The Complexities of the Pidgin and Creole Languages

Gullah (or Geechee or Sea Island Creole English) formed separately on the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida throughout the 18th and 19th centuries among enslaved Western Africans. They developed a language that combined grammatical, phonological, and lexical features of the non-standard English varieties spoken by white slaveholders and farmers in that region of the United States along with those from numerous Western and Central African languages. According to this view, Gullah developed separately, or distinctly, from African American English and varieties of English spoken in the South.

Language can be seen as a communication barrier for some. Sometimes it may be difficult to talk to a customer, distant relative, or just a person walking down the street asking for directions. Now imagine a world where every single human being spoke the same language; a place where your distant relative from another country suddenly speaks the same language as you and you can begin to appreciate or dislike them even more; where now you are connected to billions of people who you can easily communicate with; where one universal language can now progress humankind.

Irene Thompson on her webpage referred to Pidgin as the “on-the-Spot” languages (“Pidgin Languages”). She further explained that when no common language existed between the two groups a means of communication developed from a primary language blended with one or more local languages. Since the Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and Portuguese were major colonial powers, their languages were generally the source for many of the Pidgin languages. A quick check on the internet indicates that there are Pidgins not only developed from English and African languages, but also between English and Native American, Eskimo Icelandic, Yokohama (Japanese), and Taimyr (Russian). Spanglish is a blend of English and Spanish, just as Chadian Arabic is a mixture of French makes up Chadian Arabic. Because these are rudimentary means to communicate, Pidgins have a low prestige with linguists. Pidgin is also sometimes referred to as

In an ever changing world we have seen the number and complexity of languages become reduced. In a Wall Street Journal article entitled What the World Will Speak in 2115, John H. McWhorter advocates for the world to see these changes as necessary and a way for communication worldwide to become more efficient and simplified. McWhorter shows how language has been streamlined for centuries as a way for citizens to adapt rather than viewed as an extinction of culture. Modern English is likely to become the dominant language worldwide but more so for the fact that it can be easily learned and is open to transformation with the times. Despite the fears of a world where lingual diversity is reduced, McWhorter suggests that there will still be variation to promote culture and communication with people from all backgrounds will be easier. The following is a summary and analysis of McWhorter’s main points describing the simplification of language. Following the summary of main points will be a hypothetical situation in what the world language could consist of 100 years from now.

Diversity in Language – Parillo argues that there were 200 or more distinct societies that spoke 200 mutually unintelligible languages with hundreds of dialects. Different languages point to different perceptions and understandings of the worlds around them. For example, the Navajo did not distinguish third person pronouns like his, her, and their, but instead used compound words mixed with adjectives and nouns. To say “his wife” the Navajo would say something like “one-wife-of-one-man.”

Language is a vital tool for human beings. Human language is a measure for communicating thoughts, ideas, and identity to one another. Cultural relations, economic dealings, and the shaping of friendships are all dependent upon language. While it could be viewed that today’s languages are the result of past language extinctions, the death of language signifies a loss much greater than just words.

Pidgins are generally spoken as a second language when mutually unintelligible languages are in close contact (Carroll, 2008). They reflect an individual’s ability to adapt communicative techniques by learning a limited amount of basic vocabulary from one language and supplementing that with vocabulary from another language they are characterized as having a simplified syntax (grammar) (Alleyne, 1966). Although, there is some debate as to what the difference between a pidgin and a creole is, it is generally accepted that creoles are spoken as a first language evolving from a pidgin and are therefore more complex with regards to syntax then a pidgin but still simplified compared to the root language(s) (Carroll,

The Native American culture. The Spanish culture. The African culture, “Africans and their children devised a creole language” (Kulikoff 416). The French culture.

Diversity in everyday spoken languages allows people the opportunity to experience the beauty of the many different sounds that derive from the variety of languages spoken. However, this opportunity appears to be diminishing according to John McWhorter’s essay “What the World Will Speak in 2115.” McWhorter writes that the amount of different languages spoken may decrease drastically in the following century due to a generation’s act of not passing down a lesser known language to future generations. The author presents his persuading message to the audience by providing evidence of actual languages that are no longer spoken, as well as utilizing stylistic devices to promote his content.

Throughout the course of the semester, I have conducted research into the Cayuga language, a Northern Iroquoian idiom of ~250-300 speakers based primarily in southern Ontario, Canada (Ethnologue 2015). In the first study, I looked into the basic sociolinguistic aspects affecting this language, focusing primarily on efforts to revitalize it. It is labeled by the anthropological site Ethnologue as Moribund, and by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as Extinct (Ethnologue 2015). In part one of the current paper, I will reiterate some of the points that I made previously, while further exploring the topic of language revitalization. In the second study, I focused on the Cayuga grammar system, spending considerable time looking at the phonetics and phonology of the language, as there is not much other literature available on the morphology or syntax of the language. I briefly glossed over the prosodic system in Cayuga, later

Human have the capability to utilize complicated language, exceedingly more than any other set on Earth. We collaborate in every distant to use language for cammunication; language is frequently used to communicate about and even invent and preserve our social world. Laguage use and human sociality are special parts of humanity as a consanguineous species.

In conclusion, it is evident that communication, both verbal and nonverbal plays a key role in the advancement of the different aspects of different languages through symbols or the communicated language. While verbal communication relies on the coding and

On Wikipedia the definition of Pidgin language is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common (Pidgin, Wikipedia.org). The two huge examples of areas that pidgin language is Hawaii and New Orleans (Why do people have different accents when they speak English?, telc.net).

Language is a typically human phenomenon. In moving from the 'natural being' of animal existence to the 'cultural being' of human existence, language plays the decisive role. Language gives a sense of identity to an individual as well as a social group and, in the process, creates multiple identities. The maintenance, merger, clash and change in identities based on and reflected in the language change has prompted linguists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists to study language in its multifarious dimensions. Since economic and societal planning have to, of necessity, take into account the context of planning, there is no wonder that worldwide

Isabel Craik Linguistics 10 Linguistic Analysis French and Haitian Creole The Similarities and Differences French Creole is one of Haiti’s two official spoken languages, the second language being French. Currently, there are about twelve million individuals who speak the language, and then pass it on to their children. Creoles are developed from pidgins (a simpler version of a language to unite two foreign languages) and are developed over generations.