Is English a Creole? | Otherwords
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- Опубліковано 11 гру 2024
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There's been a lot of debate amongst linguists about what actually constitutes a creole language. By some definitions, English might be a creole!
Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and finds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fields of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.
Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
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sources:
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Mufwene, Salikoko S. "Creoles and pidgins: Why the latter are not the ancestors of the former." The Routledge handbook of language contact. Routledge, 2020. 300-324.
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www.bu.edu/sjm...
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www.unesco.org...
saintluciancreo...
First, I want to be clear that Dr. Brozovsky is absolutely correct at 6:45 - creoles are languages, full stop. So when I say that I strongly disagree with Dr. Wiel's reasoning on English being a creole, it's not because that would in any way denigrate English. Rather, I disagree because the definition she's using would make just about every language a creole, and to paraphrase Syndrome from the incredibles, "if every language is a creole, then no one is." The argument is that we made up the term creole to refer to what was just the normal process of language formation, and it was bias and prejudice that made the linguists of the day think it was something "different." I think that is absolutely a reasonable argument to make, but by that definition there ARE no creoles as it would just be a synonym for "language", and thus English is not a creole. I'm a little sad that this episode didn't actually go into the real argument for English being a creole, because it is very interesting, and didn't happen when most people would think - if English arose as a creole, it did so during the Danelaw, well before the Norman conquest.
Thank you! I feel the exact same way. It would have been more interesting to go into the actual argument for English specifically, the whole Old Norse-Old English fusion, and I'd personally throw in Old Norman after William the Conqueror came in.
I disagree, but I think part of the problem is that this video didn't explain it very precisely. If you focus on the more specific question of "using modern terminology, would Middle English be viewed as a creole of Old English and Norman French?" And for that I think the answer is "probably, yeah"
First off, the setting is similar enough. Post-1066 you had conquerors and conquered speaking completely different languages, and so pidgin formation would be consistent with the pattern seen elsewhere.
(In particular this is different from the Danelaw situation where the languages involved were a lot closer)
English didn't just continue on as-is with a bit of new French vocabulary. Pidgin languages often go through grammar simplification where structures unfamiliar to some users fall away if they're not needed for comprehension. Consider gendered nouns: both Old English and French have them, but the systems are completely different. Middle English slowly lost its gender system entirely. This is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to happen under pidgin-like pressure: native speakers of one of the source languages would struggle with the gender system of the other, so when conducting business in pidgin-like speech they'd skip that detail. As the pidgin becomes a creole this laxity becomes the new normal.
That this seems like "normal" non-creole evolution to us might just be because we call the language both before and after this change "English". If we had given a whole new name to the post-Norman language, we might be more inclined to view it as creole formed from the collision of two source languages.
@@mitchblank I thought the grammatical simplification is thought to have occured during and after the Danelaw as well.
@@MrGksarathy Sure. And, ultimately, language evolution never fits perfectly neatly into a box. It's part of what makes these classification debates fun (or interminably annoying, depending on your preference)
The way I look at it is this: English is (of course) a Germanic language. However it's also the "weird cousin" on that tree, with substantial differences in grammar and a ton of odd vocabulary.
And when did the biggest part of this swerve away from its linguistic cousins happen? The Middle English period. At the start it was another member of the clan with a few quirks, but a couple centuries later it was definitely the odd-one-out in many ways.
This is exactly the period of time when the language was being contorted after its collision with Norman.
If that process had happened on some tropical island in the colonial era we'd probably all say "yeah what you've got there is a creole..." But in this case it happened on a decidedly non-tropical island centuries earlier.
So at least by my reckoning , I think we got creoled.
@@mitchblank Except that didn't actually happen with English, there is no proof of it. And there is minimal influence of Norman French till quite late.
this doesn't really address the actual reasons why English linguists might consider English a creole. Among them, I've heard includes the drastic simplification of the morphological structures between Old and Middle English. The reasoning being it's a creole that arose between Old English speakers and possibly Old Norse speakers, something along those lines.
Also, they don't actually go into what a creole is on a typological level, only a historical one (and then they proceed to torpedo their historical definition). As a result of how creoles form, they're subjected to pressures that result in things like unlikely borrowings ("they" and "are" for example), simplified grammar, and a more analytical morphology.
+
AFAIK, the main donor in the creolisation of English is Norman French, not Old Norse. This can be seen by the fact, that the reduction of complexity, tipical for Middle compared to Old English, starts right after the Norman Invasion. And of course, by English' vocabulary being ~30% of Norman French origin, while Old Norse 'only' contributing ~5% (however mainly often used core vocabulary).
The grammatical structure of middle/modern English is closer to Briton than Anglo-Saxon or any other continental language (in particular the function of the verbal system with modal verb + verbal noun.)
@@IwoZamora The problem is that creoles aren't characterized by the variety of vocabulary, but by the mix of grammatical features.
It's very hard to pretend that English is a creole because of this. It's clearly a germanic language and there are very few hints of Norman influence on its grammar.
It's more divergent than some other germanic languages but it doesn't make it a creole.
This is the first otherwords episode i've been left a little disappointed, wish it was more in-depth with the explanations
I completely agree. I wish there was more information about the composition of English as a product of colonization by all the groups that colonized the land that is now called the UK.
@@vvivalamoreright, like even the loss of grammatical gender in English is thought to be a product of colonization and the mismatching of genders between nouns of each respective language being spoken; I was really hoping to hear more about that kind of stuff here
I wish we could have heard more about why English is a Creole language.
It isn't
It’s a creole blend of Anglo Saxon and Norman French
@greekboi79 no it isn't. English is grammatically and structurally Anglo Saxon. It retained its structure in the Norman invasion. The only thing it took in was vocabulary. Every language takes in vocabulary from other languages for various reasons; that doesn't make them a creole suddenly, any more than me being influenced by African music makes me African.
Irish, for example, had to use many technological words from English such as "telephone" as these technological advancements were coming out of England. Does that make Irish a creole now?
This woman's definition of creole is so wide it is essentially pointless. According to her definition every language would be a 'creole'.
@@Ana_crusis (sincere question) Then why is Norwegian one of our "sister languages" and the easiest for English speakers to learn? Even the grammar was aligned until English shifted its verb position.
@Cardboardruna Norwegian is a Germanic language over a thousand years ago all of those peoples weren't living behind the same borders as they are now. All of those languages shared things in common. And don't be fooled by this idea that they are so close we can speak each other's language. People tend to flippantly say that. They are also different languages and there are many differences if you don't speak Norwegian you will not understand what they are talking about if you go to Norway. English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, but neither is mutually intelligible with it.
Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. Remember Old Norse and Old English were still somewhat mutually intelligible at that time. We took in some vocabulary from the Danes and even some of the third person pronouns.
These languages are all closely related. more closely related in the past. They are all on the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language tree, they are naturally closely related.
What point are you trying to make?
This episode was lacking the in-depth explanation I was expecting, but still a fantastic channel!
Right? I expected more time devoted to why English is in that category. I agree with the premise, but I wanted more explanation
This channel should do explore the marvelous work of Creole Romanic English.
@@ryandodge9948 6 minutes is too short for such an in depth topic as well
It would need to be way longer for that
I don’t dispute the content, but it is more political than linguistic.
I was expecting more details on the origins of English and how its Germanic, Frankish, Latin, and Celtic roots combined to create it.
They should do the parts 2,3,4 plus 5 to show the public this process.
🤙🤙🤙🤙🍨🍹
Me as well. I thought that would be the main focus, in fact.
Same, shame it was such a short video, especially for a topic like this
The French,Greek,Phrygian, Latin grammar, the Germanic mythology and beliefs and education of language, the Norses tales, slangs, tales, stories, and histories with chronicles.
