Characteristics of Creole [PDF]

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CHARACTERISTICS OF CREOLE Creole is a mother tongue formed from the contact of a European language (esp. English, French, Spanish or Portuguese) with local languages (especially African languages spoken by slaves in the Caribbean). The term Creole comes from the Portuguese word, ‘Creoulo’ Creole has influences from several languages in its sounds, structure and vocabulary, but it is usually classified according to what is perceived as the dominant language ancestor. A Creole is a fully functional language which includes elements of its parent language. All Creole languages start as Pidgins. This is a simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages. It is devised when people who speak different languages find themselves in a situation where they have to communicate, for example, for business, trade or in order to survive. A Pidgin incorporates words from both source languages and has a simplified grammatical structure, just enough to allow some communication. Just like any other language, Creole is governed by rules.



Some characteristics of Caribbean Creole Caribbean Creole languages, regardless of their lexical (vocabulary) base, exhibit consistent features that are easily recognisable. These are characteristics that make them clearly different from standard English, standard French and so on.



GRAMMAR Useful terms  Copula A copula links the subject to the predicate. It is a verb, often the verb, ‘to be’. It can also be called a linking verb.



 Morpheme -



A word or part of a word that serves a grammatical function. E.g. ‘s’ or ‘es’ to show pluralisation. Marked vs unmarked to the presence or absence of a morpheme.



1. Verbs do not change to indicate tense. Eg. She talk so much yesterday, she forget the pot on the fire.



2. Use of preverbal markers (markers that precede the verb) to indicate tense. Behn/bin/when/did (past marker – did/ -ed (CSE) Go (future marker) - will/shall (CSE a (marker of continuous habitual - -ing does (marker of habitual) – simple present tense (e.g. cook, walk)



NB. Verbs are unmarked for agreement with a singular form. Example: Kam eat wid a fork. With a plural noun, the structure would be similar to CSE. For example, Kam and Naila eat with a fork. 3. Pluralisation is not indicated by the use of ‘s’ or ‘es’. When count nouns are used inclusively or collectively (that is, in reference to all things that fall in that category) they are unmarked for pluralization. Eg. Ah get five mango. Bwai wear khaki – Boys wear khaki Dem is sometimes used to indicate pluralisation. E.g. Girls – dem gyal or de gyal dem



4. Possession is not shown with the use of ‘s’ E.g. Is Mary pen ah borrow.



5. Creole uses double negatives. E.g. Ah doh want to hear nothing. Mi don’t want none Ricky naa talk to nobody.



6. Omission of copula ‘to be’. EC has zero copula constructions and uses subject-adjective constructions instead. Creole omits the verb ‘to be’ (is, are, am) For example: ‘I tired’ Yu behaving bad. Ah/mi hungry.



7. Creole does not reverse word order to indicate the interrogative form of a sentence. Examples: You have eaten.



You have eaten?



You eat already.



You eat already?



8. EC uses ‘ain’ or aint’, nehn or nay and noh as negators. Examples: Dey aint gat none. I aint going to di party tonight. Mi nehn go. Sim nehn se so. Me noh know.



VOCABULARY This looks at words in the language and the meanings (semantics) associated with these words. (i)



Although the lexical items are English-based, many of the words have different meanings in Creole and are used in non-English ways.



Eg. Ignorant – easily angered (lacking in knowledge) Dark – not very exposed, not sensible (little or no light, colour or shade) Belly – pregnant (stomach) Craven – greedy (cowardly)



(ii)



Some lexical items and phrases are peculiar – some are adopted from other nonEnglish languages.



Examples: pikini/pikni – small child Unu/allyuh – plural you (iii)



EC and CSE share words but they are different parts of speech.



For example: tief (n, v) - thief (n) Deaf (v, adj) - deaf (adj) Dung (prep) – dung (n, v)



(iv)



Some CSE words are compounded to create nouns in EC that are not present in CSE. (Calques – compound words borrowed from another language as literal translations)



For example: foot bottom – sole Eye water – tears Age paper – birth certificate Nose – hole – nostril Door mouth – entrance Cut eye – looking at someone in a menacing way.



(v)



Some EC words are created by reduplicating all or part of the CSE word. E.g. chati chati – (chatty) – talk excessively or out of turn Friedi friedi – (afraid) – fearful/timid Back back (backwards) – reverse Nice nice –(nice) The cake sweet sweet



(vi)



EC uses onomatopoeic words as adverbs



E.g. splat – Shi drop splat a grung Braps – the way Peter frighten, him stop braps same time. Buff – Shi run an go buff ina di wall.



SOUND/ PHONOLOGY a. Creole tends to avoid consonant clusters at the end of words, so in many cases the final sound is omitted. This is called segment reduction. For example: words ending with nd – n (stand, band), st and sed – s (first, blessed), ft and ghed – f (lift, coughed), ped – p (gulped, reaped)



b. Creole does not use the ‘th’ sound. This is substituted by ‘t’, ‘d’ ‘f’, depending on its position in the word. Examples: brother – brodder There – dere Thief – tief Thing – ting/fing



c. Some words have their pronunciations altered because sounds are re-arranged or even changed. This is called metathesis. For example: ask – aks, certificate – cerfiticate, film – flim, introduce – interduce, violence – violence. d. Words where the ‘t’ sound is followed by ‘l’ – the pronunciation changes from ‘tl’ to ‘kl’ and where there is ‘dl’ it changes to ‘gl’. Examples: Bottle – bokkle, kettle – kekl, candle – cangl, needle – neegl. e. Creole pronouns have shorter vowel sounds than Standard English. For example: she – shi, we – wi, me – mi, you – yu.