Re: Volcae and Volsci

--- "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

>
> ----- 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.

ex-nihilo doesn't quite sound right. Etymologically
the word is from Portuguese/Spanish criar "to bring up
(children), raise (children, animals), grow (crops)"
and the adjective crioulo, criollo means "home made,
home grown, home style, local, hillbilly, down home,
impure, mongrel" i.e. perro criollo "mutt", ganado
criollo "locally adapted cattle". It was originally
the language spoken in the house by and to the
servants.

>As a rule, a
> creole is spoken by the dominated group and is never
> spoken by the dominant
> group.

Not quite, the Whites in Louisiana and the Mississipi
valley and in the Caribbean speak/spoke creole, not
standard French. Given that they were outnumbered by
servants and slaves, it was the majority language.

>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.

Yes, but the acrolect is still a creole in many cases.
Afrikaans is much farther removed from Dutch than
Standard Jamaican English is from British or American
English. Boers don't speak Dutch at home, they speak
something very different, Afrikaans.

> Afrikaans is not a creole because it never stopped
> to be spoken by
> originally Dutch immigrants.

But African servants and slaves were mediators who
changed the language for the Whites. Also remember
that much of the creolization in Afrikaans due to
French. A very large percentage of Afrikaaners were of
French ancestry --see, e.g. Charlize Théron, etc. Many
others were of German ancestry. I imagine many of the
German, though, were really 1st or 2nd generation
Huguenots, as were most of my German ancestors who had
"German" names such as Brasscher (< Brasseur), Grass
(< de Grasse), Pauley (< Paulet), etc.

>
> 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

I think it's more like a standardized creole that is
informed by the most prestigious parent language

> ===========
>
>
>
>
>
>

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