English is beautiful is samurai.💛💛💛🤗🤗🤗🍺🍺🍺🍨🍨🍨🤝🍻
This should have been the topic, and not a nonsensical definition that creoles are all languages derived from another.
im addicted to this woman and her knowledge
Sigh, so am I. She earns a quick like, even before the video starts. What an informative series.
I mean she is incredibly smart and a great communicator, but its not like all these videos are just her knowledge, they are heavily researched, probably by a team and it adds to the credibility of the source but it doesnt mean she is an encilopedia on all things language related
@@sebamoreno2986 yes we all know she's not a one woman army and there's a team on most professional productions. My point was that this series is just so interesting and the lady is mesmerizing.
@@moonshot3159 Cool, I completely agree
Dr. B is awesome.
I grew up in Scotland, and Scots is my first language, English is my second. (Scots and English are both derived from Middle English.)
In school, we were not allowed to speak Scots, as it was deemed to be 'poor English'. There was an exception to this in November; we would learn Scots poetry in preparation for St Andrew's Day (national saint) at the end of the month. Another exception was made in January for to celebrate our national poet, Robert Burns.
Thankfully, times have changed, and people are recognising Scots is as valid a language as English. It has the same status as English and Scottish Gaelic in the Scottish Parliament. English is still the dominant language in education, but more Scots is being used.
So cool! I would love to try to learn some scots and older forms of english
As a Fellow Scot, it's so cool seeing Traditional Scots being Fuckin' MORE
Alas, it's still very fucked
can you write something in Scots for me? I'm so curious about it!!
@@--julian_ My spelling might be off, I only know it verbally ^^; tho also don't think a lot is standardized
Tae spek a sentince aw note isnae a task fur a sleekit wee waine li' yerself 🖤❤️
At least, it seems to be changing. In Germany on the other hand, still a mayority thinks that dialects (e.g. Bavarian)/sister languages (e.g. Low German) are "hillbilly-ish". Or even, that the only correct pronunciation is the one from Hannover. Imagin if not only Scots, but your Scottish way of pronouncing English was seen as wrong...
I hope someday we all can be proud of linguistic diversity.
As a speaker of a Germanic language that has kept its grammar, English definitely has properties of a creole. It has lost many of its core properties as a germanic language and adopted new strategies to fulfill those functions. This happened under the clash of various populations who had to somehow communicate without knowing each others language.
Excellent point, love it! One addition: ~30% of vocabulary come from Norman French, but there never truly was a mayor Norman French population in England, only a thin layer surrounding the king. But this was enough, that French became the prestige language. At a time only children, old people and 'hillbillies' spoke English. So English was able to simplify its grammar, because nobody cared to correct 'errors' in this 'inferior' language. This is typical for creole.
BTW: the counterexample is German, where standardisation & increased prestige coming with it, arificially conserved complexity (e.g. 4 case system) and even introduced new complexity (e.g. 2 -> 6 tenses).
What features are you referring to, exactly? And what evidence do you have that the loss of those features can be explained by a creolization process at the Middle English stage?
And how does that make it a creole?
A creole isn't just a language that evolved from another. Italian isn't a creole of Latin.
Creoles are mixes. They have grammatical features from at least two languages. Whether there are borrowed words doesn't matter. If it did, literally every language would be a creole.
Let's not confuse political definitions with scientific ones.
America actually uses more archaic forms of English than the UK does.
Check out Bill Bryson: The mother tongue.
@@IwoZamora This isn't how creoles are formed. Haitians didn't get more innovative with their language just b/c it lacked prestige, although its possible that could've helped. Creoles are innovative merely b/c the people groups who came to speak them didn't share a common language and had to form one on-the-spot without the benefit of formal education and literacy.
I would only argue that the label "creole" help us remember the historical colonial context in which this languages emerged as well as the struggle it meant for those communities to develop a fully functional communication strategy under the pressure of colonial powers, it is a testimony of humanity's adaptability even under the worst circumstances. But I completely agree that the label "creole" has colonial undertones in itself and that might contribute to the perception of creole languages as "broken" versions of "proper" European languages.
English developed in the context of foreign domination too. Foreign domination is not something that only brown people endure. It happens to white people too. The Norman French and the Norse subjugated the Anglo-Saxons and an amalgam of all three emerged.
@ True, power dynamics and domination have always been an integral part of most cultures around the world and that has undoubtedly shaped culture and language since we started as a species. We can point at the Chinese influence on east asian languages present till this day for example, or as you mention the Norman French occupation of England, or even the Arab occupation of Spain, both Spanish and English retain traces of that occupation till this day. But let’s not forget that european colonialism was a very specific historical episode, the first one of its kind to reach a global scale. It was also the first time in history that the notion of race and whiteness entered the collective consciousness as a pseudo argument for caucasian superiority and right to dominate over the peoples of the world. It was under colonial pressure that systematic steps were taken towards the eradication of non white peoples’ cultures and languages. It was also under european and American colonialism that slavery became an international commodity based primarily on race. And this is a very important point since many of the places where creoles developed were slave communities, Haiti, Jamaica, Aruba for instance are places mainly made up of the descendants of the international slave trade, which was only made possible by colonialism. There is no other example in human history where slavery reached such a scale where a country’s population could be made up almost entirely by the descendants of the victims of slavery.
So, while your examples are correct and Modern English is in part the product of foreign occupation it misses historical perspective, the French occupation of England was almost a thousand years ago, both the normands and saxons merged so long ago under the English identity that there is no living memory of that age old occupation. In contrast, the slave trade is only a couple centuries old and populations descending from those people are still experiencing its aftermath.
I mean it was only 80 years ago that kids were beaten up in Hawaii and Tahiti if they were caught speaking their native languages in school instead of English of French. The consequences of those acts are still felt to this day, many Hawaiian and Tahitian kids today can’t speak with their grandparents because they didn’t acquire their native languages due to institutional pressure, their languages were brought to the brink of extinction in only three or four generations.
All this to say that even if English at some point of its history was drastically influenced by occupation and conquest, it has become the most influential language in the world in the history of humankind, no other language has ever before reached the four corners of the planet as the global lingua franca, all this by becoming a colonial language in its own right and pushing hundreds of other languages to the brink of extinction, so pointing out that English was actually the underdog language almost a thousand years ago is kind of insulting, specially if you put it in comparison to languages that are struggling to survive and be recognized to this very day.
If you wish to give actual and relevant examples of how power dynamics and systematic oppression aren’t limited to race alone, there are plenty of examples of white and european languages fighting for survival and recognition today. We can talk about Irish, a true survivor of English oppression for centuries, once the language of a whole nation, now only heard in small provinces and old people.
We can talk about how the French government denies recognition or support to the preservation of native languages within its territory, Occitan, Basque, Breton are all languages native to the French but the government won’t authorize immersion schools to help preserve native speakers.
We can talk also of the many languages in Italy, which are denied the title of languages and are instead called dialects in favor of standard Italian as the national language.
We can talk about Catalan and Galician which have had to fight for their place in a Spanish speaking nation, surviving even the dictatorship that banned them as a threat to the Spanish Nation.
So in short, I agree with you, conquest and oppression aren’t exclusive to race, and there are examples of it nowadays, but English is not one of them. There are actual examples of languages native to white people that are struggling to survive and in some of them English is actually responsible for bringing them to a critical point.
But even with that we shouldn’t minimize the specific struggles that white colonialism on non white communities has had in the last centuries of humankind on a global scale, one of those struggles being that creole languages can’t be accepted as full languages even by their own communities under the pretense of better, more proper white languages.
The video states it clearly with Afrikaans, it developed basically under the same conditions as creole languages, but because it is spoken mainly by white people, we don’t call it a creole, but simply a language.
