of Senegal and Angola) by way of Jamaica. Many of the Europeans came from Scotland and North Britain. While the majority of the Creole population claim a slave/European ancestry, East indians, Mestizos, Asians and Garinagu have all intermarried with Creoles and have adapted the Creole culture.
The Lexicon:
All creole languages, because of the circumstances and processes of their formation, derive their lexicon from a number of sources. A great deal of the Belizean lexicon is retained from the English spoken at the time of colonialism with later influence first from British English, and now American English.
There are also a number of secondary sources from which Belizean Creole lexical items are derived. African (because most vocabulary items derived from the regions in Africa from which the enslaved populations were taken), Spanish (due to heavy immigration of refugees in the western districts of Guatemala), Mayan and Garifuna word help to comprise modern Belizean Creole.
Overview on Belizean Creole lexicon, based on a survey of 1,500 BC terms:
English 1309 words 88.8 % of Total
Spanish 50 words 3,4 %
Miskito 35 words 2,4 %
African 31 words 2,1 %
Amerindian 8 words 0,5 %
French 6 words 0,4 %
Uncertain 35 words 2,4 %
Sources:
Greene, Laurie A. “A Grammar of Belizean Creole: compilations from two existing United States dialects”. New York, 1999.
Holm, John. “Miskito Words in Belizean Creole” Belizean Studies (5) 6:1. 1977.
http://www.belizeanjourneys.com/
http://www.southernbelize.com/hist_ethnic.html
January 20, 2008 at 10:23 pm
The creole I want to introduce is “Papiamentu” or “Papiamento”, translated as “the way of speaking”. It is spoken on the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao), that are located in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. Its first lexifier language was Portuguese, but it changed to a Spanish-lexified creole over time.
In the 15th century the ABC islands were discovered by Spain, but then the Dutch conquest took place in 1634.
7 years later Portugal conquered Angola. After that slave depots were built up there, mainly consisting of Angolan and Guinean slaves. In these depots an “Afro-Portuguese-pidgin/proto-creole was formed. The Dutchmen of the ABC islands imported these slaves and the Afro-Portuguese pidgin/creole underwent Dutch influence. Later on also French and English (through the oil mining industry) affected the creole.
Afterwards the geographical position of the islands caused a hispanization of Papiamentu. So that today you can say that its lexifier is Spanish and not Portuguese anymore.
January 20, 2008 at 10:26 pm
The sources I used are:
http://www.papiamentu.com
https://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/aspects/assets/sjt39/CreoleInt.html
January 21, 2008 at 7:05 pm
The Gullah Language
This language is an English-based creole spoken at the Southeastern coast of the USA. The lexifier language is English, but there are several African substrate languages.
It developed as a pidgin in Africa during the slave trade in the seventeenth century and was used by Africans to communicate with other tribes or with Europeans. At the beginning of the 18th century many slaves were brought to American colonies to work on plantations. There under the influence of English, Gullah developed further. In the middle of the 18th century Gullah became a creole, when the children of the slaves brought from Africa learned Gullah as their first language. Today Gullah is spoken by not more than a few hundred people.
http://www.knowitall.org/gullahnet/gullah/language.html
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/327/Gullah_language_thrives_into_21st_century
January 21, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Negerhollands Creole Dutch („Negro Dutch“)
General information:
– Caribbean creole, spoken on the United States Virgin Islands, St Thomas Island
– 1300 words, 84% from Dutch, 7,5% from English, 5% from African languages, 2% from Iberian languages, 1,4% from Danish
– Book on Negerhollands: van Rossem, van der Voort (1996): Die Creol Taal: 250 years of Negerhollands texts. Ann Arbor.
Negerhollands probably came to existence in the early 18th century and was the result of the mixing of the languages of European settlers and their African slaves on the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. Of the European languages, English and Dutch were the predominant ones. Since the English seldom learned Dutch, their slaves were urged to accommodate to their owner’s language. Thus, creoles of English and Dutch origin came to existence. The first reference of Negerhollands is from 1732 when Moravian missionariesbegan to learn Negerhollands in order to preach to the slave. Later, Moravians and Lutherans even translated the Bible into N., and in 1770 a description of the language was published by Jochum Magens – the first grammar of a creole.
