Talk:Creole language

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I have read the insinuation that Middle English would be a creole of Norman French and Old English. Features like dropping cases and inflected grammar could be a sign. -- Error

It is not considered to be, no. See the sci.lang newsgroup FAQ. --Brion 02:00 25 May 2003 (UTC)
    • When compared to a Romance language and with a Creole of a Romance language, I'm not surprized that some people say it could be a Creole. But has far has I know English is more complex than creoles. The writing system surely is, I've many difficulties with it. But the language itself... -Pedro 22:34, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hawaiian Pidgin never became a true creole, because English became the primary language of Hawaii after it became a U.S. state.

??? I don't follow this one. I'm not a linguist, but I've been doing some research on Hawaiian Pidgin to write the article. First, I'd guess that standard American English (SAE) became an official language well before Hawaii became a U.S. state. I make a distinction between official (used in formal governmental and business contexts) and primary (spoken and/or understood widely) here, because while SAE is official, I submit that it by no means supplanted Pidgin as primary.

The pidgin article points out that the point where pidgin becomes creole is when it becomes the primary language of a community. The references I've consulted agree that this is what happened...that children learned it (unofficially) in school and at home, grew up with it and passed it on to future generations. Even today in Hawaii, Pidgin is very much alive and well, and SAE and Pidgin coexist side by side. Visit any public high school in Hawaii and you will find teenagers speaking Pidgin in the halls, while receiving instruction in SAE in the classroom. Many professionals in downtown Honolulu, who would use SAE during the day in the business environment, would speak relaxed, full-on Pidgin when they get together with friends during happy hour at the nearby bar.

Like I said, I'm not a linguist, but I'd like to know what the rationale is behind Pidgin NOT being a creole, 'cause it seems like it fits the definition. Thanks, KeithH 03:06, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You're right, Keith - as Google confirms[1]. - Mustafaa 03:29, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] kiSwahili

"Some people consider kiSwahili to be an Arabic-based creole spoken in East Africa. It is also an official language of Tanzania." Some people? Who exactly? Are they linguists? What's their argument? And, irrespective of how many loanwords it contains, how on earth can they possibly describe a language as archetypally grammatically Bantu as that as "Arabic-based"? - Mustafaa 03:31, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mixed Languages

What are the differences between mixed languages, creoles and pidgins? They are three different families at Ethnologue. ----

For the difference between creoles and pidgins, see the first paragraph: a creole is what a pidgin becomes when people start speaking it natively, and add regular grammatical rules. A mixed language is an entirely different matter, of which the best example is probably the Michif language of Canada, in which almost all the verbs and their grammar are from Cree, but almost all the nouns and their grammar from French. In normal creoles and pidgins, by contrast, the grammar is massively simplified and the vocabulary is mostly from a single source. - Mustafaa 11:14, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Australian English vs UK

Australian English now has many additions in every day speech (as different from Strine which seems to be used mainly in movies). Is it a dialect? Is Strine a creole, seeing that it was originally oral and now has a grammar? While Strine probably has never been formally 'taught' in schools etc, it is widely understood.

anonymous

I'm sorry. What that has to do with a Creole Language? Duh! -Pedro 22:29, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

s/he is asking if Strine is a creole. So that is what it has to do witn creole languages... Duh! Mathmo 23:26, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Saramaccan

  • Saramaccan is not an English Creole, it is a Portuguese Creole. Early investigators just confused it with neighbouring English Creoles. [2] Please dont use ethnologue has a bible. But Saramaccan has been influenced by English so massively that it status could be not so clear, but surely it is not an English Creole. -Pedro 22:28, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Far be it from me to "use ethnologue as a bible"! However, other rather more authoritative sources disagree, eg Bickerton ([3]) and John McWhorter ([4].) The issue appears controversial, and should be marked accordingly. - Mustafaa 11:22, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

    • you shouldnt use a personal opinion has the author put it (He said: I think...). The "Tá" that classified has stand rather than "está"(tá) is very strange to justify his oppinion is very odd (dont forget how the "a" in tá and in stand are pronunced. The link that I gave you is from a dictionary. I think just the simple mention - dictionary would be enough. What's a Creole, Mustafaa? Wouldnt you think lexicography is a good source to say that?

the author puts one example in other places, when trying to link it with English:

Al´ısi
rice
da
COP
w˜a
a
sonı
thing
dí
REL
de
they
tá
PROG
s´ei.
sell
‘Rice is one thing that they are selling.’
creole: ...tá s'ei
Portuguese: ... tá a vender or tá vendendo (even if standard Portuguese is "está", "tá" is very muched used in Portuguese, in every extent and everywhere.).
English: ... are selling.
what do you think? S'ei is surely English. Do you really think ta is stand?
and the da or dí where it comes from.... English???
dem
they
no
NEG
mussu
must
komotto
leave
na
LOC
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
They must not leave Jerusalem.” (Schuchardt, 1914: 2)
How about "na"??? English has feminine words? "na" is Feminine word for "in". often used in Creoles rather than "no" (masculine). ex: "Na Kriolu" (in Cape Verdean Creole/Santiago) in (feminine) + masculine noum.
The author doesnt know portuguese and doesnt know other portuguese creoles, where "na" (in - fem.), "da" (of - fem.) and "ta" (to be - moment) are common in Portuguese Creoles.

