Creole Languages

Creole Languages 

languages that developed from the elements of incompletely assimilated European languages as a result of the internation linguistic communication of the European colonists with Africans, Indians, and the inhabitants of the countries of the Orient.

The major Creoles are (1) Portuguese-based—the creolized languages of Cape Verde, São Tome, and Principe (on the Atlantic coast of Africa) and Papiamentu (on Curaçao and Aruba, islands off the coast of Venezuela belonging to the Netherlands); (2) French-based—the languages of Haiti, the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and part of the Dominican Republic; one of the two creole languages of Trinidad; and the creole languages of French Guiana and the islands of Mauritius and Réunion (Indian Ocean); (3) English-based—Sranan Tonga, Saramakkan, and Djuka in Surinam; the creole languages of Guyana; the disappearing Creoles of the Hawaiian Islands; the Creoles of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas; the second creole language of Trinidad; and the Krio language in Freetown (Sierra Leone); Neo-Melanesian Creole (northeastern New Guinea) and the Creoles of the Solomon Islands are developing on the basis of Beach-la-mar (Melanesian Pidgin English); the creole language known as Gullah is still spoken by Negroes on the islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia; (4) Dutch-based— on the Virgin Islands (USA).

Although the creole languages underwent a certain substratum influence of African and other languages, almost all the morphemes of these languages (including all grammatical markers) stem from European languages. Therefore, the notion held in the past that creole (or creolized) languages are “hybrid,” or “mixed” languages, has been discarded by most scholars.

REFERENCES

DolgopoPskii, A. B. “Protiv oshibochnoi kontseptsii ’gibridnykh’ iazykov. (O kreol’skikh narechiiakh).” Uch. zap. 1 Mosk. gos. ped. instituta inostr. iazykov, 1955, vol. 7.
Proceedings of the Conference on Creole Language Studies. London-New York, 1961.
Stewart, W. “Creole Languages in the Caribbean.” In the collection Study of the Role of Second Languages in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Washington, 1962.
Whinnom, K. “The Origin of the European-based Creoles and Pidgins.” Orbis, 1965, vol. 14, no. 2.
De Camp, D. “The Field of Creole Language Studies.” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 1968, vol. 1, nos. 1–2, pp. 30–51.

A. B. DOLGOPOL’SKII