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Five languages that came from English

159 points by hvo 10y ago

hellofunk 10y ago
Take this article with a grain of salt. Their description of Singlish is enough to disqualify the accuracy of the rest of the piece. Singlish is not a unique or separate langauage, or even an actual language. Comparing Singlish to English is no different than comparing Cockney to English. I don't think the different dialects of English within the U.K. are all considered separate languages, and therefore Singlish should not be either. An American English speaker will likely have much better chance of understanding a Singaporean than understanding some of the U.K. dialects.
- marcv81 10y ago
  Americans will understand Singaporeans because English is the main language in both countries. Singlish is a separate language, and the article describes it somehow accurately. It is not mutually intelligible with English (Brits or Americans can't understand it), but most native Singlish speakers are Singaporeans who also speak English.
- adrianN 10y ago
  "A language is a dialect with an army".
- snaily 10y ago
  Most Singaporeans still have a concept of "proper" English, and can code switch across the creole continuum, but interestingly the acrolect ("variation most associated with refinement") is basically standard UK or US English - though not everyone can get there. As a comparison, the closest similarity I can think of in terms of having a similar English creole continuum is Jamaican patois. I doubt most native English speakers (despite my best wishes, I certainly can't) could decipher the Singlish basilect ("least refined") - the cadence is syllable-timed, the vocabulary is part Hokkien, Mandarin, Tamil and Malay, grammar is nonstandard and a substantial part of emotion is conveyed through particle suffixes (the stereotypical Singlish "lah" is emphasis).
  - marcv81 10y ago
    You are spot on with your description.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - bane 10y ago
    Here's an example of some of the continuum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI and some more (from a film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo4ufPKTq0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo4ufPKTq0E and an explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC8nM75AqUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC8nM75AqUk
    - yomly 10y ago
      Love the posts - "Indian-net" is a classic, as an aside man that scene in money no enough really blew me away - it's crazy to believe that my laptop (not even a desktop, mind you!) has a thousand times more RAM... to say tech moves quickly is an understatement.
    - schoen 10y ago
      > Here's an example of some of the continuum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI Wow, that accent shift is really striking.
- csydas 10y ago
  I'm not sure one questionable exampe invalidates the rest - most of the versions are combinations of english vocabulary with another language's grammar and vocab or phonetics, which I think makes them distinct enough for a langauge. I must admit I too find the idea behind singlish questionable, especially since the cited website doesn't contain the examples, or in any place I could find. But, if the examples they provided are accurate, “Wah lau, the movie damn sian”, from what I can tell based on the transation, the grammar structure is different enough from english that it's probably a good candidate for something new.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  > Singlish is not a unique or separate langauage, or even an actual language. As far as I know, Singlish is widely regarded as a creole language. Yes, a large part of the vocabulary is English words, but it is very different when it comes to grammar and it uses a lot of loan words from east Asian languages that aren't in English dialects around the world. The idea that Singlish is just uneducated Singaporean English is purely a political one. > An American English speaker will likely have much better chance of understanding a Singaporean than understanding some of the U.K. dialects. I've seen a few dozen sentences of Singlish and I would understand it about as well as I'd understand any other English based creole - I'd understand the English words and not much else. The problems that different English dialects have when trying to understand each other are accents and local slang - but the grammar and written language are largely the same. On the other hand, large parts of the Singlish vocabulary differ from English, and the grammar is substantially different, even when written.
- akavi 10y ago
  To add to what everyone else has said: There's no dividing line between "accent", "dialect", and "language" any more than there's a dividing line between "pebble", "stone" and "boulder". I'm American, but I've spent about a year in Singapore in various stretches. The Acrolectic Singlish/Standard English that my coworkers at a multinational spoke definitely converges with General American English, and I understood it without hesitation. But the basilectic variety spoken, say, between army buddies? About as comprehensible to me as Dutch.
