|
|
How close are Creole languages to their parent language?
Linguist Fri Jun 19, 2009 7:49 pm GMT
<<On the other hand, Slavic languages are still (almost) the same es the Old-Slavonic.>>
This is no more true than French, Spanish, Italian, Romansh, etc. are "the same" as Latin, or that German, English, Swedish, Danish, etc. are "the same" as Old Germanic. They are similar to them in some ways because that is where they came from, but all languages are changing all the time in different ways.
___________________________________
Don´t you think that the relation between French, Spanish, Italian, Romansh and their "mother tonge" Latin seem to be fundamentally different from the relation
Slavic - Old Slavic
German - Old Germanic.
Greek - Ancient Greek
?
Don't you think that the relation between English and Old English is completely different from the relation Greek-Ancient Greek?
In general, the degree of distance between Créole languages and the parent tongue vary depending on the amount to which the Superstrate and Créole languages interact.
An example would be the Caribbean French Creoles. Martinican Créole is probably the closest to Standard French and incorporates more phonetic and lexical influences from French, which could be credited to the degree that speakers of French and Créole interact on that island. Most speakers are born créolephone, yet they're educated in a primarily Francophone system and upon leaving the educational system are presumably competent in both Créole and French.
In the middle are Haitian Créole and Guadeloupan Créole. While Guadeloupe maintains a standard of living FAR higher than that of Haiti, the people of Guadeloupe are more "nationaliste" than those of Martinique and so French influences aren't infiltrating their Patois the same way that it is in Martinique. However, like Martinique, a large portion of the population is Francophone.
Haiti is different in that although there is also a signficant presence of French, Créole dominated the population by a ratio of about 8:1 for monolingual Créolephones to Bilingual Francophones. Haitian Créole also has different registers which reflect the speaker's education, and many upper class people speak with a different register that is more Francised.
And at the complete opposite end of the spectrum are Dominican and St Lucian Patois. Those créoles are probably the most distant from Standard French. Because those islands have been administered by the British for the last two centuries, although créole persisted as the vernacular of the people, English became the superstrate lanugage rather than French, and the presence and influence of French was greatly diminished. Very few Lucians or Dominicans actually speak French in comparison to Haitians, Guadeloupans and Martinicans, and so the relationship between French and the creoles of St Lucia and Dominica is distant.
In comparison, the Anglophone Créoles are more of a dialect continuum, with English on one end, and the créole of that island on the other end. Most residents of the Anglophone caribbean are speakers of the local creole as children, and through education become more mesolectal speakers as they age. In general however, the islands are mesolectal creolephones, with broad creole speakers being limited to the rural areas, while monolingual anglophones being limited to the highest reaches of the upper class.
Personally, I grew up a mesolectal créolephone in my household, with my grandmother's speech being more broad patois and my uncles and cousins being more mesolectal. An example of how usage of creole and english could vary can be seen here:
English: She went to the beach to go swimming
Mesolectal Dialect: She gone to di beach to go siwim
Patois: She gone beach fi go swim
<<Don't you think that the relation between English and Old English is completely different from the relation Greek-Ancient Greek? >>
_______________________________
Yes because English underwent a creolization episode with Old Norse just as the Romance languages did with Old Germanic dialects
Guest Wed Jun 24, 2009 6:25 pm GMT
"Any sources? "
Sources:
Creoles, pidgins and the Middle English creolization hypothesis
Termpaper, 2006, 15 Pages
Author: Alexandra Nadler
Subject: English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics
Middle English creole hypothesis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypothesis
Bailey, Charles J. and Karl Maroldt. “The French lineage of English.” Langues en contact – Pidgins – Creoles. Ed. Jürgen M. Meisel. Tübingen: Narr, 21-53.
Dalton-Puffer, Chritiane. “Middle English is a creole and its opposite: On the value of plausible speculation.” Linguistic Change Under Contact Conditions. Ed. Jacek Fisiak. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995. 35-50.
Dawson, Hope C. “Defining the Outcome of Language Contact: Old English and Old Norse.” OSUWPL 57 (2003): 40-57.
Gilbert, Glenn G. Pidgin and Creole Languages: Essays in Memory of John E. Reinecke. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1987.
Görlach, Manfred. “Middle English – a creole?” Linguistics Across Historical and Geographical Boundaries. Eds. Dieter Kastovsky and Aleksander Szwedek. Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter, 1986. 329-344.
Poussa, Patricia. “The Evolution of Early Standard English: The Creolization Hypothesis.” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 14 (1982): 69-85.
Rothwell, W. “Arrivals and Departures: The Adoption of French Terminology into Middle English.” English Studies (1998) 144-65.
Schendl, Herbert. Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.
Warner, Anthony. Complementation in Middle English and the Methodology of Historical Syntax: A Study of the Wyclifite Sermons. London: Croom Helm, 1982.
"How close, and mutually intelligible, are creole languages to their parent language?
I have heard Cape Verdean Creole and to me it sounds similar to some Brazilian Portuguese accents that I've heard, and most words are recognizable, but I've also seen it written and it looks very different. To me it looks like Portuguese spelled phonetically. I have no more trouble understanding it than Brazilian accents.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q79bZB-1vA"
Cape Verde creole is a language, or I should say, a group of languages as they differ from island to island. It's not simmilar to Brazilian Portuguese.
Brazilian Portuguese is just an accent of Portuguese.
Compare English to it's parents - Anglo-Saxon and Norman, and see for yourself :P
|