Pidgin

Victor

I was reading this thread, when I found a link for Pidgin. All too often Pidgin languages are frowned upon is the same was that Basil Fawlty demeaned Manuel's pet keeping*, but the peice puts a whole new contect on Pidgins and Creoles.


* "But Mr. Fawlty, he not rat. He hampster." - Manuel

Scraggs

I was actually having a discussion with someone recently about Pidgin and Creole. In particular 'Black English' [can't remember the formal name] and how it evolved. Apparantly theres some kind of revival effort -wanting to make it an official language I think- going on in the US and linguists are really interested in it because of the huge links with Creole. It originated in the South when slaves were brought over from the West Indies who already spoke a Creole form and African slaves and developed. When slavery was abolished and ex-slaves moved out of the South and integrated more with English speakers and it then developed rapidly throughout black communities in the US.


Nice link Victor, very interesting:)

Victor

Scraggs wrote:

In particular 'Black English' [can't remember the formal name] and how it evolved.

Ebonics?

generalmiaow

I understand that afro-american English (etc) is a dialect rather than a creole (like the english we speak, but maybe moreso)

generalmiaow

then again, I've never actually heard anyone speaking it informally, except in movies, which I'm sure is very inaccurate

jimi_t

Bit of an old topic, but the Hawaiian Pidgin version of the New Testament

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Pidgin

is called "Da Jesus Book".

Well, I got a kick out of it anyways