@nurarihion You mention that the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman French merged long ago so that there's no living memory of that. That's true but don't forget that it's far from an accident that the higher classes in America and Britain tend to have Norman surnames like Percy while the lower classes tend to have Anglo-Saxon names like Wayne. The enslavement of the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans (and also the Norse) still very much reverberates today in our modern English-speaking plutocracies. So lack of historical memory doesn't automatically imply lack of historical relevance. Another example is the fact that many of the higher-rank German officers during the two world wars had their family roots in the feudal aristocracy, a class that had long lost its political and economic supremacy. Another example is the fact that many of the oligarchs in the former Soviet states can trace their roots in the Soviet nomenclature, but retain nothing of their former ideology and power.
You mention that there's no other example of the majority of a country being descended from slaves than the former overseas colonies peopled by Africans. That's not true. Well, it's definitely the most recent example but who do you think the peoples of the Mediterranean descend from? They descend from the slaves of the ancient Romans who made up the majority of the populace in their domain.
People have lost sight of the important fact that while the colonial Europeans did engage in slavery, they were not slavers and their states were not slaver states. They were capitalists and their states were capitalist states. Capitalist societies don't rely on slave labor to function, they rely on wage labor. They don't rely on the enslavement of other counties to maintain their wealth; they rely on the occupation of a privileged position in the international trade. Slavery was simply an expedient way for them to reduce labor costs to nearly zero and increase their profit margins. For the Europeans, slavery was not the absolute condition of their social existence. For the Romans, who were actual slavers, it was.
Creoles are indeed languages in their own right. But that doesn't mean that they are equally useful as vehicles of progress and social mobility compared to the languages of the former colonizers. For that reason, a progressive person shouldn't support their preservation. If we really want to help the descendants of the erstwhile enslaved improve their socio-economic standing and cultural level we shouldn't hesitate to encourage full linguistic assimilation. We don't need to disparage their languages to do that. We just need to tell them: 'your languages are perfectly fine but let's be realistic, you have to drop them to get ahead in the modern competitive environment'.
I totally agree that the colonial context is central to understanding creoles and also key to understanding why languages growth. I think its key enough concept to the term that we can't separate it from the term and wouldn't count english as a creole. I do think it is an interesting intellectual language to compare english to creole languages and see that english is just as subject to change and external influences as other languages. It makes you conscious of the assumption that english is immutable and some how more real than creoles
@velvetcroc9827 giving big racist, big white supremacist, big "black people should get over everything that happened to them" vibes. The fact of the matter is, so many words used in our own education that are brand new to us. Those creole languages, if they don't have a word for something in their language yet, they will come up with one. The internet is quite new and damn near every word we use to navigate a computer or a phone are words that have just been created or borrowed to now have a second meaning only in the last 50 years or so. "Processor, swipe, coding, computer, motherboard, notification, toolbar" are all computer and phone words that have very technological connotations to it, but if said to someone 100 years ago, they might have never heard the word, or are thinking of completely different things.
Much of the information in science, psychology, sociology, linguistics, and SO MANY other fields are new concepts that are discovered or observed, (or made up lol) and they give a name to these concepts. "Mitochondria" "mitosis" "titanium" "ecosystem" are all made up words that within the last 2 or 3 centuries, all created to give name to a concept after the concept has now been explained to us. And you KNOW what all those damn words mean. The modern periodic table as you know it only BEGAN to become a concept in 1869, and many elements were still yet to be discovered. As many as 60% of the element names were given to them after 1869! And it wasnt based on some scientific idea of the best name for them, people just named them whatever they wanted, whatever was cool, or after themselves. Yttrium was discovered in the swedish town of ytterby, so there it just got its name. Polonium after a guy. It's not all that sophisticated or special.
And again, you are understanding all of the topics I speak of, you understand everything I am saying. So too shall creole languages, if given the chance, come up with words or do as every language does, borrow words from other languages as loan words for concepts that already exist in english or french or otherwise! So much of the english language in and of itself is loan words, as is spanish. These people and languages are not "underdeveloped" who need european language and education to save them once again, they need people like you to take your foot of their head and stop breathing down their neck.
I highly advise you to read the book "you are what you speak" by robert lane greene to challenge your idea of language and why you think what you do, and gives a ton of evidence for supporting the existence, preservation, or just respect of non-european langauges. (Or as you would say, lesser, primitive languages) It's an incredible read and seriously changed how I interact with the world and others.
Thanks for mentioning Kamtok! As a speaker of Kamtok, I'd argue that it is a creole, not a Pidgin.
The distinction that I had always understood is that nobody's mother tongue is a pidgin; it's used to facilitate communication between people when neither speaks the other's native language (hence "business"). A pidgin graduates to a creole when these different groups intermarry and the pidgin becomes the language widely used at home; it becomes the first language of mixed families. By that definition, Kamtok is definitely a creole.
I don't know anything about Kamtok, but my understanding of a Pidgin is that it lacks the grammar and/or vocabulary to be a person's only language. There are concepts that you wouldn't be able to to convey or talk about.
This line might work on paper, but in real life it is a bit more difficult and fuzzy, because people who speak the pidgin will just fill in the gaps with their other language(s). And it can be hard to tell where one stops and the other starts. If it is too similar to the original language, it won't be recognized as a distinct language. But what exactly is "too similar"?
Sort of like how it is difficult to define dialect vs language. There are some languages that are mutually intelligible and some dialects that aren't. Language is messy and doesn't like to fit into neat boxes.
None of the "pidgins" they mentioned are actually pidgins. They're all creoles, i.e fully-fledged languages, and have native speakers.
Kamtok today is a full creole.
@@periculum69 yes, like Spanglish or Chinglish etc would be pidgin, you would use English words for the specific terms that you don't know, but as I got older, it became like 90% Chinese with some English words because they are faster than the terms, it's not a "true language" but a hybrid mix of both
I have a friend who taught English language learners in the US. Her students' parents, most of whom didn't have good English, often tried to speak only English at home instead of their native languages. She encouraged them to use their native language with their children instead. Learning the grammar of their mother tongue set them up to better understand the grammars of secondary languages.
This is totally true. Keeping in touch with you mother tongue and keep improving it will enhance your learning journey with your second language. But would you mind giving more information about it?
@luchm7317 human brains are hardwired to learn language. They WANT to learn grammar and conjugation and all that wild stuff. That's why small children instinctively pick up grammar distinctions that take older language learners years to master. The problem is that you need to acquire a language - any language - within a certain window of time, before you're like 8 or 10. If you don't, you will never properly acquire language. So a kid needs to learn a language -any language - as a native speaker in order for their brains to really acquire an understanding of grammar as a concept. It is far easier to learn correct English grammar at school if you have learned proper Tagalog grammar at home. It's harder if you're learning correct English grammar at school and incorrect patterns of English at home. Just acquiring a natural understanding of grammar itself is important, and must happen during the language acquisition phase. That's why it's so important to teach deaf kids sign language early: so they acquire an understanding of grammar and a native language to think in!
Uhm... she didn't actually give any reasons why English is a creole language? A lot of people in the comments are saying "well but 60% of it's vocabulary is borrowed from such and such", and while that's true, it doesn't make English a creole. The grammatical structure of English remains like that of a Germanic language, and even the overwhelming amount of loanwords cannot change that fact.
Even when taking into account the real discrimination these languages face, the fact of the matter is that "creole" and "not creole" are merely developmental tags.
As a French native speaker, I actually like to go see Wikipedia pages in Haitian creole (which I don't speak). When I read them out loud, I can pretty much understand what they're about, because for lots of words, they just got rid of our countless silent letters and made the spelling more "intuitive", so they look different but sound pretty close. This obviously doesn't work for every word, but yeah, it's fun to try and determine the parallels between both languages.
