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The origin of creoles is defintely due to imperferct learning of the colonial language by slaves/conquered people. They did not go to school and learn the language. Nowadays, yes, there is often a continuum from the creole to the colonial language as now education exists for native creole speakers. Even then, the majority of the creole speakers in Haiti today, the country with the largest number of creole speakers, do not speak French and cannot switch back and forth effortlessly between French and Creole to suit their needs.
Papiamento is poorly learned Spanish/Portuguese by slaves with Dutch, French and English words added. The grammatical constructions are somewhat African influenced. Few African words in spite of the grammar. The same may be said of Haitian Creole (poorly learned French) etc...throughout the Caribbean and in other places where slavery or conquered people existed.
Neither Papiamento nor Haitian Creole are "poorly learned" European languages. They are creole languages with African tonal influence and sentence structure. The vocabulary is primarily European, but the underlying structure is African.
Neither Papiamento nor Haitian Creole are "poorly learned" European languages. They are creole languages with African tonal influence and sentence structure. The vocabulary is primarily European, but the underlying structure is African.
That they are. Still does not change the fact they were "poorly learned". They did not sit in a classroom trying to learn French and Spanish. Their intention was not to create a creole different from the colonialist's language. They had no choice. So a "poorly learned version" came into existence with the underlying African structures and tonal influences. There is no shame in being "poorly learned" It is what it is. History. Major languages like Spanish, Portuguese and French were the result of Latin being forced on a native population that did not speak Latin and eventually learned a modified version with "native" influences.
The origin of creoles is defintely due to imperferct learning of the colonial language by slaves/conquered people. They did not go to school and learn the language. Nowadays, yes, there is often a continuum from the creole to the colonial language as now education exists for native creole speakers. Even then, the majority of the creole speakers in Haiti today, the country with the largest number of creole speakers, do not speak French and cannot switch back and forth effortlessly between French and Creole to suit their needs.
Curacao/Aruba can be said to have the most highly evolved creole, to the point where it is now an independent, written and semi-official language. Almost every single person on those islands speaks Papiamento, Dutch, Spanish, and English with varying degrees of fluency, but sufficiently well to be understood by native speakers. More than a few even speak more, like German and French!
So what of every Caribbean society other than Haiti? Haiti isn't the only island with a creole. Virtually every Caribbean society has a creole dialect/language. Barbados, Curacao, Martinique and other places with relatively high literacy rates.
In some societies the creole has evolved to become a separate language (Curacao/Aruba). In others it was based on an early colonial language, but remains isolated from the official language in use (Srnan Tongo in Suriname). In some it exists as a dialect in relation to, but distinct from the official language (creole in the French Antilles). And yet in others (the English speaking Caribbean, inclusive of the USVI and St Maarten/Martin) there is a continuum from a basilectal dialect, through a mesolect, and through to the local form of standard. This done with code switching based on the context, and sometime done even mid sentence.
The point is that the creole dialects/languages are alive and kicking, even though most people in the Caribbean speak the local official language quite fluently.
If the reason why a creole developed is because they had an imperfect learning, then clearly over time they would have picked up the standard language
The slaves mimicked the people who they heard speaking the colonial languages. They adjusted these languages to their African grammatical systems, and out of that the various creoles developed. Unless they were house slaves they had no interest in perfectly replicating their master's language. Their goal would have been simply to understand and be understood by other slaves (coming from very broad linguistic systems in Africa) and by the slave masters and overseers.
If it was simply an inability to master the colonial language, by now the creoles will have disappeared, as most people in the Caribbean are fully able to speak some variety of the standard form of the colonial language(s). Yet in all instances a creole dialect remains in existence.
Curacao/Aruba can be said to have the most highly evolved creole, to the point where it is now an independent, written and semi-official language. Almost every single person on those islands speaks Papiamento, Dutch, Spanish, and English with varying degrees of fluency, but sufficiently well to be understood by native speakers. More than a few even speak more, like German and French!
So what of every Caribbean society other than Haiti? Haiti isn't the only island with a creole. Virtually every Caribbean society has a creole dialect/language. Barbados, Curacao, Martinique and other places with relatively high literacy rates.
In some societies the creole has evolved to become a separate language (Curacao/Aruba). In others it was based on an early colonial language, but remains isolated from the official language in use (Srnan Tongo in Suriname). In some it exists as a dialect in relation to, but distinct from the official language (creole in the French Antilles). And yet in others (the English speaking Caribbean, inclusive of the USVI and St Maarten/Martin) there is a continuum from a basilectal dialect, through a mesolect, and through to the local form of standard. This done with code switching based on the context, and sometime done even mid sentence.
The point is that the creole dialects/languages are alive and kicking, even though most people in the Caribbean speak the local official language quite fluently.
If the reason why a creole developed is because they had an imperfect learning, then clearly over time they would have picked up the standard language
The slaves mimicked the people who they heard speaking the colonial languages. They adjusted these languages to their African grammatical systems, and out of that the various creoles developed. Unless they were house slaves they had no interest in perfectly replicating their master's language. Their goal would have been simply to understand and be understood by other slaves (coming from very broad linguistic systems in Africa) and by the slave masters and overseers.
If it was simply an inability to master the colonial language, by now the creoles will have disappeared, as most people in the Caribbean are fully able to speak some variety of the standard form of the colonial language(s). Yet in all instances a creole dialect remains in existence.
We seem to be on different wavelengths here. I am talking about the origin of creole languages, not the current status, ability today to speak the standard language today or continuums. The origin I have already stated several times. And I am not judging creole languages here. There seems to be some oversensitivity here but history is what it is.
