Before watching the video:
No, English is not a creole by any sane definition. It’s a West Germanic language with some North Germanic and Romance influence, that’s it. This is clear when you look at creole languages typically…
- having simpler and more regular phonology and using less contrast than the parent languages;
- having simple syllabic structures, like CV or ©V;
- breaking the comparative method once you try to apply it to them;
- having grammars that typically look nothing like the ones of the parent languages.
Those are all consequences of how creoles originate: to keep it short [sloppy definition] they’re the result of speakers of 2+ languages interacting, with no side understanding the others’ language, but still reaching some compromise.[/sloppy definition] The phonology and syllabic structure get simpler because it’s typically what all sides can distinguish; the comparative method breaks because all the creole vocab is borrowed; and the grammar is something anew because it’s generalised from those ad hoc rules, as needed by the speakers. And this happens relatively fast.
In the meantime, look at English:
- If anyone thinks that English phonology is “simple” or “regular”, look no further than the bloated vowel system. Typical for Germanic languages by the way.
- The syllabic structure goes up to CCCVCCC (see: “strengths”).
- You can backtrack a good chunk of the vocabulary all the way back into Proto-Indo-European, through the comparative method. Specially core vocab.
- The grammar is basically Germanic. And even the differences from [say] Dutch or German don’t really fit periods with more interaction with other languages (such as the tribal invasion of Britannia, Danelaw, or the Norman rule), they’re gradual and better explained as the result of internal development, for example the noun case system kicking the bucket due to phonetic erosion.
That’s because English, like other non-creole languages, is the result of a somewhat stable linguistic community slowly changing their language over time. Stuff like the Norman conquest had some influence in the lexicon, but that’s it, it was just a Romance ruling caste eating “porc” and “mutton” while the huge majority of the population, the Germanic-speaking lower caste, was raising “pigs” and “sheep”.
I believe that this myth that English is a creole language is mostly caused by clueless people who look at a language as nothing but a collection of words, just like they would confuse an animal with its fur.
As I’m watching the video:
We already know that English borrows from everybody,
English is not even special in its propensity towards loanwords. Just look at Romanian or Japanese.
This picture is misleading as it implies that Germanic vocabulary in English was [all/mostly] borrowed, when it was mostly inherited.
Also, when it comes to Latin+Greek vocab, it ended in almost all European languages, not just English.
[Keisha Weil, PhD] Creole languages are basically languages that were created by different communities of speakers who came together and needed to interact with each other.
English already doesn’t fit the definition - since it’s trivial to show that it’s the result of Proto-Germanic slowly changing over time, not some sort of “creation” by different communities of speakers coming together.
(That said props to Dr. Weil, that’s a great way to explain this stuff to laypeople.)
[about pidgins]
A quicker way to explain pidgins is that they’re the sort of coarse communication used by speakers of different languages, when they want to finish a task and get over it, not really interested on anything past that. They typically have incomplete grammar, a small vocab, no native speakers.
And as the video mentions, pidgins can evolve into creoles, once speakers feel the need for more than just “finish it and get over it”; for example, once children start learning that pidgin as their native language and they want to express themselves. In this process the “gaps” of the incomplete grammar and vocabulary get filled, the phonology gets systematised, and you get an actual language.
extended pidgins
That’s mostly an intermediate category for a communication system that is already more developed than you’d expect from a pidgin, but still not a full-fledged language like a creole. I don’t think that it’s an useful concept, but that’s perhaps just me.
Why are they not teaching students in their home languages? [exemplified with Kreyòl]
[Dr. Weil] That’s a really good question. And I preface this with saying I understand why it’s not taught, even though I personally believe it’s wrong [to not teach in creole languages]. Creole languages, for most part, they’ve always been considered like a bad version of a European language. French, English, Dutch, those are real languages, where Haitian Kreyòl and Papiamentu and Jamaican Patois, because they’re so young, they’re not real languages yet.
Emphasis mine. It has barely anything to do with being a “new” or an “old” language; if it was an old language people would discriminate it another way, but the discrimination would be still there (like “it’s primitive” or “it’s just a dialect”, or worse), untouched.
It’s all about power. Languages piggyback on the power of their speakers, and languages associated with disempowered linguistic communities are often degraded into “this is not an actual language, it’s a bad version of [insert another language]”.
Here is where Dr. Weil could have inserted her talk about people of colour, and it would be extremely meaningful and accurate - because racial issues are one of the things disempowering the Kreyòl, Papiamentu etc. speakers, and creating this idiotic stigma behind creole languages.
Is English a creole language?
[Dr. Weil] Ah! I can guarantee you there’ll be other linguists who will tell you “no, English is not a creole language”. But when you ask them to break down why it’s not a creole language, is it because black and brown people are speaking that language, that makes it a creole language?
No, it isn’t. As I’ve explained at the start of this comment (and I’m glad to have done so before watching the video), a creole language has a different origin than a non-creole one.
Dr. Weil dropped the ball here.
We don’t call Montréal French a creole language.
Can someone informed on QC French argue for/against this point?
We don’t call Afrikaans a creole language.
Okay, that’s bullshit.
Afrikaans is outright called a creole language by at least some authors, such as Hein Willemse. Other authors - such as Hans den Besten - claim that it has a mixed creole origin. But academically speaking nobody relevant is trying to deny Afrikaans’ roots on Dutch-based creoles dammit.
Why are we not calling English creole languages? Because it [English] didn’t just pop out of some place, right? It didn’t just magically appear.
Why is she outright ignoring the definition of a creole language that herself provided, to lean into an “ackshyualy all languages are creoles” discourse??? Why??? Just to build a strawman and beat it to death???
In fact, do we even need the word “creole” as a descriptor to separate the languages out?
Yes if you want to talk about the origins of languages like Sranan, Kristang, and so many others. And talking about origins is important:
- it explains better why each of those languages has its own unique features;
- it explains the similarities between them;
- it highlights the history of colonialism, that made a lot of those languages to be;
- it gives their speakers a sense of belonging, because “here’s how my language was born” is part of their rightful linguistic identity;
- it gives linguists another window to look into Language - as the human faculty - through how those languages are formed.
We [people in general] should not be assigning a judgment of value over those varieties, as if they were inferior to non-creole languages. However that judgment would be still there even without the term, since their speakers are typically poor and non-white.
Or alternatively we can ditch the word so the prejudice against those creole languages surfaces under another disguise, while we wash our hands and pretend that we defeated that prejudice.
Some linguists, including Dr. Weil, are saying no.
Perhaps because she’s ignoring her own provided definition of a creole language to pretend that all languages originate the exact same way?
I buy it – Germanic + French with a sprinkling of everything else.
Man I love me some Otherwords. The new PBS is just as good as the old.
