Creole Languages Ian Hancock

Maroon Societies and Creole Languages Ian Hancock The isolation of Maroon settlements and creole-speaking countries can still treat their stu their efforts to keep outsiders at a distance have dents' natural speech as deficient or defective, ensured that details of Maroon history remain because this is what they themselves have been incompletely documented. There were Maroons taught. in jamaica during the period of Spanish rule, for Nor are creoles "mixed" languages like, say, instance, before the English took over that the Spanish/ Portuguese dialect of the Brazilian island; but we don't know what language they Argentinian border; they are new, restructured spoke, or under what conditions it shifted to linguistic systems with grammars of their own. become the English-related creole spoken today. The way these languages come into being And so far, we can only speculate as to how some depends entirely on the social circumstances of speakers among the Jamaican Maroons acquired their speakers' history. In most language-learn and have preserved another creole language, ing situations, a child is born into an already one which bears striking similarities to the cre existing speech community in which parents and oles spoken in Suriname, in South America. We other adults speak an already-existing language are interested both in the historical origins and and provide models for that child to learn from. in the social conditions that perpetuated such a If such a stable speech community does not exist, diversity of speech. Despite these gaps in our but instead the community consists of speakers knowledge, what we can learn about Maroon of many languages, then no target language societies, and especially about Maroon linguistic exists for the child to imitate, and no community history, can nevertheless shed light on the devel of model speakers of a single language is avail opment of creole languages and on the process able to help the child learn. Instead, according es of creolization in general. to one theory, the infant will draw upon certain innate structures - perhaps part of a genetically Creolization of Language determined "language ability" - and upon the Linguists have documented many creole lan eclectic pool of lexical and other linguistic mate guages throughout the world. Creoles are not rial present in the multilingual community. dialects of the various languages from which they Such multilingual communities may result took most of their vocabularies - English, Span from persons of differing linguistic backgrounds ish, Portuguese, etc.- and the long-standing coming together and having to communicate, supposition that they are has caused serious such as in army or police barracks in some parts problems in the classroom. This unfortunate sit of the world; but these will not always become uation is the result of several factors, in particu communities into which children are born. Lan lar the perpetuation of negative attitudes guages used among adults in such circumstances instilled into creole-speaking populations during may never be spoken as a child's first language. the years of colonialism, and the lack (until Languages emerging in this way are usually recently) of formal training for educators in cre called pidgins in the analytic literature; they may ole language history and structure. Teachers in cease to exist once their usefulness ends. Ian Hancock is Professor of Linguistics and English at the University of Texas at Austin. His major work has been with the Eng lish-related creoles and Romani. His pioneering work in Brackettville, Texas, brought to light the fact that the Seminole Maroons of this community have maintained a distinct language, Afro-Seminole Creole, closely related to Gullah. H e earned his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. 70 MAROON CULTURES Comparison of a Sentence in Several Maroon Languages and other Creoles This chart shows: 1) similarities of vocabulary; 2) similarities in syntax (word order); 3) the "deeper" (less European) quality of Maroon versus non-Maroon Creole languages English Sentence: "SHE GROUND THE CORN WITH A PESTLE" (In the following creole languages, this sentence is expressed with a different construction than in English; in the creoles, it is rendered as "she took pestle [mortar-stick] mash corn') [past she marker] take mortar-stick mash corn Saramaccan * a bi tei tati masika kalu Ndjuka* a be teke mata tiki masi kalu Aluku (Boni)* a be teki mata tiki mas1 kalu Jamaican Maroon Creole* 0 min teka maata tiki maas kaan Jamaican lm ben tek maata tik mash kaan Gullah bin tek pesl fo grain kaan Krio (Sierra Leone) bin tek mata tik mash kon Palenquero* t eli a kohe pil6 pa mole mai *Languages marked by asterisk are Maroon Languages tVocabulary derived from Spanish rather than English (adapted from Hancock, 1987) Upper Guinea Coast English: A Source of ment provided the linguistic environment suit Western Hemisphere Creoles able for