Creoles: Origins, Linguistic Systems, Receptions and Prospects

I. Introduction
Creole languages may not be unfamiliar to American, African and European people. However, many other people, especially in Asia have had no exposure to and therefore possess no familiarity with Creole languages. To them, a language is usually closely related to the people who use it, such as Spanish is spoken by Spanish people, French is spoken by French people, and so forth. People rarely hear about Creole people; consequently, they feel very surprised to study that there even is a language named “Creole”.

This paper addresses the basic demand of understanding Creole languages as a paradigm in terms of the origins, the linguistic system, the debates around Creole’s identity, as well as the development and prospects of Creole.


II. Origin of the term “Creole”
This term has changed over time. Diater Woll (1997), as cited in “In search of a national identity: Creole and Politics in Guadeloupe” (Schnepel, 2004), supposed that the word Creole came from Spanish: Criollos and then later lost its Hispanic character, evolving into Criole or Criolle. Later, it transformed into French-based Créole. However, in the book ‘Pidgin and Creole Languages,” Romaine (1988) argued that the word Creole is the “Portuguese crioulu via English and French” (p. 38), but Holm (1998) and DeGraff (2006) thought that this term first dated back the Latin word creare which means “to create.”

The term “Creole” is also used with different meanings. Creole first represented a white person who was born in the colonies (DeGraff, 2006; Holm, 1998; Romaine, 1988; Schnepel, 2004). Then it was used to describe people of mixed blood. After that, as Jean Baptiste Labat (1722) claimed in “Nouveau voyage aus Isles de l’Amerique”, this term was used as an adjective to distinguish slaves that were native-born (negres creoles) (Schnepel, 2004). In the article “Pidgin and Creole Languages” (2002) and DeGraff’s paper (2006), Creole is also considered as the adjective to describe the animals, plants and customs in the colonies. Recently, Creole is considered as a language spoken by creoles in the Caribbean and West Africa, even associated with other languages with similar situations of emergence (Romaine, 1988).


III. Origins of Creole
According to Schnepel (2004), in the 17th century, the French colonists began to expand their power, reaching the Antilles, and African slaves were imported to be the labor force in large numbers. The society at that time included French settlers from various regions in France with different dialects, as well as the African slaves who lacked any common language. Creole language came about as a means of communication between the masters and slaves as well as among people with different languages.

Similarly, in the Anglophone Caribbean, Creole emerged because of the expansion of European colonialism (Bickerton, 1981). Since the sugar plantations needed a large number of laborers, the colonists had to import people from many areas in the world (“Pidgins and Creole Languages, 2002”). These laborers had different languages; therefore, they had to develop a language that Nero (2001) called an “auxiliary contact language” which was known as “pidgin’ and then become Creole. Kephart (2000) argued that

[Creole] develops in a context of intense contact between two or more relatively interrelated languages, and which typically exhibits features drawn from the languages present in the contact situation, as well as drawing on the human language capacity (p. 11)

In summary, Creole developed when there was a need of communication between the people with different European languages and various African languages and dialects spanning the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.


IV. Groups of Creoles:
There are many groups of Creole languages, depending on the target languages that they are influenced by, such as English-based Creole languages, French- based Creole languages, German- based Creole language, and so on.

V. Linguistic systems of Creoles
Bickerton (1981) presented twelve features to characterize Creole grammar
(i) movement rules
(ii) articles
(iii) tense- modality-aspect systems
(iv) realized and unrealized complements
(v) relativization and subject-copying
(vi) negation
(vii) existential and possessive
(viii) copula
(ix) adjectives as verbs
(x) questions
(xi) question words
(xii) passive equivalents

In terms of vocabulary, according to the hypothesis of Lefebvre (2004), the lexicon of Creole is formed based on the “relexification” (p. 38) in which Creole remains the semantic feature of the source language (e.g. African language) and adopts the phonetic feature of the target language (e.g. French). For example, one word could be pronounced similarly with French word but it may have different meanings.


VI. Receptions of Creole languages
Before the 50s, Creole used to be considered as a “deformed variety of French, a stigmatized patois” (Schnepel, 2004, p. 5), as it was seen as the language of black people, lower- class groups, and illiterate and/or ill-educated people.
Nero (2001) found that in the Anglophone Caribbean, the interaction between standard English and Creole has elevated standard English in the class structure, and stigmatized Creole. DeCamp (1971), as cited in the book “English in Contact” (2001), called this relation Creole Continuum which ranges from basilect (the most Creole) to mesisolect (mid-range) to acrolect (the English standard variety)

According to Nero (2001), the use of different languages in this continuum is not only determined by social class but also by education, ethnicity and urban/ rural origin and in social context. However, when examining the research by Winford (1994) and Winer (1993), Nero found that although the Creole- speaking children have been given access to education, the medium of instruction in schools and in socialization is English. That fact implies that English is still a dominant language in these countries and Creole is still neglected.

