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I'm charmed by the lilting english spoken in Jamaica, which the locals refer to as "Pagwha" {sp}. Does anyone know anything about the origins of this dialect? I've heard the term "Jamaican Creole"...is pagwha a form of creole? And what specifically defines a language as being "creole"? There's a creole in Louisiana which sounds nothing like that of Jamaica.
The British influence on pagwha is obvious, but it almost sounds like a bit of french as well.
If anyone can make sense of my jumble of questions, i'd love to be edumacated =)
EDIT: i thought of patois and suggested it to a local, but he said "nope, it's different... it's 'P-A-G-W-H-A'" (but he may have said "P-A-D-W-H-A"; i can't remember, which is why i wrote [sp]).
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What I've heard creole defined as (NicholasW or Akatsukami would be better) is the step after pidgin.
Pidgins develop when two cultures meet for the first time and cobb together a language with words jumbled together from each language and a very rudimentary grammar. Creoles are the languages put together by the people who grew up with the pidgin. Apparently they have a grammar all their own that is comparable to the grammar of other creoles. This is something that has interested me but that I have not had the chance to dig into very deeply.
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Apparently they [creoles] have a grammar all their own that is comparable to the grammar of other creoles. This is something that has interested me but that I have not had the chance to dig into very deeply.
Me too, faldage.
As I understand it, these two points have been cited as evidence that the basic structure of "language" is an inherited, genetic trait in human beings.
1) The various creole languages, though arising from entirely separately and from differing mixes of populations, have a rather large number of structures in common.
2) Also, where those structures may not match the "civilized" language of a particular country, the do match the errors that a young child will make when learning the language. For example, in English the double-negative cannot be used as an emphatic negative, but young children often use it that way -- and creole languages use it that way.
Note: the above is my recall of a highly technical book published about about 20 years ago, which I read at the time -- and which was way beyond me. I recall its title as Roots of Language but I cannot find that title. Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.
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The local creoles in the West Indies often have names that are variations on 'creole' and 'patois': I think I've seen Kweyol and Patwa among others. But Patwa is spoken in the Lesser Antilles, where some of the islands (e.g. Dominica) were French at some point. As Jamaica was never French I'd be a little surprised at the name 'patois' being used there, but perhaps it is.
Jamaican Creole forms a continuum with Jamaican English. As you move through class, or situation, or into the cities you find more features of standard English. (This is called decreolization.)
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But isn't the word "creole" itself Spanish for "native"? The phenomenon must long antedate the name.
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I believe creole came from Portuguese through Spanish to English, but it's been so long since I read this that I don't recall where I read it.
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The Spanish form is criollo:
1)Caucasians born in the colonies, also, Spaniards born in the Americas
2)Negros born in the Americas
Synonym-mestizo
Also, as an adjective used to differentiate between New World animals, plants and foods and those of Spain. For example caballo criollo as opposed to a horse that was born and bred in Spain.
Lastly, lenguas criollas dialects developed by incorporating native language with European language[s] in which the words of the European language[s] are incorporated into the gramatical framework of the native language. Lenguas criollos seem to encompass all dialects on the order of pidgin english of the Far East, the broken english of West Africa, lengua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Malay/Spanish of the Phillipines, etc. (Does anyone know what the "beech de mer" of the Pacific Meridianal English might be? It's kind of tough translating this from Spanish when I don't know what it is in English.)
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The word 'creole' is related to 'cradle', so it was a language learnt from the cradle, as opposed to pidgins, which are contact languages worked out by adults.
Capital-c Creole refers to specific cultures around the world, but lowercase-c creole is a linguist's term for any such native language derived from a pidgin. (The lack of capitalization in Spanish language names makes this ambiguous there.)
Bislama is a pidgin in Vanuatu; formerly known by various European spellings such as Beche-la-mer, from the name of a creature (sea cucumber) that was traded there.
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Pooh-Bah
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The word 'creole' is related to 'cradle', so it was a language learnt from the cradle, as opposed to pidgins, which are contact languages worked out by adults.
True, of course - however the English derivative spoken in Nigeria - particularly in Lagos - is still known as pidgin. Whilst it isn't ever a first language (so far as I'm aware, that is) it is a common tongue spoken from early childhood by most city dwellers, and many rural Nigerians. It was, we are told, originally developed so that master could talk to servant to give orders, but servant could not readily understand when master spoke to other English people about matters of business, etc. However, the Nigerians took to the language and developed it into a full blown means of communication, and now publish two or three newspapers in Pidgin.
Of course, there is no such race as "Nigerian," really - the country is an artificially conceived amalgam of three major races, each of which has numerous sub-groupings and a large number of languages and dialects. So Pidgin has served a purpose in giving a common tongue to an otherwise divided country; just as English does in India and Pakistan, for instance.
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