  - kqr 10y ago
    Not to be the one to shit on your parade, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_size#International_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_size#International_scale
petr_tik 10y ago
In general, there are 2 ways to classify something as a language instead of a dialect: 1. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy [0] 2. Easier test is mutual intelligibility – dialects of one language are mutually intelligible – US English speakers chat and understand with the Brits (even when they can hear the extra ‘u’s in colour). Neither US English nor UK English speakers understand or can produce intelligible German. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...
- bhaak 10y ago
  Mutual intelligibility is problematic for languages with a dialect continuum. Native speakers that live next to each other can understand each other without a problem but the farther apart the regions are the more likely it is that they can't anymore. For example German. The Swiss Germans and the South Germans can understand each other but if you let somebody from the north of Germany speak with them in the local dialect, they won't. Linguists usually don't even classify languages as dialects anymore. It's almost always a political minefield.
  - frandroid 10y ago
    There's a very wide continuum in arabic as well.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    In biology they would call that a "ring species". Sometimes two nearby populations can interbreed, which means they are the same species. But distant populations are so different they can't interbreed, and so must be different species. But figuring out exactly where to draw the line is problematic.
- lordnacho 10y ago
  Mutually intelligible is not an exact thing. From my own experience: A native speaker of Danish, I was able to speak with my Norwegian housemate. It worked OK, but not great, and not for anything technical (like science and finance, where the Germanic words are very different to the English). With my Swedish friends however, it was harder. Not sure why, since Sweden is visible from Denmark but Norway is a bit further away. Also, I found the TV Series "The Bridge / Broen" quite unlikely. Swedes and Danes don't talk that easily together, and certainly not with slang. The scenario of the cops from opposite sides of the bridge working together could still work, but mostly in writing. Also, the cadence is very different. Swedish is melodic. Danish is grunty. Of course I have had no instruction in Swedish or Norwegian, but it wouldn't be hard, based on friends who have moved. German is not mutually intelligible with Danish. But it is. I went to a handful of German classes, and it dawned on me that changing a few things around makes High German pretty much like old Danish, like what you'd hear in old black-and-white movies from around the war. These days Danish has a lot of English in it, and something about the way sentences are put together makes old movies seem very... old. But once you have a simple map in your mind, Danish appears to be German with some substitutions and simplified grammar. I can read the paper in German now, despite having had just those few lessons. Swiss German, now there's a weird one. The sounds are different. I suppose I'm twice removed from it, but even native Germans I know will produce the WTF face when they hear a Swiss German. Words and grammar are similar, but different enough to be recognisably so by a foreigner like myself. But I suppose it's like Swedish and Danish. Apropos the article, Singlish I found quite interesting. To me it's just English with sprinkled Chinese, and I think most English speaking people will not have a problem understanding it without instruction. One useful addition: English doesn't make much use of the modal particle, so it makes sense that Cantonese "la" is heard all over the place.
mariodiana 10y ago
I found this video of a woman reciting the opening to Genesis in Tok Pisin, and it struck me as really interesting. The repetition in the verses is likely what's key to this, but if at first upon hearing it you're bewildered, about halfway through you realize that you can understand what she's saying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg The history behind the language is interesting, too. Interacting with English speakers created a language that unified a geographic area that was rich in individual languages with no common tongue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin#Development_of_Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin#Development_of_Tok_P...
- kqr 10y ago
