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Pidgins and Creoles for
Beginners
By Peter L. Patrick
This page is intended to
give you a quick tour around some resources for learning about Pidgin and
Creole languages.
I teach a course on the
topic at the
Some
Questions about Pidgins and Creoles
Q: What is a Pidgin? A Creole? Why do
people study them?
A:
See my intro lecture notes at http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/Courses/PCs/IntroPidginsCreoles.htm. A collection of quoted definitions of Pidgins and Creoles is available, linked to my course syllabus at http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lg/lg449/index.htm.
Q: Is it only
possible for a pidgin to form from 3 or more languages and not just two? Am I
right in thinking that if two languages come into contact, instead of combining
to form a pidgin, the dominant language would be chosen, or enforced, over the
less dominant language to become the main language spoken and used?
A: Well,
that is USUALLY the case – but as with everything else in Ps and Cs, there are
well-known exceptions. Russenorsk is one – it is a pidgin formed from Russian and
Norwegian, only, and in this case – perhaps due to balanced numbers and power
among the two sets of speakers (which itself is rare) – it did form a pidgin,
rather than one dominating.
The other thing that happens sometimes with only 2 languages
coming into contact, is the “mixed” or “intertwined languages”, such as Michif and Media Lengua. These are not as simple in structure as pidgins, and can form
when the social forces are not exactly balanced.
Finally, there is at least one Creole whose structure is mostly
based on two languages – Dutch and
Q: Does everyone agree with
you about the nature of PCs (as Pidgins and Creoles are sometimes referred to)?
A:
Are you kidding? At least half the experts will disagree with something I said
there. (I should know -- I'm an expert, and I disagree with some of it!) For
another brief overview, see this page on Languages in Contact at the Linguistic
Society of America website. But it's
a rapidly changing field -- even most professional linguists have
misconceptions about the accepted wisdom -- and more is discovered every day.
Q: What do PCs have in common with regional and minority
dialects? Where can I find good, brief descriptions of some PCs online?
A:
See the Language Varieties Web Site at http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/. You like your facts in cold hard
print? Check out Comparative
Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars, edited by
Q: Do Black people in
A:
Yes indeed. For info about kinds of speech called “British
Afro-Caribbean English”, “British Black
English”, “London Jamaican”, etc. see
my brief bibliography at http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/aavesem/BrACEbib.htm. The Corpus
of Written British Creole (small but interesting) is available at Mark Sebba’s British Creole Resources page, http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/mark/resource/resources.htm.
Q: Is African American Vernacular English (=Ebonics = US Black
English) a creole? Where can I find out more about
it?
A:
See my website on African American English at
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/AAVE.html for a general intro, a large bibliography (700+ items), the syllabus
of a course on AAE, summaries of some interesting articles, and a FAQ on the Ebonics controversy about the use of AAE in
schools.
Q: Is there a more encyclopedic site
on PCs with a FAQ, tons of texts, historical information, an email list, online
scholarly papers and book notices, sound clips, etc etc?
A: There used to be – it was called the Creolist Archives at http://creole.ling.su.se/. It was a great source for people with a professional interest and a linguistics or academic background, but it went off the air a few years ago. Much of its info has been archived on other sites.
Q: Are all types of Caribbean English really Creoles? or are some simply dialects of English?
A: This
is partly a matter of language attitudes. Believe it or not, there is often no
hard and fast scientific distinction to be made between a “language” and a “dialect”
– thus very different kinds of Chinese are thought of as dialects, while the
remarkably similar Hindi and Urdu are not (contrasted here). Since Creoles are
often disrespected languages, whose speakers are discriminated against even if
they are the majority – and since they often exist in a post-colonial context,
which overvalues things from the colonial metropole – many Creole speakers
think of their languages as dialects of some colonial language (e.g., dialects
of French or English). Linguists nearly always disagree with this view – from
our perspective, Creoles have independent grammars and all the equipment of
full, proper languages.
Q: What about French Creoles? I'll bet they have a special resource
site, too...
A: Mais oui! Consult the
Institut d'Etudes Creoles et Francophones at http://www.superdoc.com/iecf/.
Q: ...Portuguese?
A: Slimmer
pickings, but see http://www.unb.br/il/liv/crioul/ at the Universidade de Brasília.
Q: I
bet there are school systems which encourage study and use of Creole languages,
no? Teacher?
A: Correct,
class. A useful collection of references on AAVE & classroom language
issues can be found at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/aave/aave.html.
Q: Enough already! I want to have some fun with Creoles.
How can I do that?
A: Easy.
You can read some texts in Jamaican Patwa -- a story, a folktale, an argument,
a popular song, a life-and-death narrative -- on my webpage at http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/JCtexts.html; or check out the
classic Jamaican reggae film (1972, but may be in your local video store) 'The
Harder They Come' (I've transcribed
the first few minutes at the JCtexts site above). If you want
some harder linguistics, one of the narratives above is also keyed to an
illustration of 12 features of linguistics structure thought to be typical of Creoles.
Q: What's all this about Jamaican? Is that your favorite
Creole or something? Why?
A: Seen bredda! Afta mi no come from yaad? Cho! [You bet! After all, didn’t I grew up there? Hmp!]
Some Basic References
Arends, Jacques, Pieter Muysken, and Norval Smith, eds.
1995. Pidgins and Creoles: An introduction.