I have a cousin that was supposed to go to Haiti to do service work there, he's Franco-American, born in the US but did most of his primary education in France, he ended up not going because of the coup d'etat in 2004, anyways, he learned Creole in like 2 weeks, he personally said it was close enough it was so easy. My husband is French, and I started "reading" some Creole to him once, well, trying to read it, and he was surprised how much he understood
An English reader can do the same with Flemish if they know a little German and/or Dutch
It's just not the same.@@thekaxmax
@@thekaxmax Eeh, nah not too much
@@thekaxmaxOh you meant Flemish and not Frisian? Then not at all then, dutch people even can have a difficult time understanding them
The video simply asserts at 6:15 that English is creole without properly explaining why.
Just because Old English was influenced by a few neighbouring languages doesn't seem to be enough to call it that without calling many other languages creole as well, so making it a very vague and non-specific term.
It appears to be a judgement call. English was significantly influenced by Norman French, far more than other languages it has borrowed from. Based on a dictionary definition, I've always regarded English a creole.
But depends on what definition you adopt and where you draw the line.
there's a difference between "all creoles are languages" and "all languages are just creole", technically Old and Middle English were influenced by others, but no one would call them creole by today's standards, people are confusing the terms and their meanings, no linguists would say modern languages were only creole of Latin, Greek
The impacts of Old Norse were HUGE to the grammar and vocabulary development of english. This is why a lot of people consider it to be a creole since the danelaw period
Ever since I quit opiates 2ish years ago I've become hopelessly addicted to electrical engineering and linguistics...Now all I fiend is knowledge haha
I love it, congrats on 2 years!! 🎉 So curious if these two loves ever intersect, merge, or meld?
I was talking to a Swedish friend one time years ago, and I asked him why seemingly everybody in Sweden spoke English (something like 90%) and he said it was simply because nobody outside of Sweden speaks Swedish. Not even the other Scandinavian countries. So they often times ended up using a third language to make it easy to speak between all of them. Traditionally this was German, but during the second half of the 19th century, it became apparent that German was not gonna have very much of an international presence, and was not much use for anything other than talking to Germany and Austria. After the world war, it became very apparent that German, as an international language was dead, and since everybody had to learn an additional language anyway, in order to converse with the other Scandinavian countries and so forth, English was the logical choice because English was very widely spoken around the world, Sweden had an enormous amount of contact with the UK already, and the United States was the dominant power in the second half of the century.
The reason I mentioned this is because at least in the United States there is the idea that if you’re going to learn another language, you want to learn another language that is useful. One that a lot of people people outside the United States speak. Which is why we tend to stress spanish and french and not Siwa.
Might this be a reason why Haitian education is done in French rather than creole? not to denigrate Haitian creole, but just to give their kids more options should they decide to leave, or simply want to do business with another country that speaks French?
I think that was the idea behind it, but what the video is saying is that this is largely less effective than if you focused on teaching in their native language first. So the equivalent of the Haitian education system in Sweden would be if they had all of their classes in English and never learned Swedish in school at all. Since Swedish is what they speak at home this would be a disadvantage to them because they would never learn the grammatical structures of the language they are most familiar with.
@@andramoraHaitian creole is much closer to French than Swedish is to English or even to German.
And French has always been part of the Haitian history since the beginning...
It's up to Haitians to decide which languages they want to use in schools...
@@jandron94 , it's up to Haitians to decide or course, but as someone from a formerly colonised nation too, I can say that to the colonised people it takes generations to unlearn this inferiority complex, and even those who adamantly defend their identity and claim to be proud of it, still display some subcontious inferiority when they express their opinions about some seemingly unrelated things. If you were taught to hate who you are and everything about it for 3 centuries, you will not unlearn this in 30 years. And so it's the right thing to have a public discussion about that which some people from the colonised nations can join or at least hear, and, thus, maybe more people thinking of their culture or language as "less of" or lacking something will realise that their national and cultural identity is worth fighting for and is an important peace of the puzzle in the kaleidoscope of the world cultures.
@liliyafaskhutdinova6532 I do get your point but I still do think that Haitian Creole and Standard French are two sides of the same coin for Haitians and that it is not wrong that standard French is their education language.
Always ironic to see people fully articulated in English (the most common and widespread exported language in the world) suggesting to other people that they should give priority to their local language and neglect standard French, Dutch, Spanish, etc. but not English...
Because how did that woman communicate with Haitians in Haiti, by using English ? How could she tell if a majority of Haitians don't understand standard French ? Haitians do tend to understand a minimum of standard French simply because a lot of vocabulary is common, pronunciation is not that much different. I would prefer a Haitian to tell us on this, or at least someone who knows well both Haitian Creole and French (which doesn't seem to be her case)
@@jandron94 no one says that they should neglect French, what is being said is that it's the right and natural thing to learn your own language in school. English is a colonisers language too, it's not wrong to learn and speak it, but it is wrong to teach it over the native language. It's exactly because of this people in Morocco think that Arabic is "not suitable for learning science", because there is French, so why? It's exactly because of that it was not even an option to choose Ukrainian on your laptop in Ukraine until 2010s, because there is Russian, so why? By not learning your own language in school you reduce it to domestic use and do not allow it to develop in science and literature, which becomes a vicious cycle, because by not developing and modernising, it's even more likely the the language will keep being used at home only. That said, I do agree that I would prefer to hear Haitians to talk about that, because the thing that I wonder about, do they even consider Haitian Creole as "native". Because if not, then I agree that French or Haitian Creole, it's all the same.
4:05 this is the kind of argument of why we shouldn’t teach in French or Spanish because it’s just bad Latin.
And we shouldn’t teach Portuguese because it’s just bad Spanish.
I understood you and feel you.
The truth is the adverse its healthy to yall learn spanish, french, portuguese, italian, romanian, Louisiana creole, Interlingua, to acess Latin, Greek, Hellenic Phrygian, lluvian, Anatolian and Italic.
The anglonazis did a weak false wall to separate Romanic from the him Romanic family and subfamily, the subfamily of Romanics Creoles.
But the truth clearly appears to minds independent of cultures and eras, centuries or decades.
English propositally, intensely optioned by Romanic civilizations and others allies civilizations linked to Romanic civilization on all planet.
Commonwealth deceived all mankind about the linguistic truth, forces, reasons and desires of English idiom.
Just check my words opening all frenchs normands libraries and castles and books of english idiom on Ireland 🇮🇪, Scotland, Wales, England 🇬🇧, UK, Island of Man 🏝 and Normands Libraries castles, and books on France 🇫🇷 and on Italy 🇮🇹 about the creation of english idiom, go there, claim and process them for all global opening of forces and sources of true English of today and find, touch the truth.
Simple as that.
Process Commonwealth on EU,NATO and UNO.
Yall were deceived in a criminal project of all anglonazis of all planet.
Simple as that.
Run for the truth now!
Loved this video! As a Singlish speaker it made me quite sad that most people, even those born and raised in Singapore, don’t really think about it as a legitimate way of speaking. It’s a very fun and visceral pidgin language that speaks to efficiency and passion.
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I'm intrigued by the titular question, and politically sympathetic to the answer given to it at the end of the video. Though I agree with some other commenters that it would have been nice to get a little more historical context informing the argument that English is definitionally a creole. Such historicizing would have satisfied the curiosity of sympathetic viewers (like me), and perhaps been compelling or convincing to viewers skeptical of the premise. The video was fun and informative, but it felt like it ended abruptly just as it started to build up steam around its core idea.
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This video deserves parts 2, 3 , 4 and 5.
I think they were continuing from other videos about English and its history
This deserves continuations mates to show about all reforumlation of all english that we speak.