In the early 19th century, the first books to teach Negerhollands were published, but it was already losing ground to the English creoles. When the US bought the island in 1917, nearly everyone spoke English as a first language, with Negerhollands only remaining in the rural areas. However, there are even tape-recordings of Negerhollands made by bilingual speaker Alice Stevens, whose death led to the extinction of Negerhollands in 1987.
Reference: John Holm (2000): An introduction to pidgins and creoles. Cambridge: CUP.
January 22, 2008 at 2:10 pm
The creole i would like to introduce is the Virgin Island Creole. It coexists with a creolized Dutch on the self-governing territories of the British and U.S. Virgin islands. Therefore, it is an English-based creole.
In 1672, the islands became British, though there were some cities occupied by the Dutch.
In the middle of the 18th century, 94% of the population were slaves and approximately 50% of the white population were Dutch. Thus, Dutch and English both developed creolized varieties of their languages among the slaves.
At the end of the 18th century English and its creole encroached the Creole Dutch.
After 1848, when the abolition of slavery took place, there was a population shift from plantations (the stronghold of Creole Dutch) to towns (the stronghold of Creole English). During the second half of the 19th century Creole Dutch was wane and even Danish scholls adopted English.
Nowadays, English is the official language of the islands but it coexists with the Creole English being in frequent use.
It is to say that the term Virgin Island Creole is a technical term and that the speakers itself refer to it depending on their location as e.g. Thomian dialect.
My Sources:
-Holm, John. “Pidgin and Creoles – Reference Survey.” 2vols.Cambridge:CUP,1989.
-http://www.vinow.com/general_usvi/culture/language.php
January 22, 2008 at 3:07 pm
The creole I would like to present is Krio.
It is a creole which is spoken in Sierra Leone. According to Barbag-Stoll is is native to 200,000 Sierra Leonians. According to Holm it is the native language of some 500,000 people living in and around the capital city of Freetown, the peninsula on which it is located, and some offshore islands. In the rest of the country Krio is used as a lingua franca, which means it is used for inter-tribal communication by about 95 % of the population.
The lexicon: The creole draws most of its vocabulary (80%) from English but also many words from the major languages of the liberated Africans (who inundated Sierra Leone during much of the nineteenth century). A great majority of them were Yoruba-speakers => probably 10% of the lexicon is derived from this language. The rest comes from other African languages as well as Portuguese, Arabic, French etc. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Krio spread in the interior of Sierra Leone, and thus words from local languages such as Mende and Temne were added to the Krio lexicon.
The phonology: Krio shares some features with West African Pidgin English and with the Surinamese creoles. e.g. the coarticulated labial-velar stops /kp/ and /gb/.
The syntax: Just to name some features: na is used as a general locative preposition; blant is used as an anterior habitual marker.
Sources:
Barbag-Stoll, Anna. “Social and Linguistic History of Nigerian Pidgin as Spoken by the Yoruba with Special Reference to the English Derived Lexicon.” Stauffenberg Verlag: Tübingen, 1983. 36.
Holm, John. “Pidgin and Creoles – Reference Survey.” 2vols. Cambridge: CUP, 1989. 412-421.
January 30, 2008 at 7:34 pm
The creole I want to introduce is “Hawai’i Creole English” .
In the 1820s immigrants arrived and more children were born in Hawaii. They grew up learning their parents’ language and English at school. The English they got in contact with on the playground was strongly influenced by Pidgin English, Hawaiian and their first language, especially Portuguese. As time went by it became a creole because children began to learn it as their first language. By the 1920s the language was spoken by the majority of people. Still English and Hawaiian are the official languages of legislature and Hawai’i Creole English is looked upon as a less prestigious language which is a sub-standard form of English. Nevertheless, there are some attemps of linguist to make clear that the creole is a separate language.
Like most creoles Hawai’i Creole English emerged because there was a need for a common language at the plantations.
Although English is the lexifier language, HCE includes words from many other languages, for example Portuguese (“malasada” meaning “doughnut without a hole”), Japanese (“obake” meaning “ghost”) and Hawaiian (“pau” meaning “finished”)
Source:
http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/definitions/hce.html#bkgd-hce
January 31, 2008 at 12:26 am
I will introduce the Kreol Morisyen, which is also called Mauritian Creole French, Kreol, morisien or morisyen.
