For our first essay I chose to write about Hawaii Creole. I chose Hawaii Creole because it was one of the few languages that I was able to find enough information on. According to my research Hawaii Creole is spoken by about 600,00 – 700,000 people living in Hawaii as well as Nevada and Florida. The Creole has influences of Hawaiian, Portuguese, Cantonese, Hakka, and of course English as its main lexifier.  It was fully developed by about 1930 and was spoken among children who passed it on to the next generation and made it their native language. This language is most Like many other pidgins and creoles it is not recognized as an official language although people are fighting back. Awareness programs and academic debates have been held to to enlighten people as well as to change the negative connotations that come with speaking the creole language. I did have difficulty finding information on if and where the language is written.

Resources:

Roberts, Sarah J. Nativization and the genesis of Hawaiian Creole. Language change and language contact in pidgins and creoles, 2000 257–300

http://apics-online.info/surveys/26

Velupillai, Viveka . Hawaiʻi Creole English. A typological analysis of the tense-mood-aspect system. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 2003

Velupillai, Viveka. The absence of reduplication in Hawaiʻi Creole English. In Kouwenberg, Silvia (ed.), Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgin and creole languages, 245–249. London: Battlebridge.  2003

Hi guys! For my paper I decided to do my research on Nigerian Pidgin. I decided to choose that because I thought it would be interesting to learn about. The origins of Nigerian Pidgin English goes back in history when there was a trade contact between the British and local people in the seventeenth century. As time passed by Nigerian pidgin became a very popular way to communicate. Before Nigerian pidgin would be associated with people that were not educated but now everyone uses it, it’s even more popular than english. 

Resources:

http://www.nairaland.com/4131533/brokin-nigerian-pidgin-history-origin

http://languagecontact.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/McrLC/casestudies/FG_NigerianPidgin.html

https://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/definitions/naija.html

I thought finding resources would be easy. But I was wrong. It was hard to find articles. I say that because many of the articles I found were very repetitive. So it was hard to find different types of information on this language.

For the first essay I’ve chosen to write about Belizean Creole English. The Belizean Creole variety is derived from West African slaves, coupled with English literature. Being that Belizean Creole came about by slaves communicating with each other, the Creole language was learned rather than taught in an institutional setting. Belizean Creole sparked an interest because of their culture, food, and different language varieties. While doing my research I realized how slightly difficult it was to find resources about the language. Many sources focused on the culture rather than the actual language. Apics however is a very useful sight and gave the most information about Belizean Creole.

Academic sources:

Geneviève Escure. 2013. Belizean Creole structure dataset. In: Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.) Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://apics-online.info/contributions/9, Accessed on 2018-02-17.)

Lavar Manuel “My Belize” New York Press, 2006.

Eltringham, Peter. The Rough guide to Belize. Penguin, 2010

PS: I’m not quite sure how to add pictures! Next class someone be oh so kind to show me!:)

Hey y’all! So, for our first paper assignment I chose to do research on Nicaraguan Creole English (NCE) also known as Miskito Coast Creole. It is both a native and second language in rural barrios located mainly on the Eastern or Caribbean Sea coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. I first and foremost chose to research NCE because I am a Nicoya (term for a woman from Nicaragua or of Nicaraguan descent). I also chose to study NCE because I remembered visiting the region of Bluefields as a child and realizing that a form of English was being spoken but that it was unrecognizable to me. This baffled me not only because the predominant language of the country is Spanish but also because this English-lexified language was something entirely new to me.

According to the data collected by The Joshua Project, NCE is currently being spoken by less than 20,000 people in the country of Nicaragua. Born of the communication between Caribbean Coast natives, English settlers and the Miskito Indians (slaves of Jamaica and African decent), NCE is influenced by its lexifier, English, the dominant language of the country, Spanish, and other Western Caribbean creoles such as Belizean creole. NCE is a dominantly oral language, therefore many Youtube videos can be found in which it is spoken. It is not a written language and is not taught in the Nicaraguan school system, which adheres to a bilingual English to Spanish education system, making written form unlikely. The Joshua Project is rumored to be working on a biblical translation in NCE for their future missionary work in Nicaragua.

Being that this language is mainly oral and considered a subordinate language in Nicaragua, I fully expected sources on it to be scarce. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was an academic topic that even has books dedicated to the study of NCE. I was also pleased to find that there are educational programs and global organizations working to preserve NCE and introduce the language to the digital age. The sources I found are listed below:

Angela Bartens. 2013. Nicaraguan Creole English.
In: Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.) The survey of pidgin and creole languages. Volume 1: English-based and Dutch-based languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

http://apics-online.info/contributions/11

MOST USEFUL SOURCE EVER. Used Barten’s work to define NCE in my paper. She has extensive research on features of the language, history of the language and sociological background. You can find even more on NCE in the survey chapter 11 linked on the top of the page once you click on the link.

Gabbert, Wolfgang, “In the Shadow of Empire – The Emergence of Afro-Creole Societies in Belize and Nicaragua,” Indiana 24 (2007): 49

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3338282?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

JSTOR ACCOUNT OR STUDENT LIBRARY ACCOUNT NEEDED TO ACCESS. Article on the creole societies in Nicaragua. Great source for the history of NCE and some social views on it.

http://revistas.bicu.edu.ni/index.php/wani/article/viewFile/76/76

Academic article (WRITTEN IN SPANISH) about the moving from oral creole to written creole specific to NCE. Has a ton on NCE’S morphology and syntax as well as history and social opinion on it.