This is my favorite video thus far! Thank you so much! I speak Cape Verdean Creole and I used to be able to switch between 5 different dialects. We used to make fun of the northern dialects that retain many Portuguese features and say "They don't speak Creole, it's just poorly spoken Portuguese ". We would laugh it off, but your video gave me a foundation for reflection and I am so grateful for that. Just to share with others, I would also like to make known that Cape Verdean Creole is very intelligible between other similar colonies like in São Tomé e Príncipe and Guinea Bissau, but also with the Papiamento mentioned in this video. Despite the larger contrasts between Portuguese and Dutch, it developed from the deep roots in Cabo Verde's position in the transatlantic slave trade that, after very different governing languages and centuries of separation and unique development under such differing overlords, it is still fairly intelligible today because roots are never cut, regardless of intents to do so. Thank you. Best wishes.
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3:39 I have no doubt it’s even worse in the Caribbean due to the history of slavery in the region, but it is interesting to note that’s something that happens with European languages too. Welsh, Frisian, Catalan, Basque, Scots, and many others have been seen as ‘inferior’ or even ‘not real languages’ by other Europeans as well. Homegrown hatred and classism and dismissal, that was then exported to the world as if it was good.
The Anglosphere has deemed the language of my ancestors to be "Primitive" Irish.
"We don't call french Québécois a créole language"
Well yes. Because creoles still need to have some radical changes compared to their mother languages. Québécois is just a variety of french.
Does this linguist thinks that Scots is a creole? Or that Italian is a creole from Latin?
I'm not against the discussion about whether English is a creole, but come on. Not every new language is a creole. Creoles don't just branch out of other languages, there are always grammatical elements that are derived from at least two different languages.
If borrowings from another language is enough to make a creole, then every single natural language is a creole.
Her answer was probably the worst possible. Linguists take creoles seriously.
That argument works for Quebec french, but what about Afrikaans? It should categorized a creole language as much as Haitian Creole
The video is too short and snappy for such a wonderful question, especially if you notice that its explanation has a lot of holes in it. (Also, the video dealt in the question mostly in the very last minute hence, very, very deficient.) What really determined modern English as a creole, especially if one considers how other creole languages formed? To recall (and the video mentioned this too), those other creole languages came from the sum of the attempts of a diverse population to speak a language of prestige that they do not speak natively which they regard as a sort of lingua franca. Was English ever in such a situation? Were English speakers of medieval and early modern periods in fact mostly its non-native speakers?
Don't they also notice the internal history of the languages mentioned here? Did anyone bring up that irregular verb forms (which English has a lot) do not last in a creolization event?
What about mixture? So Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean should be creoles given the sheer amount of Sinicization these language endured, so much that Sinitic words comprise more than half of these languages' wordstocks? What are the history of those that speak these languages? Were they displaced peoples who have to learn a dominant language (i.e., Chinese, in this context) to survive?
It must also be noted that there are creole languages that did not originate from Indo-European languages and was brought about by colonization. Arabic and Malay have creoles derived from them.
To answer the question, if you compare Middle English to Old English, the former is very streamlined and simplistic compared to the latter. Old Norse speaking vikings that came to Britain started intermarrying with the Old English speaking natives, so there's that...
Yes, English was in this exact situation, when William the Conquerer conquered England. He and his nobles only spoke Norman French. Middle English is a creole of Norman French and Old English. As for "irregular verb forms don't last through a creolization" there is a spectrum to this, and not every language is going to exactly fit a definition. What modern English does have with respect to Anglo-Saxon is a much simplified declension and conjugation system. Also, if by "irregular verbs" you're referring to "strong verbs", like "sing/sang/sung" or "write/wrote/written" - those are not irregular verbs, they follow standard patterns that other verbs also follow. The only truly irregular verbs in English are "to be", "to have" and "to do", the three most commonly used verbs in the language. "To be" is irregular in almost every language that has a version of it.
Neither of the commenters address the fact that English is still overwhelmingly West Germanic in vocabulary: The words have gone through West Germanic sound changes and not Norse ones. The grammar is also not imported wholesale from North Germanic. Creoles require two parents, one which provides the grammar and one which provides the vocabulary. English has not gone through such a stage.
@@vampyricon7026 you are changing the definition of a creole in order to exclude English.
@@vampyricon7026english is not, in fact, overwhelmingly west germanic in vocabulary. West germanic comprises the largest single share of english word origins, but French comprises 40-50% of English terms, and this is not only restricted to "prestige" and "technical" terms.
My grandmother was Welsh and her a lot of her generation in the early 20th century were actively discouraged from speaking or learning Welsh _by their own families_ , as it was seen as “backward” and that you *had* to speak English in order to get on in life. So not teaching in a native language doesn’t just happen with Creole, it’s any language that is tied to poor social or economic status.
@@greendoodily I know people who had one parent forbidden from speaking their native language around their children by the other parent, because it was considered too rough.
This is the most seen I've felt as a Jamaican, at least from foreigners. I don't really speak Patois, but everyone I know does, alongside proper English.
@@mcfahk indeed, "proper English" is an inherently prescriptivist way of putting things. Perhaps a less elitist way of talking about it is "standard English."
I'm English and have always considered Patois etc as languages, if I can't understand it, it's a different language in my book.
Jamaican Patwa and English are united, English is the father of Jamaican Patwa.
Father and son without rivalries, only love.
Jamaican Patwa belongs to the same subfamily of english: Romanic Creoles.
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People are studying the fake false lingusitic: pseudoanglonazi linguistic.
That's why nations are truly hurted and confused til today.
@@mcfahktotally. British or American "standard" English? Both of which have distinct dialects of their own. American English in the Midwest is different than that in the Northeast or the South. And soooooo many dialects in Britain.
There was a friend of mine in college whose grandparents moved from Haiti to New Orleans, then his parents moved from New Orleans to Montreal, so he had several varieties of French in his background. He always had a trick of impressing the ladies by speaking French.
Mi ta papia papiamentu! I lived in Bonaire for many years when I was little… It completely shaped the way I experience languages. I’ve also been a language teacher for 25 years… It has resulted in me being offended by the fact that local Italian languages are called dialects and, of course, even though I lost my papiamentu for lack of practice, whenever someone says this or that isn’t a ‘real’ language I get up in arms about it because Mi ta Papia Papiamentu!! 😂❤
I need more people like Dr.Erica in my life
5:55 - Good point. We don't call Quebecois or Afrikaans creole languages but they are. Never thought about that but it's true.
Thanks for introducing me to Dr. Keisha Weil. I've actually heard of Papiamento when I visited Curacao.
I'm surprised that they don't teach the European languages using the local creole. I think Norway did that because each Norwegian region has its own dialect but there are two main dialects in Norway. This is what the AAVE teachers in California tried doing in the 90s before the media tore their initiative apart.
It's interesting how majority Black vs white creoles are viewed through the lense of legitimacy and language acceptance.
They really aren't creole languages by any definition of the word.
I don't think that most Quebecois would consider their language (me included) as distinct from French. 😅 A regional variety, at best.
Since when Quebec French or Afrikaans are creole languages? They fit no definition. Have they changed the grammar structure of their original languages? In fact, is Quebec French really not French?
Papiamento and Aave, Michiff are Creoles as English.
Quebequian is a regional french.
Louisiana creole is creole as English.
Afrikaans is a regional Netherlandish.
Your text in many points was good.
In another's points missed more experience with others cultures.
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Nice week mate.
Sorry but that's not really true. Quebecois French and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible with Metropolitan French and Dutch, and they don't exhibit the grammatical simplifications that most creoles do, nor do speakers of these lects experience the same social stigma as a result of the grammatical differences. Grammatical simplification is actually the strongest evidence that English is a creole of Old English and Old Norse (and maybe Norman French). This idea that we should abolish the category of creole b/c it's stigmatized is backwards. It's the stigma that should be eradicated. Erasing the concept and/or language to talk about and reason about creole also erases the very important historical context behind most of the creoles that exist today.
"it's great to know several different languages but not at the expense of your own language" EXACTLY
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Petition to make this a series! It’s clear from the comments there’s a lot more to be said
I’m no linguist, but I did take linguistics classes for my Anthropology degree. I always loved the argument that Middle English (think of Chaucer) developed as a Creole of the native Old English and the invading Norman French, with Old Norse and Medieval Latin also in the mix.
