Re: Volcae and Volsci

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "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. 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 would say that have understood the structure of it although I reject
your choice of value-laden words for terminology ('xenophonic',
'polluted', 'distorted'), since I fear that you would later use it as
a springboard for another racist attack on people of other hair color
than yourself.

> 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.

I was going to answer that with a call for more research and an agreed
upon terminology, but it turns out - as I found out googling on the
two terms acrolect and basilect Rick supplied us with - that it has
already happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_switching
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilect#Stratification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia
(note the paragraph on English in the last article)
And that's one I'll be using in the future.

BTW, more interesting terminology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbausprache_-_Abstandsprache_-_Dachsprache

Dutch/Afrikaans as a diglossia:
http://www.afrikaans.nu/pag7.htm


Torsten