Understanding "tá": Romance copula, it doesnt work as in English. In the Latin section you can also see why Portuguese use "está" and "tá" alike. it is from "STA(T)" The author says that the creole is not related with African Portuguese Creoles, it is very different. The difference is this Creole is influenced by English, while others arent and there is clearly similarity with other Portuguese Creoles.

I changed Portuguese or English to Portuguese and English it is more realistical. Saramaccan even preserved words has "avó", unchanged from Portuguese. -Pedro 14:05, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Uh, John McWhorter and Derek Bickerton are two of the leading creolists of this generation. The SIL guys are just some missionaries. The fact that John McWhorter alludes to controversy on the matter of Saramaccan's classification is itself better evidence for the possibility of it being Portuguese-based than is the SIL dictionary. - Mustafaa 21:28, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The relevant McWhorter quotes:

I will assume that the primary substrate language for Saramaccan was Fongbe, one of several members of the Gbe complex of Togo, Benin, and Nigeria... Saramaccan is a sister offshoot of early Sranan (Smith, 1987a; McWhorter, 1996)... The wealth of lexical items in Saramaccan from Kikongo is obvious (Daeleman, 1972), but these are largely confined to “cultural” vocabulary, including ideophones... I consider English to be the primary lexifier of Saramaccan, with Portuguese having made a lexical contribution analogous to that of Kikongo.


    • So in your words. you consider him (i'm talking about McWhorter, the other didnt seem to me a good article) some sort of god in Creoles? with the supreme truth? And if you read ... He says " i will assume... I consider...". Think for yourself! I think a Portuguese linguist would be good to clarify this. -Pedro 22:28, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Think for yourself" is really not what we're supposed to be doing here; rather, we should be citing credible sources, which these two certainly are. (Wikipedia:No original research) That said, the examples look way more English than Portuguese to me. But if you can find a good Portuguese creolist to cite, that would be great. - Mustafaa 23:02, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

yes, he uses examples were English is clear to support his ideas. here's one, that I choose from the article Saramaccan language were they cite also to be an English creole. So they use an example without trying to link nothing.

U ta mindi kanda fu dee soni dee ta pasa ku u.
"We make up songs about things that happen to us."
"_ta _ ? _ dee _ dee ta pasa ku _" Kanda?!

in fact, what's written in English is in Portuguese " o que nos está a acontecer" translating from the creole "de tá passa com nós." <- broken Portugues, Portuguese -> do que está a se passar connosco. "tá" is vernacular (very common) "com nós" also vernacular connosco = com + nós + co (a termination)

think for yourself is classifying good sources and retrieve proper information. If I would know a good creolist I would tell you, but I even doubt that a Portuguese linguist even investigated that creole. The "Instituto Camões" (an Authority in the language) citying some sources just says, for what I remember, that it shares many similarities with African Portuguese Creoles and it was influenced by English. I doubt they really investigated it, them must just saw some doccuments and saw the similarities. In fact, my interest in Creoles started with Instituto Camões (and CV creole music). And I dont have the pacience to use google. Nor using a spell-checker. Sorry ;) -Pedro 23:48, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, John McWhorter specializes in Saramaccan, which he did his PhD in and has worked on writing a grammar of. - Mustafaa 05:53, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
OK. But just because you agree with him. Doesnt mean that the rest believes in him, has you could see. In fact, the part of "tá"... And it is not only "ta". Writing the grammar and missinterpreting the "ta", its very nice grammar! And see that he even doesnt know where "dee (di in other creoles and de in Portuguese), na, etc. does come from. I think he should had learned Portuguese or a Portuguese creole before his PHD. That is what I think and continue to think. By the way, your edits has NPOV in Portuguese Creole, I think they are a bit POV, just because a linguist says, doenst mean that others think that. That you classified has POV is based on people, who research Portuguese Creoles. You should rewrite it: American linguists (name them): "it was 1st classified has English creole, them has Portuguese, but John McWhorter and .... classify it has English." - these are the facts and the reason why there is a mess about this language. -Pedro 11:52, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A quick search through McWhorter's paper and [5] reveals that Jan Voorhoeve (1973), N. Smith (1987), M. F. Goodman (1987), John McWhorter (1996), Salikoko Mufwene (2002), and Derek Bickerton consider Saramaccan to be an English-based creole. I can't find anybody other than SIL-Suriname who think it's Portuguese based, although [6] and [7] might be places to look. - Mustafaa 12:16, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
And about the ta - he says that the earliest sources give tan instead, which does suggest an origin other than "esta". - Mustafaa 13:11, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)


