Is English a “creole Language”?
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
Is English a “creole Language”?
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Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#2Creole is both a sociohistoric and linguistic term. The fact that the linguistic attributes are difficult to put boundaries on is extremely common for linguists: we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is!
As for whether English is a Creole, it’s important to understand the motivation for Creolistics at its origin. It started, and continues, as an effort to legitimize a set of languages that before were considered illegitimate, un-interesting and utterly lacking on features worth studying. Part of that reputation is inextricably bound up in colonialism and racism.
Could you squint and call English a Creole? Sure. But you’d be doing the same disservice to “Creole” as you would by saying “technically we’re all [in the US] African American because all humans originated in Africa.” It’s a disingenuous point, and one that could easily be mistaken for trying to reverse the legitimization efforts that brought the term into existence to begin with.
Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#3Creole is both a sociohistoric and linguistic term. The fact that the linguistic attributes are difficult to put boundaries on is extremely common for linguists: we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! As for whether English is a Creole, it’s important to understand the motivation for Creolistics at its origin. It started, and continues, as an effort to legitimize a set of languages that bef…
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Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#4Creole is both a sociohistoric and linguistic term. The fact that the linguistic attributes are difficult to put boundaries on is extremely common for linguists: we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! As for whether English is a Creole, it’s important to understand the motivation for Creolistics at its origin. It started, and continues, as an effort to legitimize a set of languages that bef…
> we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is!
What's your best attempt? :-)
Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#5Creole is both a sociohistoric and linguistic term. The fact that the linguistic attributes are difficult to put boundaries on is extremely common for linguists: we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! As for whether English is a Creole, it’s important to understand the motivation for Creolistics at its origin. It started, and continues, as an effort to legitimize a set of languages that bef…
It's more about how people define the term. I don't think I've seen the position made disingenuously.
Most people I've spoken to think of creole as a mixed language that becomes it's own language. To them that describes English and how it came to be.
Even if you require colonisation to be part of it the position can stand. The Anglo-Saxon's colonisation by the Romans and the Normans are a big part of how the English mixture was formed.
If your definition requires an indigenous, non-European, language being modified by contact with a European coloniser's language. Then sure, English isn't a creole language. But I don't think that's how most people use the term creole colloquially.
Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#6Creole is both a sociohistoric and linguistic term. The fact that the linguistic attributes are difficult to put boundaries on is extremely common for linguists: we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! As for whether English is a Creole, it’s important to understand the motivation for Creolistics at its origin. It started, and continues, as an effort to legitimize a set of languages that bef…
Why don't just define a new word?
I mean you're linguists! :D
Pseudo-Creole, a language that's technically a Creole, but doesn't fit the sociohistoic context.
I think, it would be funny if a word for giving specific languages legitimacy is used to define a language that had more legitimacy to begin with.
Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#7Creole is both a sociohistoric and linguistic term. The fact that the linguistic attributes are difficult to put boundaries on is extremely common for linguists: we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! As for whether English is a Creole, it’s important to understand the motivation for Creolistics at its origin. It started, and continues, as an effort to legitimize a set of languages that bef…
> we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! What's your best attempt? :-)
\s\w+\s
;)
Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#8Creole is both a sociohistoric and linguistic term. The fact that the linguistic attributes are difficult to put boundaries on is extremely common for linguists: we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! As for whether English is a Creole, it’s important to understand the motivation for Creolistics at its origin. It started, and continues, as an effort to legitimize a set of languages that bef…
> we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! What's your best attempt? :-)
It's a bit like the old saying, "All models are wrong, some models are useful." The concept of a "word" is useful in everyday language, particularly in English -- it's host language, unsurprisingly enough -- and (probably) other Indo-European languages. However, in a more precise context, it breaks down because of edge cases.
For example, "words" in agglutinative languages[1] (e.g., Turkish) act very differently from "words" in English. It's hard (impossible?) to capture all that variety in a pithy way. "A string of morphemes" might work, but that's hardly a satisfactory definition!
Maybe a good analogy for the HN crowd would be like asking, "How many characters are in a string?"
Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we won’t even claim to tell you what the definition of “word” is! What's your best attempt? :-)
\s\w+\s ;)
"Ain't ain't a word 'cause it don't match the regex."
BTW, should be "\b\w+\b". The \b is a zero-width match for the start or end of a word. Your pattern requires a space before and after:
>>> import re
>>> re.compile(r"\b\w+\b").findall("What's the problem?")
['What', 's', 'the', 'problem']
>>> re.compile(r"\s\w+\s").findall("What's the problem?")
[' the ']Re: Is English a “creole Language”?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
\s\w+\s ;)
"Ain't ain't a word 'cause it don't match the regex." BTW, should be "\b\w+\b". The \b is a zero-width match for the start or end of a word. Your pattern requires a space before and after: >>> import re >>> re.compile(r"\b\w+\b").findall("What's the problem?") ['What', 's', 'the', 'problem'] >>> re.compile(r"\s\w+\s").findall("What's the problem?") [' the ']
That makes sense. I was trying to translate "A word is a group of letters with whitespace on either side" into regex.
I was being facetious, obviously, but you've already identified a serious problem with that definition (is "what's" two words or one?)