BTW, most people in the Caribbean are monolingual. If I take the millions of monolingual Spanish speakers in Cuba, Dom. Rep and Puerto Rico and add the 10 milliion or so monolingual Haitian Creole speakers, the added numbers of all other islands having bilinguals in the colonial language and the local creole are minimal compared to them.
W
BTW, most people in the Caribbean are monolingual. If I take the millions of monolingual Spanish speakers in Cuba, Dom. Rep and Puerto Rico and add the 10 milliion or so monolingual Haitian Creole speakers, the added numbers of all other islands having bilinguals in the colonial language and the local creole are minimal compared to them.
It is this simple. On any given plantation in Jamaica, as an example, one would find slaves from what would today be Sierra Leone, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Congo. Given that they came from a wide variety of linguistic systems they had to develop a common vocabulary to understand each other. They also had to be able to communicate with the plantation hierarchy.
They chose compromise of using the lexicon of the colonial language, building it on the syntax and grammatical systems of the dominant African groups (usually either Igbo or Akan). So the discomfort of having to use foreign words was reduced by re-arranging the language into a manner that made more sense for them. People allege that, while there are differences in lexicon between many of these West African languages, there are similarities in structure, much as French connects to Italian.
If the creoles developed because the slaves were not able to learn the colonial language, over time they would have learned, just as the babble of a toddler evolves into normal speech. To the extent that their speech diverted from the standard, the reason would only be to attempt a simpler version, with an incompetency in pronunciation of words.
This would therefore mean that the creole slaves (those born in the Caribbean) would speak the standard colonial language, much as the whites on the plantations did, leaving only recently arrived African slaves speaking this "broken" variety.
But this wasn't the case. What happened was that the slaves used the lexicon of the 17th century versions of the colonial languages, and adapted this, and the accent of the native speakers of these languages (the overseers) to their own African speech patterns, syntax, and grammatical structures. They did so because they wanted to, just as today's Caribbean person is perfectly able to code switch between the standard language and the particular vernacular used.
Indeed many of the Europeans who the slaves had direct contact with were NOT themselves standard speakers of the official colonial language (in the Anglophone Caribbean many came from Celtic backgrounds in rural England, Wales, and Ireland). A linguist can study the impact of this, and the extent to which this partially explains how Caribbean English (and its creoles) divert from the standard version of the language which is based on the speech repertoire of people from south east England.
What is indeed a fact is that the English language seems to be quite prolific in generating non standard varieties. Some believe that up to 70% of the English speak non standard varieties, many of which not being understood by Americans, as an example.
Linguists have detected between 5 to 7 levels of speech (on the continuum between formal English and the deepest creoles) in the Anglophone Caribbean. Most Caribbean people engage in some code switching. Even the most educated, who speak standard English most of the time, will use "light" creole influenced vernacular in informal settings.
No politician will be elected if unable to speak in continuum as he/she will need to indicate their ability to both show the competency of speaking to foreigners, and showing that the empathize with the masses.
It wasn't a "choice" of linguistic compromise. They had no choice. With the variety of unintelligible African languages, they had to make do with vocabulary obtained from their masters and adjust it to some African grammar in order to communicate with each other. As slaves, except for house slaves, they lived pretty isolated from standard European speech. Creoles still exist nowadays as a soure of nationalistic/island pride even when they can speak the standard colonial language. In Haiti, the country with the largest number of creole speakers in the world, this was more due to lack of education. But even the small educated French-speakers in Haiti prefer to speak in Creole to each other. These were not situations which existed in the past. There were no choices.
It wasn't a "choice" of linguistic compromise. They had no choice. With the variety of unintelligible African languages, they had to make do with vocabulary obtained from their masters and adjust it to some African grammar in order to communicate with each other. As slaves, except for house slaves, they lived pretty isolated from standard European speech. Creoles still exist nowadays as a soure of nationalistic/island pride even when they can speak the standard colonial language. In Haiti, the country with the largest number of creole speakers in the world, this was more due to lack of education. But even the small educated French-speakers in Haiti prefer to speak in Creole to each other. These were not situations which existed in the past. There were no choices.
I don't know that the creole continuum speech of the Anglophone Caribbean exists as a source of national pride. It exists in its complex continuum, because people feel that it is more appropriate outside of formal contexts. In government, educational, scientific, and business contexts it is considered inappropriate and a sign of ignorance.
Some one telling a joke will most likely not use standard English. Some one discussing a business project will almost NEVER use any aspect of the creole continuum.
In fact in the oldest British West Indian colonies (Jamaica, the Leewards, and Barbados) the first wave of African slaves worked side by side with Irish indentures. Indeed these indentures OUTNUMBERED them in the mid 17th century when African slavery began. So they had high exposure to Europeans in those early days, and this is when the creole dialects began to be formed (as well as the pidgin English dialects of parts of West Africa).
The creole which they developed was learned by subsequent waves of African slaves, but also by the whites themselves. Indeed 18th and 19th century English visitors to those islands were appalled by the fact that the whites themselves spoke "no different" from the "natives"! So the development of language went in BOTH directions. Butch Stewart, the white Jamaican tycoon who owns Sandals, speaks a highly creolized influenced tone, even in formal settings.
Indeed the notion of laboring groups learning the speech patterns of existing groups performing similar tasks is visible if one hears the speech patterns of the descendants of Indian indentures into Trinidad, and Guyana. They adapted the creole of the descendants of the Africans to do their Bhojpuri (dialect of Hindi) linguistic systems. It wasn't because they had an inability to learn the creole of the African, or the standard English of the overseers.
Haiti is a unique situation, so cannot be used to explain linguistic development in other parts of the Caribbean. One cannot learn a language if one doesn't hear it, and so a rural peasant with no exposure to standard French will not learn it, though urban Haitians, I am sure, have a much higher competency in French, even though their preference might be to speak Kreyol.
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