ok. But is that tan nasal? In Portuguese there are numerous tá... removing (es) from estar (usual in vernacular Port.: eu tou, tu tás, ele tá, nós tamos, vois tais, eles tão (nasal: tang) ele means he, also this is the verb to use for respect in Portuguese.

The way that I saw in the examples has I see it extremely similar to Port. creoles, not only the word, but its use! It reminds me a lot CV creole.

I hate to use google, i've only 768 MB of RAM and other things in the PC and other things do do. Here it goes what I could find in a flash [8] [9] : "Saramaccan is a good example. Originally a Portuguese-based and at the point of being relexified to English when the colony came under Dutch control." [10] this is interresting and useful (it supports your claims)

Saramaccan:
~ 50% English = LL
~ 35% Portuguese
~ 15% Kikongo/Ewe/Fon/Twi
another with the same [11]
another interesting article [12] (not very related)
[13]

SARAMACCAN [SRM] 23,000 in Surinam including 1,000 Matawari (1995 N. Glock SIL); 3,000 in French Guiana (1994 SIL); 26,000 total. Central, along Saramacca and upper Surinam rivers. Refugees are in Paramaribo and French Guiana. Creole, English based, Atlantic, Surinam, Saramaccan. Dialect: MATAWARI (MATAWAI, MATUARI, MATOEWARI). A creole with Portuguese influences; Ian Hancock classifies it as Portuguese based rather than English based. Linguistic influences from KiKongo (Hancock 1988). 20% or more of the lexicon has an African component. A Bush Negro ethnic group with background similar to the Aukaans. 15% to 25% literate. Typology: tonal. Traditional religion. NT 1991. Bible portions 1974-1985.

SIL
Betian, Desmo, Wemo Betian, Anya Cockle, Marc Antoine Dubois, & Marc Gingold (2000). Parlons Saramaka. Paris: L'Harmattan. (Coll. Parlons, 110f 192p.) ISBN: 2-738.1-9835-3 [a teaching book in French to learn Saramaccan, the English/Portuguese-lexifier creole of the maroons of Suriname, some of whom have moved to neighbouring Guyane. This creole also has significant Portuguese and West African elements in lexicon and grammar. I have not seen it, but I heard there are quite a few errors in it[14] suporting how it is now.
"The Superstrate Role of English and the Substrate Role

of Fongbe and Portugese in Property Depictions in Saramaccan Creole" Marvin Kramer (Mendocino College) - this guy classify Portuguese has substrate! And English has superstrate (so English Creole)

[15]
Papiamentu just keeping it for development of that article :P
there are too many links and too few time. "saramaccan creole portuguese" returned 1700 hits

An interresting subject, since the Portuguese influence is a mistery. Now I really dont know, to be honest, but I think "ta" is really Portuguese: "dee ta pasa ku u" <- I could easily understand this. so similar to "di ta pasa ku nu/nos" the english "ee" is the Portuguese/CV creole "i".-Pedro 14:25, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)


[edit] British English??? =

"Singlish is a creole based on British-English. It originated in Singapore, and spread to parts of Malaysia. It is a mixture of mainly Mandarin, Hokkien(a Chinese dialect), Tamil(an Indian dialect) and British English." Isnt this a very stupid thing to say? because all English Creoles are British English Creoles, or are there another Englishes? From Mars maybe? If one is talking about the dialect, it should note it is a dialect (it is a English Creole, strongly based on British dialect.... or something like that). In here it seems a language. Isnt Tamil a language???? Please review this... a dialect is figured has a language, and a language has a dialect. LOL, the guy who wrote was drunk when he wrote that. -Pedro 21:38, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, I think it is stupid to say, but not for the reasons you give, but because Singlish is not a creole but a variety of English which has been influenced by those other languages mentioned.
However, it is not true that all English-based creoles are British English creoles. There are at least two (maybe three or even more) creoles in Australia (for example) that are based on Australian English. Yes, there are numerous Englishes, American English, Australian English, New Zealand English, etc., and within each of these there are more varieties. Unless that is you take 'British English' to refer to all Englishes because they all originally descend from British English? But that would be a strange usage. Dougg 23:51, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I'm a Singaporean and I'm a native speaker of Singlish. I'm not sure about the "spread to parts of Malaysia" part, because Malaysia, being also an ex-British colony, has all along been evolving their own variety "Manglish" which is similar to Singlish. Of course Singlish and Manglish do influence each other, but I don't think Manglish originated from Singlish. The two has been co-evolving in parallel, but Singlish gets the spot-light because English is _THE_ de facto /lingua franca/ used in Singapore, whereas English (and hence Manglish) gets 2nd or 3rd class status in Malaysia.

