3 ms·
I'm not going to get into the fine-grained (and for the purpose of this discussion, basically persnickety) nuances of where English sits on the creole/pidgin/hy
by kafkaesq 9y ago
I'm not going to get into the fine-grained (and for the purpose of this discussion, basically persnickety) nuances of where English sits on the creole/pidgin/hybrid spectrum (especially since none of these terms have formal† definitions anyway).
Being as the basic facts of its lineage (a near head-on collision of German and French -- not just "contact in a few places"), and the fact that many of its annoyances (particular in regard to spelling and pronunciation) result directly from a watering-down of these two systems, are generally understood.
† Yes, there are widely accepted definitions for these terms, but they are more like conventions ("thought to arise from interactions between parents and children") rather than formal definitions, like e.g. SVO.
- wareya 9y agoCreole is a scientific term, not a casual one. Creoles evolve from pidgins. English was never a pidgin, and it has a very clear history. No useful interpretation of the word "creole", formally defined or not, is broad enough to actually consider English to be a creole, and no good linguist will call it one. Whoever or whatever taught you that it can be considered one, it's wrong. The people who take the Middle English creole hypothesis seriously are crackpots.
- kafkaesq 9y agoI don't think you're precisely correct in all of what you're saying, above. But that's precisely the point I was trying to get across: for the purpose of this discussion, such distinctions are basically persnickety. And in terms of relevance to the original article under discussion, basically neither here nor there.