  > if at first upon hearing it you're bewildered, about halfway through you realize that you can understand what she's saying. As a non-native English speaker, this is basically my experience watching some movies (where the characters speak with regional dialects). The first 10 minutes I feel like the actors are mumbling and then after 20 or so minutes I have no problem keeping up anymore. Also what it feels like when someone with an accent is holding a lecture at my university.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    It took me longer for British accents to become intelligible; I think it took about a season of Top Gear before I no longer had to rewind certain portions or listen very actively to understand what was being said.
  - anotherevan 10y ago
    I'm kind of the same when watching Shakespeare. Takes about 10 minutes and then my brain snaps into the right mode to more easily follow what is being said.
- schoen 10y ago
  The Bible text might have more loanwords from standard English than other texts in Tok Pisin do, though. For example, right at the beginning she says "spirit", which I suspect came into Tok Pisin through a conscious borrowing by a Bible translator or missionary. If I look at this translation http://www.bible.is/TPIPNG/Gen/1 http://www.bible.is/TPIPNG/Gen/1 it seems quite challenging to follow, even knowing a couple of Tok Pisin words. But maybe it would be different if it were read aloud, or maybe the woman in the video you found is reciting a version that uses vocabulary that's especially close to English?
thomasfoster96 10y ago
These five languages didn't 'come' or evolve solely from English - rather they are all English-based creoles[0]. Many of them are grammatically quite different to English, but they've all had heavy influences from other languages as well. On the other hand, French, Romanian and Portuguese aren't Latin-based creoles - they're separate languages which have evolved from Latin (although you could make the argument that Portuguese and French are two ends of a dialect continuum[1]). Really, the relationship between Tok Pisin and English is very different to the relationship between French and Latin. English hasn't had the time and geographical spread to diverge into different languages that Latin has had. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_languages [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Romance_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Romance_lang...
- emodendroket 10y ago
  The geographical spread is certainly there.
- spraak 10y ago
  Yeah, the article title (premise?) is flawed in that way. Otherwise an interesting overview of a few languages I'd never heard of
TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
Ebonics? <ducks/>
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  More properly known as African American Vernacular English: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_...
jmadsen 10y ago
A curious side note - hardly a language or even dialect, really - is the effect that having a large number of immigrants from one country can have on a region's language. For example, in my own eastern Wisconsin, a large part of "Wisconsin-ese" is nothing more than German translated directly into English. So many people settled Eastern Wisconsin from Germany at the same time that their efforts to learn English all had the same mistakes, and became our local "pidgen". For example - - to soften an imperative in German, add "mal" - short for "einmal" (once) - there is only one word for borrow or lend - "leihen". And so "Leih mir ein dollar mal" is "Could you lend me a dollar?" in English, but, "Borrow me a dollar once" in Wisconsin "accent". Many other small examples of this.
- rmc 10y ago
  Hiberno-English (the English dialect in Ireland) is similar. Lots of grammatical influence from Irish. e.g. plural you, additional tense ("do be"), verb repedition instead of yes/no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English
- empath75 10y ago
  That's called a calque, I believe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque
- ekianjo 10y ago
  The exact same thing is observed in Belgian French (wallonian) where they use "une fois" (same thing as "once") because of the dutch speaking influence locally.
  - ksenzee 10y ago
    "Une fois" means "once" in standard French ("il y avait une fois..."). Is there a specific context you're thinking of where it's used in a non-standard way?
    - adrianratnapala 10y ago
jcbeard 10y ago
How about all computer languages? They're largely subject to grammar constraints (e.g. LR, etc.), but they're quite subject to creolization and almost all the widely used ones are derived from english, nerd slang, slang tech terms, short tech terms, and shit that early programmers made up to express themselves. I've been wanting to do a study on the evolution, understanding, and psychology of programming languages (even wrote a blog post awhile back about it) but i haven't gotten around to it.
- Dutchie 10y ago
  Computer languages are only very superficially similar to English. Like a whale is superficially similar to a fish. The syntax of ALL computer languages is completely unlike English. Computer languages don't have the phonology or morphology of English either (they don't have any phonology or morphology).
