Re: My version

--- On Sat, 2/21/09, Daniel J. Milton <dmilt1896@...> wrote:

> From: Daniel J. Milton <dmilt1896@...>
> Subject: [tied] Re: My version
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, February 21, 2009, 10:39 PM
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
> >
> > Dutch and Belgians have told me [Afrikaans] sounds
> like "baby talk",
> which is what many Spanish-speakers say about Portuguese
> --mainly
> because small kids in Latin America tend to pronounce
> <ie> as /e/ and
> final -e as /i/, and also lisp or shush their /s/.
> ****
> There may be more to this than just the impression it
> gives.
> Somewhere a long time ago I read that Afrikaans developed
> as a nursery
> language used by Dutch children and their Native nannies.
> Of course
> this might be a wild guess or a snobbish putdown, but maybe
> there's
> something to it.
> Can anybody find this idea in the literature?
> Dan

I've read the same thing but it does sound anecdotal.
I've read in some places that there are some creolized aspects to Brazilian Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese at times does simplify morpho-syntax, e.g. by using the imperfect for the conditional, but occasionally you hear that in Spanish, it also tends to drop Continental tu and vos in favor of você and o senhor, a senhora, which use 3rd person --so 2 less conjugations to learn.
But we have Portuguese speakers on the list who can explain this much better than I can. While I learned Portuguese from Braziians, I've only traveled to Portugal, where I had no problem at all. The only difference I noticed was that Portuguese tended to trill r's and swallow unstressed and final vowels, e.g. "ham" was /przunt/ --which I believe is <presunto>.