Joshua Project, Frontier Ventures. (2018). Language: Nicaragua Creole English. Retrieved February 12, 2018, from https://joshuaproject.net/languages/bzk

Link to the statistics of The Joshua Project’s research of  Nicaraguan Creole English speakers (be cautious of their religious numbers and general numbers)

Keener, Andy and Decker, Kendall D. 1998. A report on the English-lexifier creole of Nicaragua, also known as Mískito Coast Creole, with special reference to Bluefields and the Corn Islands. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2001-004.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.579.6716&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Article written by two men who traveled to Nicaragua and recorded the language’s origin, educational status and historical and social status in Nicaragua. Great read for other references as well!

Simons, Gary F and Charles D. Fenning (eds.). 2017. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 20^th edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International

https://www.ethnologue.com/language/bzk

Website with some statistics on NCE and the most current source I was able to find on native NCE speakers with stats provided by the United Nations

https://rising.globalvoices.org/blog/2016/05/22/strengthening-the-miskitu-and-mayangna-languages-in-nicaragua-through-digital-media/

This is a short article on new media programs in Nicaraguan upper-education schools. Students speak NCE and are allowed to create and post their own content in whichever language they choose.

The reason I chose to choose Nigerian Pidgin is because of listening to Nigerian music. The Nigerian singers in Afro-Pop and Afro-Beats are often found switching between English and their native tongues. Because of a new-found love for the music I found it fitting to choose this language for the assignment. Nigerian Pidgin is spoken by 75 million speakers and is quickly growing in Nigeria. For some Nigerian Pidgin can be the first language or second language they they learn in urban areas and Southern Nigeria. The pidgin used for interethnic contact and its linguistic use has become an essential form communication for marketplaces, workplaces, and schools. The Nigerian Pidgin uses English as its lexifier and has primary Substrates in Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo. Other contributing languages include, Benue-Kwa and other languages of the Niger-Congo family. There is a heavy usage of the English language for the pidgin where much of it is understandable to the English ear. What is also very striking is where the pidgin develops and is used. The pidgin is used in Urban areas and Southern Nigeria which is perhaps one of the more striking details of the language. The resources about my chosen language variety were not difficult to find.

Academic Sources:

Aziza, Rose Oro. “Aspects of the Syntax of Modern Nigerian Pidgin” Selected Proceedings of the 44^th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 2015, pp. 11-16.

Comrie, Bernard. “Pidgin and Creole Tense-Mood-Aspect Systems by John Victor Singler” Lanugage, Vol. 69, No. 2, 1993, pp. 389-393.

Mann, Charles. “Attitudes Toward Anglo-Nigerian Pidgin in Urban, Southern Nigeria” The Generational Variable”, 2009, pp. 349-364.

University of Hawai`I Press. “West African Pidgin English A Bibliography of Pidgin and Creole Languages”, Oceanic Linguistic Special Publication, No 14, 1975, pp. 345-360

Videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWe5jO7Ogwc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz_z0A2KwaM

Each source explained in some detail the Pidgin but not in the manner I expected. Finding sources and further research is required. However there is an indication of the possibility of creolization for Nigerian Pidgin.

The Gullah Language

The English-lexified creole which I selected to do my paper on is Gullah (which is also called Geechee or Sea Island Creole). It is a legacy of the plantation system and its speakers are direct descendants of African slaves. I was first introduced to the existence of this language in my Black Psychology class in Spring 2017, and this stimulated my interest in the language and the Gullah people who reside primarily in the coastal areas of Georgia, South Carolina, and Northeast Florida. Furthermore, the fact that Gullah is the only English-lexified creole language spoken indigenously in the United States made me even more interested in learning about it.

Gullah is said to be similar to Bahamas Creole English and Afro-Seminole, but there are certain linguistic features particularly with tense, phonology and vocabulary that set it apart from these and other English-lexified creoles. There is no standard orthography for the language and it is predominantly an oral language used among the Gullah people and in their storytelling and music. However, it must be noted that in 2005, after 26 years, a panel of native speakers of Gullah completed the translation of the New Testament of the King James version of the Bible into Gullah, they named it De Nyew Testament: http://www.gullahbible.com/.

The Gullah people have produced various media to educate individuals about the language (and the Gullah culture) in both Gullah and English, these include the educational websites: https://www.knowitall.org/series/gullahnet, http://digital.kenyon.edu/gullah/, and https://gullahgeecheenation.com/tag/de-conch/.

There are also YouTube videos featuring Gullah story tellers such as Carolyn “Jabulile” White: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kY_0lXMeVM, and Sharon Cooper Murray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijl7Sg3ZAd0.

Researchers of Gullah have also compiled resources online to educate the general public about the sociolinguistic and structural features of the language, these include: http://apics-online.info/surveys/13, https://www.ethnologue.com/language/gul, https://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection, and http://academic.eb.com.york.ezproxy.cuny.edu/levels/collegiate/article/Gullah/38490.

All these resources and others about the language were easier to find than I had initially expected. However, where getting credible statistics are concerned, in terms of the total number of speakers of the language, this prove somewhat challenging as various sources gave contradictory information. Based on my findings, this may be due to the fact that there has not been any ‘proper’ official census done by the US government to count the speakers of the language since they are a marginalized group in the society and their language is considered by some to be ‘bad English,’ ‘unintelligible,’ or even not a language at all.