The exact moment of when a pidgin language becomes a creole isn’t fully agreed on by linguists, but many claim it is when the pidgin language is taught to the next generation. Maybe you’ve heard of Haitian Creole, Belizean Kriol or Papiamentu? All are examples of a pidgin that has evolved to become used in more situations that just the necessities to trade etc. There are many cases in history when a pidgin becomes a language in it’s own right, in which case it becomes a creole language. See how much you can understand with your knowledge of your version of English! Creole The video below shows some examples of Nigerian Pidgin English filmed on the streets of Lagos. Zonke nyoni pezulu yena khala kakhulu means “All the birds above, they cry loudly/a lot”. However, Fanagalo, a Zulu based pidgin from South Africa may be trickier for English speakers to understand. Top headlines include “ Ghana: See as dis girls conquer autism” and Why BBC Pidgin Facebook Live with Dino Melaye no work. What’s incredible about pidgins is how they are sometimes relatively easy to understand for speakers of one language and sometimes…not so much.įor example, Nigerian Pidgin, which now has a BBC News page in the language could be considered on the easy end of that spectrum. When one language meets another and people need to trade for economic purposes, a pidgin, not a bird but rather a mixture of the two languages that can be understood by both parties, forms. This has always been of interest to me personally because where I grew up, in Northamptonshire, aka the middle of England, aka The Midlands that are always ignored in The North vs The South debate, I found myself using a mixture of both, often depending on the speed I speak or whether or not that word is at the start, middle or end of a sentence.Īs you can see from this clip, it’s quite a heated debate in the UK…Īnother variation on language is the creation, often naturally, of pidgin languages. So the word ‘bath’ would sound something more like ‘barth’. However, down south, people are often expected to add almost an ‘r’ sound to the end of that ‘a’, that they’re already making a longer vowel of. Typically, you would expect accents from the North of England to say the word ‘bath’ with a short ‘a’ sound like the ‘a’ in ‘cat’. Oxford Living Dictionaries shares a great example of the ‘Bath A’ in British English accents. The distinction between accent and dialect can become kind of hazy, but, to put it simply, whereas dialect refers to pronunciation and vocabulary and grammar structures used that may differ from the “expected” version of a language, accent tends to refer only to the sounds or pronunciation that combine to create a particular accent. Also, “Cockney accent” brings up more Google results than “Cockney dialect”. I’ve definitely used the term “Cockney accent” in the past, just as one example. Accentīut surely, these words can be used to describe accent too, right? The more you know about a language, the more dialects you can identify when you hear people speak. Let’s take England alone now as our example.Ĭockney, Received Pronunciation, Geordie, Brummie…to name just a few. However, what makes this such a complex and interesting thing is when we then include things such as Scottish English, Welsh English, Northern Irish English, and English English (referring to English spoken in England).īut of course, on an even deeper level, we could say that there’s even more. With that in mind, if you’re reading this then you know English, but do you understand everything being said in this interview? I’m not a linguist, I’m not an authority in this, and I’d love to hear your interpretations of these terms too.Ī dialect is a way of speaking that is distinct enough to be considered a variation of a language yet familiar enough to be understood as that language.įor example, American, Australian, and British English could all be considered dialects of the same language: English. Instantly you can see this is going to be a fun post with lots of room for discussion in the comments, which by the way is totally cool. After all, you’re probably familiar with the phrase “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”.
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