Re: CHAT: various infotaining natlang tidbits
| From: | Danny Wier <dawier@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, June 15, 2000, 2:02 |
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>From: Roger Mills <romilly@...>
>Danny wrote:
> >If the word is _pecaninho_ (?), then it's the *dimunitive* of "little" --
> >i.e. "little little"!
>It would have been _pequeninho_.
Yeah I though so. I don't see this form of dimunitive in Spanish though; is
there such a thing? I just recognized the Portuguese form from Italian
practice (_soprano_ > _sopranino_, for example).
The Portuguese were running around E and W
>Africa long before anyone else, and probably started the slave trade.
They also enslaved South American natives. One of my favorite movies is
_The Mission_, where Jesuits were evangelizing the Aymará (?) in the
highlands of what is today northern Argentina. The Portuguese had conquered
an adjacent area, and the poignant final scene where the Spanish Christians
were slaughtered by fellow Aymará under Portuguese rule. The priest, who
became a priest to atone for a murder, was slain carrying the Blessed
Sacrament in a monstrance.
That movie, along with _On the Waterfront_, almost made me become a priest.
Which I still am considering. My cousin who lived in India was in southern
Louisiana for a time, near a Jesuit seminary.
Ironically, I believe the Brazilians were the last country in the Western
Hemisphere to abolish slavery (in the 1880s; twenty-odd years after the end
of the American Civil War which ended slavery in the US). If she's still
alive, the possible oldest living person, who would be over 130, is actually
a former slave! (Which prevents her entry into the Guinness Book of World
Records because of lack of documentation.)
>Plenty of time for some Port. words to be adopted/pidginized and spread
>hither and yon by sailors, slavers, traders etc. of all nationalities.
>The
>Portugues also beat everyone to Asia. However, and I may be mistaken, my
>impression is that Asian Pidgin English got started in the China ports,
>then spread into the island world, probably by British sailors/traders--
>also Aussies in the New Guinea/Melanesia area. Not at all surprising to
>find the word in US Black (albeit stigmatized)speech too. BTW, in some
>versions of Pidgin/Tok IIRC it's sometimes shorted to _pikin_??
Macao was handed over to China last year, I think. Goa is now an Indian
state; the state language is Konkani, IIRC. East Timor was a former
Portuguese colony, and we're probably all aware of religious persecution of
the Christian community by former dictator Suharto's troops. I don't know
of any current Portuguese possessions in Asia.
African-American creoles, such as Sea Islands [North and South Carolina]
("Gullah") and Texas Seminole, (which I, a lifelong Texian, have never
heard) are English-based. French-based creole is found in Louisiana as well
as Haiti. I don't know of much "stigma" since the creoles haven't migrated
from their home bases, but so-called Black English (once called "Ebonics"),
is a different issue altogether. A speaker of "Middle American English" can
understand Black English *much* easier than Black creole English. The
latter is much more simplified grammatically than the former; even pronouns
have no cases -- "we" covers "we", "us", "our", "ours"...
(Huh, I do that in Big Six too! And the word happens to be _wi_, or a
variant _muwi_ or _mui_, from Russian MbI [mwi-]).
DaW.
DaW.
>The only Malay word I can think of in English: (run) amuck;
>ketchup/catsup
>is via Ml. but originally Chinese. British Engl. may have a few more.
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