  - jcbeard 10y ago
    morphology I'm not so sure. looking at the evolution of keywords seems to suggest that the morphology is there. phonology, I'd have agreed with you a few years ago after I finished a minor in slavic linquistics, but now after seeing how people verbally communicate programming concepts over the last decade and how that communication has impacted language design itself...I'm not so sure. In either event, the structure of the english language has heavily impacted the design of languages used to program computers. Not so drastic a difference as whale to fish, more whale to dolphin.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      >> now after seeing how people verbally communicate programming concepts over the last decade and how that communication has impacted language design itself...I'm not so sure. This sounds interesting - can you elaborate?
    - int_19h 10y ago
      As an aside, I wonder if anyone has studied how learning an English-based (at least wrt keywords and such) programming language before learning English affects the latter. From personal experience (I am a native Russian speaker), I have a feeling that it does, to some extent. To this day, for me, the primary meaning words like "loop" and "string" is that of programming - the first mental association with "string" is text, not an actual string, for example. Surely this has got to change perspective somewhat. This also has an interesting side effect, in that code doesn't look like mutilated English - it just naturally reads and feels like, well, code. This is not the case when I'm reading a program that uses keywords in my native language (e.g. the 1C language - http://www.asd-dnepr.com/images/v8/two_variants_of_embedded_language.gif http://www.asd-dnepr.com/images/v8/two_variants_of_embedded_...) - those just look weird as hell, and very awkward/funny. I have often asked myself if that's what C and Python look like to native English speakers; and if so, then what difference does it make in how we code.
lucasnemeth 10y ago
Shelta, is a language spoke by the Irish travellers, came from Irish and English. It is pretty interesting : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  huh, interesting that linguists would call it something totally different from what speakers call it (always called some variation of "travellers cant" from the speakers I've known).
  - lucasnemeth 10y ago
    Yes, I have no idea why...
clw8 10y ago
Creoles are fascinating. If we can assume that modern language came about with modern humans some 50,000 years ago, I wonder how many modern languages are creoles of extinct languages?
acjacobson 10y ago
As others have mentioned, many of the examples in this article are creoles. A non-creole example of language descended from English (or rather Middle English) is Scots, which has its own dialectical variations that vary in intelligibility with Modern English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
junto 10y ago
Out of interest, is American English considered a dialect of British English?
- jdavis703 10y ago
  No, they are both dialects of English.
- anotherevan 10y ago
  Both Americans and Britons would probably say no, but for different reasons.
mkadlec 10y ago
What about Canadian? ;)
linkmotif 10y ago
Really neat. Especially the idea that: "English may come to have a global standard that is not exactly what is spoken in any local culture"
kazinator 10y ago
There are, of course, other languages that came from English. One that comes to mind is Bislama, a dominant language spoken in Vanuatu.
saynsedit 10y ago
Also Hawaiian Pidgin (not a literal pidgin).
anotherevan 10y ago
Having lived in Papua New Guinea twice while growing up, I have a certain fondness for the language Tok Pisin. I can’t really speak much of it, but I can understand a fair bit. You’ve got to love a language where “gras” means “hair”, “bagarap” means pretty much the same thing if you say it out loud in English, and while expressing how full your tummy is after a good meal you accidentally say you’re pregnant[1]. It’s charmingly idiosyncratic to an English ear. And there’s even an edition of Wikipedia in Tok Pisin: https://tpi.wikipedia.org/ https://tpi.wikipedia.org/ [1] True story. My dad did this and all the locals fell on the ground laughing. [2] Brief blog post I wrote in 2009 which is the source for this comment: http://www.michevan.id.au/content/wikipedia-really-does-have-page-just-about-everything/ http://www.michevan.id.au/content/wikipedia-really-does-have... [3] Another blog post about the Vanuatuian cousin, Bislama: http://www.michevan.id.au/content/by-any-other-name/ http://www.michevan.id.au/content/by-any-other-name/
mmanfrin 10y ago
Gullah is a neat language. I came across a website that had a Gullah translation of the bible -- at first glance it looks unintelligible, but when you read it out loud it makes complete sense (as a native english speaker): http://www.gullahbible.com/e-GullahNT/index.htm http://www.gullahbible.com/e-GullahNT/index.htm