Thank you for this video, I loved hearing a real expert’s take on this!
It make sense, I didn’t know abt creole until today, but it sound like it’s simply everyday speaking in contrast to dictionary speaking - the language taught in schools that’s technically correct but you don’t hear it too often irl
“Truly, ‘Creole languages’ are just ‘languages.’” Yes! ❤
2:55 Does this mean that nigerian pidgin is turning into a creole? With more and more second generation city people whose parents came from different communities to Abuja and Lagos and grow up only speaking nigerian pidgin..
Reminds me of the movie "Airplane" when Barbara Billingsley (the "Jive Lady") offered to interpret for the flight attendant.
Me, a French Canadian - Pinay Montrealer, snapping a WOY to the screen upon hearing it's a creole... and then hearing myself 😂. That was so specific, and likely so true.
I would have actually liked to see the arguments for English being a creole weighed in the video.
Asking for a part 2. Is like an explanation as to why English could be considered creole.
I'm surprised you didn't explain more about more of the the language contact situations in the history of English that lead some linguists to call English a creole. Norman conquest, anyone?
Yes and Great Heathen Army and Anglo-Saxon Invasion
Thanks!
I thought creole was a stand alone language, I have learned something instantly
I was confused when I was younger too, and that's why it's such a deceptive term.
Creole is positive and powerful term in theory and pratice.
Rather serendipitous that this video showed up for me today. This morning I was trying to remember the difference between a patois and a creole.
I had the thought, "What use is the word creole then?" like 10 seconds before you brought it up 😆 Well played.
This is the only channel where I look forward to the intro theme song
I'm not even subbed, this was in my feed after being posted 3 minutes ago 😂 great video
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I'm Deaf and use American Sign Language (ASL). I'm not going into the complicated history behind the Deaf Community in the United States and Deaf Education. Suffice it says that once hearies realize there's money to be made off Deaf bodies partnered with audism where it is believed that Spoken English is superior and better for Deaf children, they pushed manual communication systems such as Signed Exact English (SEE) on Deaf students and ought to suppress usage of ASL. ASL never died out and persisted throughout the community but you had generations of Deaf children who grew up in hearing families who often do not sign and those children were pressured into using SEE. So a child could be using SEE at school (and likely do not completely understand English structure) and using ASL in the community. That's how we ended up with Pidgin Signed English (PSE). Growing up in 80s, I was told ASL is "broken English" and we should strive to use SEE. Deaf schools did not use ASL as the language of instruction until roughly around 90s but the stigma still lingers, even today. I used PSE myself for a long time until college when I switched to ASL. There is significiant psychological damage done when children are encouraged or forced to not use their native language and use a language of their oppressor or colonizers - same with Deaf children. I internalized the idea that I am inferior, somehow lesser compared to hearies because I could not speak or hear English. Imagine my shock when in graduate school I learned I wrote far better compared to my hearing classmates - whenever our professors had us read each other's writings, I'm devastated how many years of my life were spent thinking I'm a lesser human being and that hearies were superior and better. To clarify here - SEE was never a true language, it was a manual communication system devised by hearies to try to impose English structure upon signs.
“hearies” 😂😂😂😂 yooooo i love it
This video did not actually explain what a creole language is and just gave it a shallow explanation. A creole language is a very distinct type of language because it basically froms with one dominant language (or languages, but usually one) bringing the vocabulary and another (or others) bringing the grammar (a simplified version of it), so if a language has it's grammar and most of it's (core) vocabulary coming from only one language, that's not a Creole. Colonialism has nothing to do with that.
0:55 this definition is wrong in a small but important way. Creole languages are when to language mix into a simplified pidgin (basically a very small basic language) before the pidgin expands into a new language. By her definition any language that has ever had any influence from another language can be defined as a creole. But with the correct definition Creoles are a subtype of language which share common features and patterns allowing us to be able to tell what language are creoles even 1000s of years later (an example being the Vedda language of Sri Lanka).
Maybe I just missed it, but I feel like I didn't get a definition of "Creole" that would help me understand what is or is not a Creole language.
0:48 she explains it here
one could say that a creole is a later stage of a pidgin, at first a pidgin is only a way of communication between diverse groups living together, but it isn't anybody's first language yet, and it serves only to really specific communication needs, it becomes a creole once the children and grandchildren of those communities absorb it as their first language and so extend its use to all aspects of life
I felt the same. It was covered but perhaps it needed to be explained a bit more. That’s no criticism Dr Erica is brilliant.
@@nurarihion One of the sources in the notes was an article called "Creoles and pidgins: Why the latter are not the ancestors of the former.", so that account of the origin of creoles is not universally accepted.
It’s an amalgamation of languages just like English, which originally evolved from Old English mixing w/ Norman French (pig/pork, cow/beef, deer/venison etc.)
I'm a Capeverdean Creole speaker. Part of the reason why the people in the Republic of Cabo Verde aren't educated in their own native language is the difficulty in standardizing it. There would have to be at least two versions of writing and pronunciation and the debate of which one should be the norm is an ongoing issue since the independence (50 years ago). Yes, it is a very small country with 500K inhabitants. And yes, the two main dialects are different enough to be written in very distinctive ways.
This video told us nothing about the evolution of English and WHY it is a creole language.
That would be a 2 hr vid to give a basic picture
That's because it isn't. Its grammar and basic vocabulary overwhelmingly point to a single origin, which is Old English, whereas typical creoles have vocabulary from one language and grammar from another.
@@vampyricon7026this is not true.
· Old English comprises the single largest share of modern English grammar, but it is not "overwhelming".
· Creoles do NOT reflect vocabulary of one language overtaking grammar from another. This tells me youve never listened to Creole Speakers.
· English actually has substantial grammar AND syntactic influence from French.
The video told this by analogy with others creoles idioms.
@@chillin5703 All this tells me is that you've never actually looked at a paper on creoles.
I love this; especially as a (adult) child of a British-Afrikaans marriage, who a week ago was sitting at a table in Congo after a long day of trying to communicate in broken French (alongside a friend trying to communicate in broken Québécois), discussing with Congolese, Zambian and Afrikaans friends how English is the way it is because it is just a chaotic pidgin, and getting onto how Afrikaans was fathered by Dutch but is not Dutch, but a creole where a lot of the "home" words still come from the first mothers of the Afrikaans people, who were mostly not remotely dutch.
Afrikaans and Quebecois are great examples of Creole languages! Afrikaans is a Dutch creole spoken in South Africa, so much so that it became “taken seriously” as its own language. This is because white people were the majority of its speakers at one time. Same with Quebecois, a French Creole (not unlike Haitian Creole) but again it’s called a language because white people in Canada are the majority of people who speak it. Someday I hope people recognize that English is a creole language, as Haitian Creole is Haitian (putting aside any indigenous languages that predated Haitian and French colonialism).
I live in Quebec. While I would say that some Québecois is definitely creole, I would say that most French spoken in Montréal is still French. Or perhaps it's a question of differences between listening and speaking. A French speaker from France will be understood here. The same French speaker may have a bit of trouble understanding some parts of spoken Québecois.
Edited to add: After reading the reply from @lozoft9, I have changed my mind. Québec French is simply French that has diverged from European French.
Afrikaans and Quebecois are not creoles. The vast majority of the people who came to speak these varieties of Dutch and French were already speaking Dutch and French. Their colonial dialects drifted away from the metropolitan dialects gradually as a result of isolation from other French speaking communities, not b/c the people speaking these dialects were native speakers of disparate other languages and needed a shared language to communicate in. Quebecois and Afrikaans don't exhibit the same features as actual creoles b/c they didn't form in the same way.
