Pidgins, Creoles, and the Evolution of English
What is Maritime English?
Royal Navy and merchant ships travelled the oceans. The officers were English, but the crews were multiracial. Maritime English, or ship’s jargon, was a form of pidgin English. Linguistic descendants of maritime English share similar characteristics in the Caribbean, West Africa, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, and Hawaii.
What is a Pidgin? How Do Pidgins Normally Begin?
A pidgin is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is typically a mixture of simplified languages with elements from other languages included. It is not the native language of any community but can be learned as a second language. Pidgins have low prestige. They usually begin as improvised contact languages between traders and tribesmen and become essential for communication in multilingual societies.
Linguistic Features of Papua Pidgin English
Pidgin sentences rely on phrase blocks like goodpela tru, bigpela for ‘big’, and go long for ‘went’. It uses characteristic repetition, like goodgood, talktalk, and litlit for ‘little’. Typical words in Papua include belong, pela ‘fellow’, kaikai ‘food’, mary ‘woman’ (from Mary), and pickaninny and savvy, which are common in pidgins around the world.
What is a Creole?
A creole is the first language of a speech community of native speakers and thus has a fully developed vocabulary and grammar. Most linguists believe that a creole develops when children of acquired pidgin-speakers learn it and use it as their native language.
Linguistic Consequence of the Slave Trade
It created several varieties of what we call Black English, a family that includes an emerging British Black English, Caribbean creole, Southern Black English, and African English.
Sociolinguistic Situation of Sierra Leone Krio
The national language of Sierra Leone, Krio, is an English creole spoken by everyone, including the President. It is considered good to use English at home as well as internationally. Krio is the language of the street, especially in markets. Many people switch easily between Krio and standard English depending on the situation. Krio includes universal pidgin words like savvy and pickaninny. A Krio-English dictionary has recently been published.
Status of Standard English and Jamaican Creole
In Jamaica, the use of Creole has become a hot political issue. It is the language of reggae music and dub poetry (political poetry). The language of authority is still standard English, but on the streets, Jamaican Creole is spoken. It is also becoming an important literary medium because it expresses things about the Jamaican experience that standard English cannot express with the same force. The work of dub poets has been transcribed and published. Some linguists see Jamaican Creole as the future language of official business and propose translating street signs into standard English. They urge the authorities to recognize Jamaican Creole as another variety and give it the functions it deserves as the language of the mass of the population.
Associations of ‘Nation Language’ vs. ‘Dialect’
The term ‘nation language’ is proposed because of the negative connotations of ‘dialect’, which is associated with broken English and something to be laughed at.
Types of Pidgins and Creoles
- Military and police: Throughout history, mixed armies have used pidgins for functional communication.
- Plantation: Europeans in tropical countries, exploiting resources based on slave labor, led to the development of Creoles over many generations.
- Mine and construction
- Seafaring and trade: Few have a nautical origin, but linguistically diverse crews used pidgins. A combination of seafaring and trading also contributed.
- Immigrants’ pidgins
- Tourist pidgins: Little information is available, but tourists and locals communicate simply (e.g., in Bangkok, Thailand).
- Urban Contact Vernaculars: Evolve in a particular type of urban setting where large-scale migration creates poor, linguistically, and ethnically diverse communities. The youth may create a language with pidgin characteristics.
The Spread to Canada
After the 1776 American Revolution, supporters of Britain exiled to Canada due to cheap land. Thousands of people emigrated from the USA.
English: For B → A, For A → B. Vocabulary and spelling were mixed. Some words originated in Canada. There are identifying features in pronunciation.
The West
“Go West” was originally ‘to die’. In America, it referred to the frontiersmen who went into Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois and disappeared. Later, cowboys used the phrase to refer to someone who deserted his family or left his job, usually in search of a new or better start. The doughboys of WWI used it to describe a fellow soldier who went AWOL (absent without leave). Hollywood cowboys restored it to its original Elizabethan sense of ‘to die’.
The Mississippi
The river was a way of life: it ferried settlers, farmers, and merchants; it prompted the development of the steamboat, or paddle steamer. Together with its mighty tributaries, it was the cargo route for cotton, sugar, tobacco, and slaves; it brought prosperity to scores of cities and towns. The language of the river was adopted in everyday English: letting off steam, riffraff, high falutin’, hogwash.
The Immigrants
The Germans
Distinctive and serious-minded, seven million Germans immigrated. German cities (Cincinnati, Ohio, Wisconsin) developed. A large, professionally successful, literate, alternative culture passed on words. Before the First World War, the Germans were a popular element in American society, renowned in the universities for their science, their philosophy, and their pedantry.
The Italians
Italians were of a different social class and status: they tended to be poor, often illiterate, peasants from the South. More than five million Italians immigrated. Unlike the Germans, the less-educated Italians made a more complete adoption of American English. As a result, the influence of Italian words is limited to food words.
The Jews
East and Central European Jews, numbering 3 million, worked in the garment trade. They had a strong subculture and moved into the entertainment business (newspapers, magazines, radio, films, and television).
Vocabulary
The Mississippi
- Let off steam: To get rid of your anger, excitement, or energy in a way that does not harm anyone by doing something active.
- Riff-raff: [plural] An insulting word for people who are noisy, badly-behaved, or of low social class.
Poker
- Have an ace up your sleeve: To have a secret advantage which could help you to win or be successful.
- To call someone’s bluff: To tell someone to do what they have threatened because you do not believe that they will really do it.
- Pass the buck: To make somebody else responsible for something that you should deal with.
- The odds / cards are stacked against somebody: Used to say that someone is unlikely to be successful.
- Up / raise the ante: To increase your demands or try to get more things from a situation, even though this involves more risks. Example: They’ve upped the ante by making a $120 million bid to buy the company.
- Hit the jackpot: To win a lot of money or to have a big success. Example: Owens hit the jackpot in his first professional game with the Cowboys.
- The dice are loaded: The situation is arranged so that a particular person will win or gain an advantage.
- Follow suit: To do the same as someone else has done.
The Fur Trade
- Eager beaver (informal): An enthusiastic person who works very hard.
- Beaver away (at sth) (informal): To work very hard at something. Example: He’s been beavering away at the accounts all morning.
The Cowboy
- Wild card:
- A playing card that can represent any other card.
- Someone whose behavior or effect on a situation is difficult to guess.
- When the chips are down: [spoken] In a serious or difficult situation, especially one in which you realize what is true or important. Example: When the chips are down, you’ve got only yourself to depend on.
- Mustang: A small American wild horse.
- Maverick: A person who does not behave or think like everyone else, but who has independent or unusual opinions.
- Hot under the collar (informal): Angry or embarrassed. Example: He got very hot under the collar when I asked him where he’d been all day.
- Bite the dust (informal):
- To fail, or to be defeated or destroyed.
- (humorous) To die.
The Iron Horse
- Railroaded: To force something to happen or force someone, especially quickly or unfairly.
- Sidetracked: To direct a person’s attention away from an activity or subject towards another one that is less important.
- Streamlining: To shape something so that it can move as effectively and quickly as possible through a liquid or gas.
- On the gravy train: Used to refer to a situation in which someone can make a lot of money for very little effort.
- Whistle stop tour: A series of short visits to different places, made usually by a politician.
- To be in the clear, to make the grade, to have the right of way, to backtrack, to reach the end of the line, to go off the rails.