159 points by hvo 10y ago

Take this article with a grain of salt. Their description of Singlish is enough to disqualify the accuracy of the rest of the piece. Singlish is not a unique or separate langauage, or even an actual language. Comparing Singlish to English is no different than comparing Cockney to English. I don't think the different dialects of English within the U.K. are all considered separate languages, and therefore Singlish should not be either. An American English speaker will likely have much better chance of understanding a Singaporean than understanding some of the U.K. dialects.

marcv81 10y ago
Americans will understand Singaporeans because English is the main language in both countries. Singlish is a separate language, and the article describes it somehow accurately. It is not mutually intelligible with English (Brits or Americans can't understand it), but most native Singlish speakers are Singaporeans who also speak English.
adrianN 10y ago
"A language is a dialect with an army".
snaily 10y ago
Most Singaporeans still have a concept of "proper" English, and can code switch across the creole continuum, but interestingly the acrolect ("variation most associated with refinement") is basically standard UK or US English - though not everyone can get there. As a comparison, the closest similarity I can think of in terms of having a similar English creole continuum is Jamaican patois. I doubt most native English speakers (despite my best wishes, I certainly can't) could decipher the Singlish basilect ("least refined") - the cadence is syllable-timed, the vocabulary is part Hokkien, Mandarin, Tamil and Malay, grammar is nonstandard and a substantial part of emotion is conveyed through particle suffixes (the stereotypical Singlish "lah" is emphasis).
- marcv81 10y ago
  You are spot on with your description.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- bane 10y ago
  Here's an example of some of the continuum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI and some more (from a film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo4ufPKTq0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo4ufPKTq0E and an explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC8nM75AqUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC8nM75AqUk
  - yomly 10y ago
    Love the posts - "Indian-net" is a classic, as an aside man that scene in money no enough really blew me away - it's crazy to believe that my laptop (not even a desktop, mind you!) has a thousand times more RAM... to say tech moves quickly is an understatement.
  - schoen 10y ago
    > Here's an example of some of the continuum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmXRJiMkKpI Wow, that accent shift is really striking.
csydas 10y ago
I'm not sure one questionable exampe invalidates the rest - most of the versions are combinations of english vocabulary with another language's grammar and vocab or phonetics, which I think makes them distinct enough for a langauge. I must admit I too find the idea behind singlish questionable, especially since the cited website doesn't contain the examples, or in any place I could find. But, if the examples they provided are accurate, “Wah lau, the movie damn sian”, from what I can tell based on the transation, the grammar structure is different enough from english that it's probably a good candidate for something new.
thomasfoster96 10y ago
> Singlish is not a unique or separate langauage, or even an actual language. As far as I know, Singlish is widely regarded as a creole language. Yes, a large part of the vocabulary is English words, but it is very different when it comes to grammar and it uses a lot of loan words from east Asian languages that aren't in English dialects around the world. The idea that Singlish is just uneducated Singaporean English is purely a political one. > An American English speaker will likely have much better chance of understanding a Singaporean than understanding some of the U.K. dialects. I've seen a few dozen sentences of Singlish and I would understand it about as well as I'd understand any other English based creole - I'd understand the English words and not much else. The problems that different English dialects have when trying to understand each other are accents and local slang - but the grammar and written language are largely the same. On the other hand, large parts of the Singlish vocabulary differ from English, and the grammar is substantially different, even when written.
akavi 10y ago
To add to what everyone else has said: There's no dividing line between "accent", "dialect", and "language" any more than there's a dividing line between "pebble", "stone" and "boulder". I'm American, but I've spent about a year in Singapore in various stretches. The Acrolectic Singlish/Standard English that my coworkers at a multinational spoke definitely converges with General American English, and I understood it without hesitation. But the basilectic variety spoken, say, between army buddies? About as comprehensible to me as Dutch.
- kqr 10y ago
  Not to be the one to shit on your parade, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_size#International_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_size#International_scale

petr_tik 10y ago

In general, there are 2 ways to classify something as a language instead of a dialect: 1. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy [0] 2. Easier test is mutual intelligibility – dialects of one language are mutually intelligible – US English speakers chat and understand with the Brits (even when they can hear the extra ‘u’s in colour). Neither US English nor UK English speakers understand or can produce intelligible German. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...

