Re: Creole vs. Pidgin
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Friday, July 23, 1999, 21:50 |
"R. Nierse" wrote:
> That's excatly why I don't really believe in the monogenesis theory.
The Monogenesis theory is certainly not accurate if you try to say that
ALL creoles have the same origin, but most European-based creoles seem
to have a common origin, a pidgin spoken by sailors in the
Mediterranean, originating from international crews, whenever a ship
would dock in a port, they'd pick up a few new sailors to replace ones
that died or whose contract was up, or who just didn't return,
therefore, all sorts of languages were spoken by the sailors, who
crafted together a pidgin based mostly on southern Romance languages.
When the makeup of the crews changed, at first becoming mostly
Portuguese, and later mostly English, the vocabulary picked up words
from those languages.
--
"[H]e axed after eggys: And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude not
speke no Frenshe ... And then at last a nother sayd that he woulde haue
hadde eyren: then the goode wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel." --
William Caxton
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