the emergence of a pidgin. The vocabu During the early years of European contact lary of the Coast English, at least as it was utilized on the Upper Guinea Coast of West Mrica, local by the grumettos, was available to the slaves, and highly distinctive (though not creolized) though conditions for learning the whole lan varieties of Portuguese, English, French and guage were not. Dutch seem to have developed. They were spo When Mricans arrived in American slave ken between European settlers and their Mrican markets, they were sold as individuals, not in wives and fellow residents. There is evidence that family or colingual (same-language-speaking) Upper Guinea Coast English came to be used as lots. The new communities they subsequently a lingua franca among the Mrican porters, or joined throughout the British territories- in grumettos, who worked for Europeans and Mro North, South or Central America or on the dif Europeans. We have records of slaves who say ferent Caribbean islands- were made up of that they learned "English" in the slaving depots individuals like themselves who had no choice on the West Mrican coast while awaiting trans but to continue to use what they had learned if portation, and on the ships coming west. But the they wanted to be able to communicate. When "English" they learned was in fact an already their children were born into these polyglot blended Guinea Coast dialect. It was spoken as a communities, this still-emerging lingua franca second language and learned by the grumettos based on Upper Guinea Coast English provided as adults from their employers, many of whom their language model. During the early period, spoke it as a first language. The eclectic linguistic however, the infant mortality rate was very high, mix of Mricans in the barracoons awaiting ship- and only the steady influx of new adult slaves MAROON CULTURES 71 ensured that the communities did not die out. cate with ancestral spirits, but which was proba Nevertheless, within the first two or three bly their everyday speech until the early part of decades in each community, the linguistic situa this century. Jamaican Maroon Creole is tion had more or less stabilized, and with the ces extremely conservative in its English component, sation of the slave trade, the original Mrican lan which comes so close to that of the creoles of guages began to disappear. Suriname as to suggest strongly an actual histori Not entirely, however. In Maroon communi cal connection with them. The same Maroon ties especially, remnants of Mrican languages populations have also retained some Mrican dating from the earlier period continue to be speech as well, particularly Ashanti, spoken in used in ritual contexts. the region of modern-day Ghana. Examples of Jamaican Maroon forms that have parallels in Maroon Languages - "Deep" Creoles Suriname but not in general Jamaican Creole Because of their social and geographical iso include the "be" verb na (which is a ordain lation, most Maroon languages are distinctly con Jamaican Creole), the particle sa used with verbs servative when compared with other creoles. to indicate future tense (and which is wi or gwain While they are creoles, they are less like the lan in Jamaican Creole) and anti meaning "what" guages from which they took most of their vocab (Jamaican Creole has wa or wat or wara). ularies - English, French, Dutch, etc. - than The speech of the Mro-Seminoles is similarly non-Maroon creoles. Some speakers refer to the conservative when compared with its immediate relative difference or distance between creole historical relative, the Gullah or Sea Islands Cre and its metropolitan counterpart as being more ole spoken along the Carolina and Georgia or less "deep," and Maroon creole languages coast. Negation in Sea Island creole with no is tend to be deeper than those spoken by non now extremely rare, having been replaced with Maroon populations. This is true not only ain' or don', but it is general in Seminole, e.g., mi because of the larger Mrican component of their no yeddi um, "I didn't hear her." Similarly, the lexicon, but also because of their phonology and common creole grammatical marker for pluraliz grammar. ing nouns, i.e., by placing the word dem after In creole-speaking communities where the them, has practically disappeared from Sea lexically-related metropolitan language is also Islands Creole, but again, is normal for Semi spoken -which is the case in most places - nole: enti hunnuh bin bruck di stick dem? "Didn't each is exposed to the other, and there is con you break the sticks?" stant influence upon the creole from the colo Although the formalized study of creolized nial language. More so than the reverse, since language is well over a century old, it is only in most speakers aim for competence in the official the present day that linguists have come to real language, and may intentionally modify their ize its importance in our attempts to understand creole in that direction.

Load more