bhaak 10y ago
Mutual intelligibility is problematic for languages with a dialect continuum. Native speakers that live next to each other can understand each other without a problem but the farther apart the regions are the more likely it is that they can't anymore. For example German. The Swiss Germans and the South Germans can understand each other but if you let somebody from the north of Germany speak with them in the local dialect, they won't. Linguists usually don't even classify languages as dialects anymore. It's almost always a political minefield.
- frandroid 10y ago
  There's a very wide continuum in arabic as well.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  In biology they would call that a "ring species". Sometimes two nearby populations can interbreed, which means they are the same species. But distant populations are so different they can't interbreed, and so must be different species. But figuring out exactly where to draw the line is problematic.
lordnacho 10y ago
Mutually intelligible is not an exact thing. From my own experience: A native speaker of Danish, I was able to speak with my Norwegian housemate. It worked OK, but not great, and not for anything technical (like science and finance, where the Germanic words are very different to the English). With my Swedish friends however, it was harder. Not sure why, since Sweden is visible from Denmark but Norway is a bit further away. Also, I found the TV Series "The Bridge / Broen" quite unlikely. Swedes and Danes don't talk that easily together, and certainly not with slang. The scenario of the cops from opposite sides of the bridge working together could still work, but mostly in writing. Also, the cadence is very different. Swedish is melodic. Danish is grunty. Of course I have had no instruction in Swedish or Norwegian, but it wouldn't be hard, based on friends who have moved. German is not mutually intelligible with Danish. But it is. I went to a handful of German classes, and it dawned on me that changing a few things around makes High German pretty much like old Danish, like what you'd hear in old black-and-white movies from around the war. These days Danish has a lot of English in it, and something about the way sentences are put together makes old movies seem very... old. But once you have a simple map in your mind, Danish appears to be German with some substitutions and simplified grammar. I can read the paper in German now, despite having had just those few lessons. Swiss German, now there's a weird one. The sounds are different. I suppose I'm twice removed from it, but even native Germans I know will produce the WTF face when they hear a Swiss German. Words and grammar are similar, but different enough to be recognisably so by a foreigner like myself. But I suppose it's like Swedish and Danish. Apropos the article, Singlish I found quite interesting. To me it's just English with sprinkled Chinese, and I think most English speaking people will not have a problem understanding it without instruction. One useful addition: English doesn't make much use of the modal particle, so it makes sense that Cantonese "la" is heard all over the place.

mariodiana 10y ago

I found this video of a woman reciting the opening to Genesis in Tok Pisin, and it struck me as really interesting. The repetition in the verses is likely what's key to this, but if at first upon hearing it you're bewildered, about halfway through you realize that you can understand what she's saying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg The history behind the language is interesting, too. Interacting with English speakers created a language that unified a geographic area that was rich in individual languages with no common tongue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin#Development_of_Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin#Development_of_Tok_P...

kqr 10y ago
> if at first upon hearing it you're bewildered, about halfway through you realize that you can understand what she's saying. As a non-native English speaker, this is basically my experience watching some movies (where the characters speak with regional dialects). The first 10 minutes I feel like the actors are mumbling and then after 20 or so minutes I have no problem keeping up anymore. Also what it feels like when someone with an accent is holding a lecture at my university.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  It took me longer for British accents to become intelligible; I think it took about a season of Top Gear before I no longer had to rewind certain portions or listen very actively to understand what was being said.
- anotherevan 10y ago
  I'm kind of the same when watching Shakespeare. Takes about 10 minutes and then my brain snaps into the right mode to more easily follow what is being said.
schoen 10y ago
The Bible text might have more loanwords from standard English than other texts in Tok Pisin do, though. For example, right at the beginning she says "spirit", which I suspect came into Tok Pisin through a conscious borrowing by a Bible translator or missionary. If I look at this translation http://www.bible.is/TPIPNG/Gen/1 http://www.bible.is/TPIPNG/Gen/1 it seems quite challenging to follow, even knowing a couple of Tok Pisin words. But maybe it would be different if it were read aloud, or maybe the woman in the video you found is reciting a version that uses vocabulary that's especially close to English?