These features caused by formation are by the way why people say English is a creole. It's not b/c we now call destructive waves with a seismic origin "tsunamis", it's b/c modern English was formed by the fact that England was a linguistic melting pot and the people who inhabited it needed a shared language to communicate in, and as a result English appropriated whole grammatical structures from Old Norse, made some of the unlikeliest borrowings like the pronoun "they", and simplified the grammar of Old English.
@@lozoft9 Your point seems logical to me.
@@lozoft9Loud and wrong, most Afrikaans speakers aren't even white, the first attestation of the language was in the Arabic script too. If you're going to make an argument about something, try have some knowledge about the thing you arguing about
I love studying the history of English. One of my favorite works is the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is the earliest known manuscript to demonstrate the evolution of Old to Middle English. The language had already begun to change by early 1100, one generation away from Hastings, but by the 1150s, it had transformed.
High Creolization with High Hibridization together.
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I wouldn't pretend that there is a definitive definition of what a creole is, but it seems very obvious that English is not a creole. Creoles typically have two parents: One that provides the grammar and one that provides the vocabulary. (Of course it can also borrow substrate vocabulary, but this would be a small proportion of its basic vocabulary.) On the other hand, English's grammar and basic vocabulary are overwhelmingly Germanic. Contrast Tok Pisin where the vocabulary is English but the many grammatical features being Austronesian. Another more controversial example is Hangzhounese, where the vocabulary shows Mandarinic phonology, but the grammar is (Northern) Wu.
Another definition is that a creole is a pidgin that has been made a language, and English once again hasn't gone through that stage. The importation of Norman vocabulary was gradual instead of sudden, and took place over the entire Middle English period. (Norse and Celtic influences are even less significant.)
I think the biggest issue in the video is that it's never explained *why* one should think English is a creole. Many facts about creoles were presented (and it was a very good presentation!) but there wasn't an explanation as to why English fits the bill. It's only declared that English is a creole without anything to support it.
Creoles have several parents, in the case of Louisiana, Haiti and Jamaica they have a base European lexifier, some African derived grammar with several African languages and Native American languages providing vocabulary
The English are largely descended from British Celts and Anglo-Saxons. What happened to the language of the Anglo-Saxons when it was adopted by the British Celts? It looks like the Celts did a good job of learning the lexicon but did no better than expected with the grammar. Welsh and Gaelic have significant influences from Norse, French, etc., but they retain much of their complicated grammar as they are languages that have been largely passed on only within families.
@@kevingriffin1376 You'll have to present some sort, any sort of evidence for that, as English grammar was and still is extremely un-Celtic. Where are the verb-initial constructions? The lack of the verb "to have"? There's so much evidence against this claim that it's unbelievable anyone could say it with a straight face.
Typological linguistics has such difficulties with a creole/mixed-language systems (probably mainly due to the Eurocentricism thing) but because I think in the shadow of P.I.E. the focus on genetic linguistic relationships has really neglected for a general audiences - how we might think ‘new’ idioms come about, and the earliest nodes of our various trees as well
I study tok pisin! there's no reason why tok pisin can't be labeled as a creole if hawaiian pidgin is labeled as a creole. the process of creolization that makes hatian creole a creole happened to tok pisin as well. tok pisin has a very very complicated and consistent word order and a lot of lexicalized compounds.
Awesome video as usual! Keep up the amazing work!!!❤
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The vid is absolutely correct of Creole as a linguistic label having colonial overtones. It is a useful distinction though due to those being languages where the divergence comes from significant crosspolination [often as a direct result of colonialism]. That is in contrast to having divergence from a once more unified language yielding localized dialects and then formally its own thing.
But a lot of the labeling stems from nationalism and the comparative recognition a people and the language spoken by them are given.
After learning a little Haitian creole for a trip back in 2012, I realized that it's a much better more phonetic version of French
I would
Respectfully disagree that Montreal French is not a creole. It’s a dialect of French, that has had less change from 1800s French than “metropolitan” French has had. Afrikaans and English are 100% creole languages
English is 6 different international sausages in a trenchcoat. Isn't it really just a trade jargon?
If English is not a creole languange, how would a creole produced by Old English, Old Norse and Norman French be diffrent from English? The gammar is simplified compared to Dutch or German, the core day-to-day vocabulary comes mostly from Old Englsih and Old Norse while the vocabulary related to law and govenment is mostly latinate.
I see people comparing the language structure vs the form that it takes today, technically it is a form of "creole"
Just like “koin”! A language spoken by sailors crossing different ports in different countries/lands.
Yes, coin=koin=qoin same idea and word.
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It has a lot to do with social class, since creoles and pidgins developed mostly in poor communities, they were perceived as the speech of poor uneducated social classes, they were thought of as ignorant and broken versions of the languages spoken by those of higher class.
Yes it's the true prejudice and preconceptions of bastards cruels elites.
Creoles are powerful idioms that can connect many differents idioms in one and protect ancestral idioms of glotocides.
Creoles in social pratice are positive never negatives in common use.
TBH, I'm a bilingual Montreal, raised speaking English and Montreal French. A lot of our French French TV series are from Europe, and the difference in language is shocking. Just as much as British vs American English, or Californian valley girl vs Louisiana cajun.
I consider our language to be a creole, as it adopted a lot of terms from Native and English vocabularies that are not found in Europe. The same can be said for American English using non-Enhlish words like "entrepreneur" or "hors d'oeuvres" or even "tapas".
The problem lies in the fear of cultural appropriations. When a predominantly white culture starts adopting words and sayings associated to non-white cultures (especially formerly enslaved one), it doesn't end well. Just look at how white women in America are physically assaulted for wearing dreadlocks or silk bonnets.
There's always a target on our backs for being the Steve Buscemi "How do you do fellow kids?" meme as well.
European cultures are like the boring, well-established parents of the world that everyone still cries about being controlled by; be it the Americas, the Caribbean, India or elsewhere. Once again, no one wants their parents acting like Steve Buscemi meme.
English was 100% formed in the same way that many other creole languages were formed. A history of invasion and imposition of another language. So it should 100% take the badge of "creole." And there is nothing wrong with that.
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You are completely wrong.
@samuelterry6354 yeah okay. Hundreds of years of being ruled over by France is nothing. Not to mention the Germans invading the Island before them and the Romans before them, but I'm just completely wrong.
@@samuelterry6354 yeah, because England WASN'T invaded and ruled by France (to a large extent) for 300 years, and by the Germans before them and by the Romans before them. 2000 years of history England has had other languages imposed on it.
@@DaltonHBrown Just having influences from other languages doesn't make a language a creole.
Omg! Thank you for mentioning louisiana creole! Kouri-Vini !
@Storied Are there any languages that are *not* by this definition a Creole language?
Yes
@thekaxmax not helpful.
A creole is what happens when a child grows up speaking a pidgin as their first language. It was mentioned in the video - you cannot have a pidgin as a first language - the wiring in your brain makes it fit into the mold of a natural language, making it a creole. There are many modern languages which have developed either in isolation, or from merger events that are so long ago they predate institutional memory. Languages speciate just like living things - that's why there are language families. Think of a creole as a horizontal gene transfer.
@@werothegreat so, is English a Creole by your definition?
Yes; most languages are not "creoles", because while these processes are not unique to creoles, most languages do not experience them to the same degree as those we actually label "creoles".
4:27 I don't know if I agree with the end of that statement that she gave where if you are taught through your language other languages that you learn them faster, I know I'm only speaking from my perspective, but I have never ever retained any language I've learned if there was any element of English used to teach the target language, and I have studied a lot of them (and only can actually communicate in one, mostly because I live in that country know and have to use it, and spent one on one time with a family in that target language n while never hearing English), lol, and the only stuff that was retained in any of them was where no English was present and I learned it in context, and when I taught for 5 years in Korea, my students that did all their English studies in English with no Korean present learned English faster and were able to communicate in English more easily with no Korean present.