In addition, that Creole has had many different names such as, “broken English, bastard Portuguese, nigger French, kombuistaaltje (‘cookhouse lingo’), isikula (‘coolie language’)” (Holm, 1988, p. 1) shows the discrimination in terms of languages and speakers. These terms are assumed that Creoles are the “corruptions” (Holm, 1988, p. 1) of standard languages, so their structures and lexicons have not been taken into much consideration by linguists. Secondly, these names are referred to their speakers’ low social classes.

Therefore, one of the linguistic and social issues around Creole languages is whether Creoles are languages or dialects. Creoles have been considered “deformed” varieties of standard languages because it seemed that Creoles share similar lexicons with standard languages. However, when examining their linguistic systems thoughtfully, Creoles are not dialects but rather new languages, because compared to the linguistics systems of the source languages, Creoles have different word formation and grammar (Holm, 1988).

In Haiti, the morphology and syntax of Creoles are influenced by West African languages and the lexical structure is based on French. However, it is not considered as a dialect of French, but rather an “independent language” (“Haitian Creole”, 2006). Similarly, in some other Caribbean countries, Creole is somehow similar to West African languages in terms of phonology, morphology, and syntax and akin to English in terms of lexicon. That is the reason why some Creole is sometimes seen as a dialect of English and hence, incorrectly considered ”broken” English (Nero, 2001).

From these above linguistic facts, it is implied that treating Creoles as dialects or languages is not due to their linguistic systems but due to the behavior and receptions of speakers who use these languages. [Perhaps more due to the attitudes of people who describe them (See DeGraff’s paper)]

VII. Development of Creole
Since the abolition of slavery in 1848 and up until departmentalization in Guadeloupe and Martinique, French was appreciated as a prestigious language, used officially in education, while Creole was the language of people who lacked formal schooling. Although Creole was the mother tongue of many people there, French dominated in almost every daily and cultural aspect of society so much that the cultures of these countries were influenced by French culture and they felt unfamiliar with their own culture (Schnepel, 2004).

However, since the 70s and 80s, there have been many movements in Guadeloupe in terms of seeking identity for their culture (Schnepel, 2004). One of the initiatives of these movements was to revive Creole so that it could become a spark plug to the movement of seeking “independence” from French culture. Similarly, in other Caribbean countries, Creole was used in the pre- and post- independence periods as an “affirmation of national and ethnic pride and as the language of true Caribbean identity” (Nero, 2001, p. 7).

Recently, Creoles have been drawing the attention of both linguists and people in the countries that speak Creole languages. Presently, there are about 20 million people speaking Creole in the world (DeGraff, 2006). There are many international Creole music festivals which have been organized in The Republic of Dominique and The Republic of Seychelles. Replying an interview about “the origin and future of Creole language and culture”(2003), Raphael Confiant- a Martiniquan writer well known for his works about Creole and for the créolité movement since 1970s, asserted that Creoles have progressed in the past thirty years in The French Antilles in the fields of education and media. The development includes offering a certificate for teaching Creole, setting up schools where Creole languages [?] are taught, and presenting the news in Creole on the channel ATV and RFO. In Haiti, about 90 % of the population can speak in Creole. In Haiti and in the Republic of Seychelles, Creole has become the official language. Creoles are not only used in daily life but also in schools. [Note that they speak different Creole languages]

However, Raphael Confiant questioned the ability of Creole languages to survive since he claimed that globalization and commercial markets stimulate people to use more French instead of Creole. This situation endangers Creole in his view. Therefore, Creole has gradually decreolized according to him. He also supposed that Creoles develop only when it is taught at schools. If students are taught in another language, Creole will tend to be similar to the target languages such as French and English. [Look at the critique by DeGraff about the claim about decreolization.

VIII. Conclusion
There have been many debates around the origin, the linguistic systems as the viewpoints of Creole languages. However, it is asserted that Creole languages have gradually gained their identity in Creole- speaking communities. Moreover, more and more people have been interested in these languages. If there are more research projects, discussions in the media, festivals in Creole languages, and the like, then these languages will have a stronger presence and perhaps acceptance in society.

REFERENCES

Bickerton, D. (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma

DeGraff, M. (2006). Linguists’ most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism. Paper presented at International Symposium on African & Diasporic Languages & Education: New York

Holm, J. (1988). Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kephart, R. F. (2000). “Broken English”: The Creole language of Carriacou. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

Lefebvre, C. (2004). Issues in the study of Pidgin and Creole languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Nero, S. J. (2001). Englishes in contact: Anglophone Caribbean students in an urban college. New Jersey, USA: Hampton Press, Inc.

Origins and future of Creole language and culture, an interview with Raphael Confiant. (2003). Retrieved November 15, 2006 from http://www.palli.ch/~kapeskreyol/divers/origins.html

Pidgins and Creole languages [Electronic version]. (2002). International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Retrieved November 15, 2006 from http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pidginCreoleLanguage.html

Romaine, S. (1988). Pidgin and Creole languages. New York: Longman, Inc.
Schnepel, E. M. (2004). In search of a national identity: Creole and politics in Guadeloupe. Hamburg, Germany: Helmut Buske Verlag