thomasfoster96 10y ago

These five languages didn't 'come' or evolve solely from English - rather they are all English-based creoles[0]. Many of them are grammatically quite different to English, but they've all had heavy influences from other languages as well. On the other hand, French, Romanian and Portuguese aren't Latin-based creoles - they're separate languages which have evolved from Latin (although you could make the argument that Portuguese and French are two ends of a dialect continuum[1]). Really, the relationship between Tok Pisin and English is very different to the relationship between French and Latin. English hasn't had the time and geographical spread to diverge into different languages that Latin has had. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_languages [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Romance_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Romance_lang...

emodendroket 10y ago
The geographical spread is certainly there.
spraak 10y ago
Yeah, the article title (premise?) is flawed in that way. Otherwise an interesting overview of a few languages I'd never heard of

TheRealDunkirk 10y ago

Ebonics? <ducks/>

acjohnson55 10y ago
More properly known as African American Vernacular English: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_...

jmadsen 10y ago

A curious side note - hardly a language or even dialect, really - is the effect that having a large number of immigrants from one country can have on a region's language. For example, in my own eastern Wisconsin, a large part of "Wisconsin-ese" is nothing more than German translated directly into English. So many people settled Eastern Wisconsin from Germany at the same time that their efforts to learn English all had the same mistakes, and became our local "pidgen". For example - - to soften an imperative in German, add "mal" - short for "einmal" (once) - there is only one word for borrow or lend - "leihen". And so "Leih mir ein dollar mal" is "Could you lend me a dollar?" in English, but, "Borrow me a dollar once" in Wisconsin "accent". Many other small examples of this.

rmc 10y ago
Hiberno-English (the English dialect in Ireland) is similar. Lots of grammatical influence from Irish. e.g. plural you, additional tense ("do be"), verb repedition instead of yes/no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English
empath75 10y ago
That's called a calque, I believe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque
ekianjo 10y ago
The exact same thing is observed in Belgian French (wallonian) where they use "une fois" (same thing as "once") because of the dutch speaking influence locally.
- ksenzee 10y ago
  "Une fois" means "once" in standard French ("il y avait une fois..."). Is there a specific context you're thinking of where it's used in a non-standard way?
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago

jcbeard 10y ago

How about all computer languages? They're largely subject to grammar constraints (e.g. LR, etc.), but they're quite subject to creolization and almost all the widely used ones are derived from english, nerd slang, slang tech terms, short tech terms, and shit that early programmers made up to express themselves. I've been wanting to do a study on the evolution, understanding, and psychology of programming languages (even wrote a blog post awhile back about it) but i haven't gotten around to it.