Note also that Singlish grammar is largely based on Chinese, whereas the vocabulary is mainly English. It sounds as if the speakers are speaking in some Chinese language, but substituting the words with mostly English, plus some Mandarin Chinese or Hokkien Chinese or Malay, and (infrequently) Tamil or Cantonese Chinese. For example,

  "You makan already or not?"  ("Have you eaten?", makan = eat (Malay))

If one substituted the words back into say Mandarin Chinese ("Nǐ chī le meí yǒu?"), one finds a perfectly grammatical sentence! So is Singlish classified as a "creole" or a "dialect" of English? Or should it be a "creole" of Chinese?! You tell me.

[edit] Latin Creole

I think the romance languages should be in here as latin creole because that what it is. I don't see how they are any more advanced than say Haitian creole. They are both written and steal words from another language

That's not quite how the Romance languages developed. To create a creole, a process of pidginization must first occur, and this only happens in certain situations of cultural contact. There really isn't any evidence of such an event. Romance languages are simply the result of natural changes from Latin. AEuSoes1 10:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Pidgin article needs help too

There are so many additions and repairs to this creole page, but the pidgin page has been oddly neglected. Can someone help me fix it? No one has done much with the Pidgin article recently, and it is in dire need of repair. Sorry to talk about a different article on this discussion page, but I'm not getting any responses or help from the Pidgin discussion page.--ikiroid 15:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English as a Creole Language

Would it be worth mentioning here the debate over whether the formal, standard English langauge itself was originally a creole language? Some argue that English developed from an equal mix of Anglo-Saxon, Norman French and Scandanavian dialects, while others argue that the basic Old English language remained substantially intact and was enriched by contact with the other languages. Here are some arguments:

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361ryan.htm

http://calico.org/journalarticles/Volume10/vol10-3/Rendall.pdf

http://blackvoicenews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=929

I'm not a linguist so I don't think I could give this a fair summary, but I think this is very interesting. --38.112.184.20 22:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

We could mention it briefly and put those sources in. Although the general consensus is that English isn't a creole since the changes had already begun before the Norman Conquest. AEuSoes1 22:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I sort of added something in along those lines a while back, when I added in "Development of a Creole," but everyone shot down the fact, despite the fact it's a well-documented hypothesis in linguistics, like in the book The Power of Babel and A History of Language. Since it's not solid, however, you gotta put down some disclaimer next to it if you add it in. However, don't be surprised if it soon gets deleted anyway.--ikiroid | (talk) 00:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. See the top of this talk page for more info.--67.184.163.248 00:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] mixed language

What is the difference between mixed language and creole language? --Hello World! 16:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  • A mixed language is a synthesis of two languages (or more) by people who speak both, a creole is a synthesis of two (or more) languages by people who only speak one language, but still need to communicate with each other. --BadSeed 16:43, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] One definitive "Creole"?

I had always been told that Creole was one specific mixed language, a mix of mostly French, a bit of English, and other languages spoken in parts of New Orleans, Haiti, and many other smaller Caribbean nations, rather than just a general term for any mixed language. I've also seen the word referring to a style of cuisine from the same region. From this article, it seems that it may just be a matter of a general term evolving into a more specific term in certain circles. Is this particular mix sort of informally considered the one definitive "Creole" among other creoles? Or were the people that taught me that just all wrong? (It was in French class I first heard this term, so there was probably a bias towards that particular mix.) --Lurlock 21:32, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a word that has multiple meanings. I'm sure one of them was the original term and others stemmed from it. It can be ambiguous sometimes but that's why this is creole language with a lowercase C. AEuSoes1 04:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Creolization

I'm proposing that creolization be merged into the Development section and redirected here. "Creolization" is really only a verbification of "Creole", and the present article is scattered and needs a lot of work (citations, formatting, expansion, etc.). Merging would be more expedient and parsimonious, I think. Thoughts?

-Gsnixon 12:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I can go either way on this. Creolization is a little bit more than just the verb form of a creole language and and the development of its study is somewhat separate from that of creole languages but the article on creolization is horribly underdeveloped. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 18:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
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