From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 57080
Date: 2008-04-09
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> =========
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans
>
> They don't even mention the word "creole".
>
> Afrikaans is basically an evolved geo-socio-lect of Dutch
> in the African context of mixed populations of natives and
> immigrants.
>
> Arnaud
> ===============
What is a geo-socio-lect? Does this originating Dutch geo-socio-lect
correspond to any known Dutcch dia- or sociolect, and if yes, which
one? In which sense has it 'evolved'? Do you know of any circumstances
under which this vapid truism could be untrue?
Torsten
=========
I would personally define a creole as being a variety of language created ex
nihilo by people trying to acquire a given language which is not their
mother tongue and which is the language spoken as a mother tongue by another
social group in the position of being the dominant group. As a rule, a
creole is spoken by the dominated group and is never spoken by the dominant
group. A creole is the inferior partner of a kind of diglossia, created by
the influx of foreign-language people at the bottom of a society.
Afrikaans is not a creole because it never stopped to be spoken by
originally Dutch immigrants.
If I understand what you mean about Germanic expansion in Central Europe,
when you say "creolized", you mean that Germanic was altered in the process
of its expansion because it was superimposed to xenophonic people by
Germanic speaking people. The resulting mix was somehow polluted and
distorted Germanic languages.
I don't think "creolized" is adequate.
If we indulge into Greek poshy words, maybe a kind of "xenolytic" alteration
is better.
Afrikaans is a "xenolyzed" variety of Dutch.
And French is a xenolyzed variety of Latin, because too many speakers of
late Latin in Gaul were originally Gaulish (and whatever else) speakers.
Arnaud
===========