Dutchie 10y ago
Computer languages are only very superficially similar to English. Like a whale is superficially similar to a fish. The syntax of ALL computer languages is completely unlike English. Computer languages don't have the phonology or morphology of English either (they don't have any phonology or morphology).
- jcbeard 10y ago
  morphology I'm not so sure. looking at the evolution of keywords seems to suggest that the morphology is there. phonology, I'd have agreed with you a few years ago after I finished a minor in slavic linquistics, but now after seeing how people verbally communicate programming concepts over the last decade and how that communication has impacted language design itself...I'm not so sure. In either event, the structure of the english language has heavily impacted the design of languages used to program computers. Not so drastic a difference as whale to fish, more whale to dolphin.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    >> now after seeing how people verbally communicate programming concepts over the last decade and how that communication has impacted language design itself...I'm not so sure. This sounds interesting - can you elaborate?
  - int_19h 10y ago
    As an aside, I wonder if anyone has studied how learning an English-based (at least wrt keywords and such) programming language before learning English affects the latter. From personal experience (I am a native Russian speaker), I have a feeling that it does, to some extent. To this day, for me, the primary meaning words like "loop" and "string" is that of programming - the first mental association with "string" is text, not an actual string, for example. Surely this has got to change perspective somewhat. This also has an interesting side effect, in that code doesn't look like mutilated English - it just naturally reads and feels like, well, code. This is not the case when I'm reading a program that uses keywords in my native language (e.g. the 1C language - http://www.asd-dnepr.com/images/v8/two_variants_of_embedded_language.gif http://www.asd-dnepr.com/images/v8/two_variants_of_embedded_...) - those just look weird as hell, and very awkward/funny. I have often asked myself if that's what C and Python look like to native English speakers; and if so, then what difference does it make in how we code.

lucasnemeth 10y ago

Shelta, is a language spoke by the Irish travellers, came from Irish and English. It is pretty interesting : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta

abritinthebay 10y ago
huh, interesting that linguists would call it something totally different from what speakers call it (always called some variation of "travellers cant" from the speakers I've known).
- lucasnemeth 10y ago
  Yes, I have no idea why...

clw8 10y ago

Creoles are fascinating. If we can assume that modern language came about with modern humans some 50,000 years ago, I wonder how many modern languages are creoles of extinct languages?

acjacobson 10y ago

As others have mentioned, many of the examples in this article are creoles. A non-creole example of language descended from English (or rather Middle English) is Scots, which has its own dialectical variations that vary in intelligibility with Modern English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language

deleted 10y ago

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junto 10y ago

Out of interest, is American English considered a dialect of British English?

jdavis703 10y ago
No, they are both dialects of English.
anotherevan 10y ago
Both Americans and Britons would probably say no, but for different reasons.

mkadlec 10y ago

What about Canadian? ;)

linkmotif 10y ago

Really neat. Especially the idea that: "English may come to have a global standard that is not exactly what is spoken in any local culture"

kazinator 10y ago

There are, of course, other languages that came from English. One that comes to mind is Bislama, a dominant language spoken in Vanuatu.

saynsedit 10y ago

Also Hawaiian Pidgin (not a literal pidgin).

anotherevan 10y ago

Having lived in Papua New Guinea twice while growing up, I have a certain fondness for the language Tok Pisin. I can’t really speak much of it, but I can understand a fair bit. You’ve got to love a language where “gras” means “hair”, “bagarap” means pretty much the same thing if you say it out loud in English, and while expressing how full your tummy is after a good meal you accidentally say you’re pregnant[1]. It’s charmingly idiosyncratic to an English ear. And there’s even an edition of Wikipedia in Tok Pisin: https://tpi.wikipedia.org/ https://tpi.wikipedia.org/ [1] True story. My dad did this and all the locals fell on the ground laughing. [2] Brief blog post I wrote in 2009 which is the source for this comment: http://www.michevan.id.au/content/wikipedia-really-does-have-page-just-about-everything/ http://www.michevan.id.au/content/wikipedia-really-does-have... [3] Another blog post about the Vanuatuian cousin, Bislama: http://www.michevan.id.au/content/by-any-other-name/ http://www.michevan.id.au/content/by-any-other-name/

mmanfrin 10y ago

Gullah is a neat language. I came across a website that had a Gullah translation of the bible -- at first glance it looks unintelligible, but when you read it out loud it makes complete sense (as a native english speaker): http://www.gullahbible.com/e-GullahNT/index.htm http://www.gullahbible.com/e-GullahNT/index.htm