Mauritius is an island nation off the coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean.
English is the official language in Mauritius, but Mauritian Creole, or MC, is spoken by majority of the population.
It´s lexifier is French .
This creole draws most of its vocabulary from French. There are also more than 150 words from English, 50 from Indian languages, and several from Malagasy and Chinese.
After a short Dutch settlement, French immigrants came in 1715, named the island Ile-de-France and established sugar industry. And slaves from different parts of Africa and Madagascar came to work in the sugarcane fields. Like in other plantation colonies, slave masters in Ile-de-France mixed individuals from different ethnic groups together, as a result, a creole language developed quickly, using French vocabulary, a modified pronounciation and a simplified grammar.
And the Indian immigration and other immigration have also influenced the creole.
In 1810, the British captured the island and in 1814, by the Treaty of Paris, it was ceded to Great Britain. But MC is still the mother tongue of most Mauritian and used by them for communication.
Sources:
http://www.kreol.mu/
http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Creoles.html
http://www.hku.hk/linguist/program/contact8.html
February 4, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Juba Arabic
Lexifier lge: Arabic
Socio-cultural background of its formation:
– spoken in and around Juba (nowadays in Sudan)
– 1820-1870: Turco-Egyptian government extended its control into Sudan
– native tonge of the officers: Arabic
– recruits: black slaves captured in the Nuba mountains south of Khartoum
– military force of diverse ethnic and linguistic origins
– Arabic was also foreign language to local people in the south of Sudan
– soldiers evolved a pidginized variety of Arabic called Juba after the regions principal town (north of the boarder with Uganda)
cf. Holm, John. “Pidgin and Creoles – Reference Survey.” 2vols. Cambridge: CUP, 1989
February 5, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I would like to introduce Cameroon Pidgin English.
It is one variety of West African Pidgin English and is used in West Cameroon, where it is trade language and lingua franca for the whole area.
It is spoken by approximately 80 per cent of the population.
Cameroon Pidgin English continued to be an unofficial lingua franca even when Cameroon was partitioned between France and Britain after the First World War.
At present CPE is widely used along the East Cameroon Coast.
In the West Cameroonian towns there is even a small but increasing group of people who speak CPE as their first language so that it develops into a creole.
source: Barbag-Stoll, Anna: “Social and Linguistic History of Nigerian Pidgin as Spoken by the Yoruba with Special Reference to the English Derived Lexicon”. Tübingen: Stauffenberg Verlag, 1983. P. 37 /38.
February 7, 2008 at 9:58 am
Creole language – Nubi (Ki-Nubi, Kinubi):
– Nubi is an Arabic-based creole: 90% of the lexicon comes from Arabic
– formerly a soldier language (soldiers settled there by the British), which split off from Sudanese Pidgin Arabic about 1900: it was formed in the nineteenth century from a Sudanese Arabic-based pidgin
– spoken by descendants of Sudanese soldiers in Uganda and Kenya
– spoken around Bombo and Kenya around Kibera
– used for intercommunication among southern Sudanese ethnic groups: in Kenia: speakers use Swahili for out-group communication and Nubi for in-group communication, with a stable bilingualism. 30% can also use English. Non-Nubi wives of Nubi men are expected to learn Nubi!
Sources:
http://www.experiencefestival.com/creole_language_-_nubi – 131k
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=kcn
February 10, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I would like to introduce Nigerian Pidgin English. NPE is another variety of West African Pidgin English and is widely spoken in Nigeria. NPE can be found in all age groupes and continues to flourish among pupils and Uiversity students. The Portuguese were the first Europeans who traded pepper and slaves from Nigerian. The British took over as major trading partner in the middle of the 16th century. With the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 British colonial interests shifted to agricultural production for exportation. NPE is widely used in songs and oral literature.It drwas most of its lexicon from English.
sources: http://members.aol.com/afripalava2/Pidgin.html#pidgin
http://www.ngex.com/personalities/babawilly/dictionary/default.htm
Holm, John. “Pidgin and Creoles – Reference Survey.” 2vols.Cambridge:CUP,1989.