Yes, but were they taught math in English? Science? Korean history?
Teaching in the local language isn't about how to teach French or English, it's about education in general. And that's pretty important, even if they still have a low-class accent in the foreign language of a former colonial power.
Really disappointed with the quality and content of this episode. The core question apparent within the video’s title was answered hastily with no sufficient argument behind it. Please consider reassessing how you frame and execute videos such as this.
I love this channel thank you guys!!
I think Quebecoi aint a creole is cause its basically still french maybe theyres a few words "decalisse" is one but generally other than the weird vocab theyre still intelligable
PLEASE do an episode about irregular plurals, but SPECIFICALLY I want included a section about singular nouns that only exist in plural form like scissors, pants, or glasses. I NEED to know why I can’t have a scissor!!!
They aren't singular nouns if they only exist in plural form. ;)
They're called "pluralia tantum".
There is one singulare tantum in English - a count noun that doesn't have a plural. See if you can work out what it is.
There's an old Yiddish quote, that when translated goes: "A language is a dialect with an army and navy."
True mate and english is a Romanic creole.
Thank you for the video and information
quebecois is not a creole; it's more of an archaic french that continued to develop on its own. metis peoples out on the canadian prairies who have retained their blended language would be closer to a creole, as it mixes indigenous languages, english, french and even in some cases, scandinavian influences.
Love this content!
Thank you!
Is Singlish a Creole? Traditionally speaking or is it something else?
Papiamentu ta den e chat!!!😛🇦🇼🇨🇼🇧🇶 very good video!! Hopi bon Keisha!!! Sigui e bon trabou kubo ta hasi!!
Papiamento and English are true brothers, Creoles brothers forever for all eternity.
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I watch your interesting channel sometimes. Please, do not follow the current trend of having “quiet” (but never quiet enough) music in the background almost constantly, even while people speak. I am surprised that a channel focused on communicating and language would do this. Is it intentional? Is there some theoretical reason to use this strategy? I can say for me, it makes it very hard to focus on what is being said. Around the 1:00 mark in this one it became very bad.
It's really not hard to follow. And there are captions.
I mean... French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are technically latin accents. Italian ist not even a general language since the accents differ so drastically that they can't even understand eachother... the Italian that most Americans are familiar with is actually a very distinct Sicilian accent where you say "muzzarell" instead of "mozzarella" for example. Hence why some New Yorkers call it "muzz"... Germanic languages are also accents of a photo-germanic language. And the funniest thing is that Latin and Germanic words ALSO share a lot of roots.
What I'm saying is that this is just how languages come to be. nothing is a "real" language...
English is firmly a germanic language in morphology, but one that has a lot of French loanwords. The vocabulary is mixed sure, but there are no strong arguments that English is a creole. I think someone would argue the simplified grammar, with no genders like other Germanic languages, or that the verb just doesn’t really change with conjugation, but is that it? It is very much Germanic at its core.
Pretty much everything else is traced back to Proto-Germanic. Even the word formation is Germanic, think how it’s penname in English (noun-noun compound) but nom de plume in French (noun-connecting term-noun). It is just very awkward for English speakers to say “name of pen” to mean penname. The order of the nouns is reversed too. That’s the Germanic roots holding strong.
Vocabulary wise, English is a mix of everything for sure. Everything else is strongly Germanic
I was just pondering this a day or two ago!
After hearing the description of what a creole language is, it sounds to me like English is just about the ultimate creole. So many different languages and influences have changed it over the centuries
English was the one of the firsties idioms to born creole in ancient age and reborn creole on middle age.
English is the Creolest cos it's born from romanics, germanics celtics and hellenic, phrigians idioms.
And came from germanics creoles and romanics creoles.
I think the discussion is about the wording of creole, yes English is the ultimate creole absorbing other languages
I like how a friend of mine described it: "English is the language spoken by Norman soldiers trying to pick up Saxon barmaids". And that's its origin in a nutshell.
This is my understanding of English as a creole language; please correct me where I go wrong: Prior to the Norman invasion Anglo Saxon was the main language with influences from Celtic, Pict, and Norse. In comes Norman French in 1066 and there are three main influences on what becomes modern English. The first being Anglo-Saxon which was the common language especially in rural areas; if you deal with the government, the courts, or wish to engage in broader commerce (not just on your home town) then one uses French; if you receive an education, no universal education at that time, or attend church, Catholic at that time, then the language used is Latin. Mixed together over a couple of generations and voila, English comes into being. I say this because partly since I also know that multilingual societies were accepted in the earlier times as evidenced by cities sometimes having different ethnic quarters. Also there is much more to add but for now, I hope I have the basics.
You got it about 60% correct
Add in Parisian French as a separate powerful insert, then add Arabic.
You walk to truth thanks and have the basics notions yes.
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The title alone made me recalibrate something... Dang this is cool...
I think calling English a creole makes more sense than saying it's a Germanic language -- which just happens to get 60% of its vocabulary from French/Latin and a bunch of its grammar from Celtic and Scandinavian languages
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If you look at everyday English and its usage! English origin words are at a much much higher rate than the latin language derived words.
Latin based words are usually used for fancy or sciencey English
@@Patroclus27That's not all a creole is - borrowed words. It also is simplification: English lost the dual number, grammatical case on nouns and most directly inflected tenses, along with phonological and morpholigical simplifications.
English is Super Upper French Romanic Creole, thank 😊 🙏
G|d.
ROMANOPHONY WON FOREVERMORE 🏆 🙌 AND FOREVER!
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Many Haitians who come to the US will claim they speak French when the speak the local creole. French is the prestige language. The situation is related with Yiddish, Yiddish was a low prestige language and Zionists over time created a modern Hebrew rather than continuing with Yiddish or other similar kinds of languages such as Ladino. It is a shame because Yiddish has died out within the secular Jewish community, at least as a popular spoken language. And the religious Jews who do speak Yiddish won't even read secular Yiddish texts. The popular definition that a language is a dialect with an army is a good practical definition.
The english we speak daily is most definitely a creole language. It is constantly picking up words from other languages to aid in communicating with people who aren’t fluent in it. A good example would be the heavy Arabic influence English is going through right now. Perhaps it is a trend but words like Wallahi, bismillah, inshallah, are becoming more commonly used in English spaces outside of religious purposes. Similarly to how French, Greek, and Latin had their words taken in by English.
All of this with no mention of why English can be considered a creole?
@@jeffdege4786 a British Linguist made a better video on this topic.
@@chillin5703who?
@@chillin5703letthemtalktv?
Letthemtalktv talked there that he isn't an linguist or antropologist, only a retired english teacher.
He failed and wronged to not say english as Romanic and Romanic Creole, all Anglophony is part of Romanophony and loves romanics idioms? Why this? Cos English is intentionally,propositally is Romanic and Romanic Creole.
My thoughts exactly
6:14 it exists in the context 🥥
I love learning about creole and pidgin.
2:28 Haha this was my favourite part
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I think it will be more fair to see creole as a genetic identifier. Creoles are an exception to the usual rule that languages branch out rather than merge.
Haitian creole is not a descendant of French alone and is not a romance language. it is a merger of languages, French among them.
meanwhile English is definitely a descendant of Anglish. it is definitely a Germanic language, even if it was influenced by many other languages. English is not a descendant of French.
similarly Maltese is still definitely a Semitic language. so it's not a creole.
The mask came off of English for me after the word "sushi" was added to the dictionary as an "English" word.
To see how is english is creole and Super Romanic global creole, mixed and married with Japanese lang and culture, Asian in many aspects slangs, verbs and terms and says that sushi is native word, come on, a borrowed word gave from Japanese to him.
Simple as that.
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I thought creole luggage was just a language which stem from French. I'm so happy to have learnt this and fully agree with her creole language are just language