Talk:Creole language

I'm a trained linguist and creolist. As it is, the entire article creole language is heavily biased in favor of views which date back to a 1971 conference on pidginization and creolization organized by Dell Hymes. A case in point is the very introductory paragraph:

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or more languages, typically with many features that are not inherited from any parent. Two ways of development of a creole are discussed in the literature: nativization of a pidgin (e.g. Tok Pisin) and gradual development (e.g. Mauritian Creole).

To put some balance into to this and air some more recent views, I added:

However, efforts to conceive a yardstick for measuring creoleness in any scientifically meaningful way have failed so far.^[1] The answer might be that creoleness is better described and referred to as a syndrome, a combination of phenomena seen in association with little inherent unity. In some cases, the modified source language might be the substrate language when warranted by a homogeneous substrate; in other cases, the modified source language clearly is what creolists identify as the superstrate language; and in still other cases, no single source language might be identifiable. The same approach must be applied to identifying indiviual features as inherited or non-inherited and to distilling the defining grounds which separate creole languages from mixed languages such as Michif. Noula69 01:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

To my surprise, my contribution was blanked minutes later by an individual, TenIslands, who takes himself to be the guardian of the ideological correctness of the creole page. As can be seen from the history of the post, it isn't the first time that contributions are blanked by this individual. In a Revision as of 08:27, 26 June 2007, the following comment added to a paragraph ostensibly already marked as citation needed was blanked:

This information, though attempting to show the prejudice of the word, is biased. It is proven uncited and the word Creole is used to describe dialects, such as Atlantic Creole, etc. as a universal standard to describe dialects in a scientific manner.

No explanation was ever offered on the appropriate talk page to indicate that the blankings should not be considered as vandalism.

The same user blanked French Creoles in favor of French-based creole languages though the very term French-based is the expression of a phylogenetic bias which is not shared by a majority of scholars in the field. Noula69 01:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

A very clear "that's not true" was given in the edit summary. Sounds like you've gotta source it before you include it again. That shouldn't be too difficult for someone of your training. While TenIslands's methods are a bit abrasive, he is making good faith attempts at keeping this page from getting in worse shape than it is. The removal of the anon's edits was the removal of unsourced analysis (i.e. original research). Please don't accuse others of vandalism for contentious edits, as it violates WP:AGF and WP:CIV. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:37, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

An unsourced "that's not true" in the edit summary is not sufficient for blanking inconvenient hypotheses which were, as it is, sufficiently sourced with added references to the bibliography. "TenIsland's methods", on the other hand, are not merely "a bit abrasive" but outright biased and even unsourced. Noula69 10:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, friend, the burden falls upon those wishing to include information, not remove it. I see now that you've added a lot more sourcing, which is good. However, there is still some unsourced information that I find contradictory to what I've read about creoles. Namely, that French-based creoles are the outcome of normal language change, or that creoles can be arise out of something other than creolization of a pidgin. You also use the terms "creoleness" but the link to that word has nothing to do with creole languages (so we might need a definition of the term). Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

What I don't like is your attitude to this, as if you owned the place. If the burden were to lie where you'd want it to be, the whole article ought to have been removed for anecdotic bias and lack of sources. On the other hand, I think I understand your motivations and I do not hate what you're doing.

As it is, I have to be away for a while. Would you mind tend the gardens against vandals and continue to see what you can do to improve things? Thanks. Noula69 00:46, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Naturally. I certainly won't let anyone revert your changes until we have considerable discussion and consensus on the matter. When you get back, I would like you to clarify why you edited the article to say "Since the middle of the late 19th century, linguists have promulgated the idea that creole languages are in no way inferior to other languages" while Hymes (1971) says that, before the 1930s, linguists considered pidgins and creoles as marginal languages at best. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:06, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Though I'm not back yet, let me answer your query. Dell Hymes was a (linguistic) anthropologist marginally interested in creoles though very much imbued with his importance as the organizer of the 1968 conference. Like most American anthropologists (and even linguists) of his days, he couldn't read the relevant literature written in languages other than English (languages such as German and French which were the academic languages used for linguistic subjects up to then or something like that in the aftermath of WWII). So, he didn't now about Schuchardt or any of the other creolists who worked on pidgins and creoles before America discovered that these things existed. Even linguistics as a whole in the Americas goes back to Bloomfield 1933 at the earliest and the first linguistics departments came about thirty years later. Best.Noula69 23:42, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Ahh. It's so odd then that Wardhaugh (2002) doesn't question Hymes's judgmentƵ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Wardhaugh's book is intended as a standard textbook for introductory courses in sociolinguistics, not in creolistics. It offers broad coverage in 16 chapters with just one devoted to pidgins and creoles. He couldn't have done more than some gleaning and the outcome shouldn't be surprising. No one is perfect. Noula69 10:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The individual Noula69 takes himself to be the guardian of the scientific correctness of the creole page. Many of his contributions are biased and reveal a certain point of view, not allowing the exhibition of different points of view in order to assure the neutrality of the article. I am presently without a computer at home, so I'm not capable of explain myself thoroughly. But as soon as I'll have the time, I will gladly show my explanations in order to assure the neutrality of the article. TenIslands 12:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

May I remind the individual TenIslands that when I first got here the creole page was utterly unsourced with room for only one theory, TenIslands' own Gradualist and Developmental Hypothesis? In the meantime, room was made for the presentation of four different families of current theories, including his own. The theory he subscribes to was left unchanged for him to develop to his taste. The page is now more fully sourced except for the sections that wait for his attention according to his theoretical bias. What does he want to do to "assure the neutrality" of the article? Revert to the stade where his theory was the only one current on the page to explain Creole languages? Noula69 20:04, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

On 01:17, 10 September 2007, the article Creole language as a whole got tagged on two counts, by one user Kemet. There were no edit summaries in sight and no reason were given on any of these counts on this talk page or elsewhere. What is more, this user's own Talk page turned out to be a heap of complaints about his disruptive editing all over Wikipedia and none of these complaints seemed to have attracted his attention in any way. So I reverted his edit and added a warning to this user's Talk page. In the meantime, this user has reverted again my edit, putting one of the tags back on top of the article as whole, with an edit summary he left on my own User page.

I'm moving the relevant messages pertaining to this dispute right here to this talk page so that the whole community of contributing editors who may be concerned, working on this or related articles, might be able to react. What follows here are my original warning to him, his response, and my reactions to his queries. Noula69 10:09, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello,
I appreciate the decision to have Arends et al as a guideline for the structure of this article. Since this book is now 12 years old, it does not include more recent developments. In order not to disrupt the overall structure, I have added the recent developments to the end. I have given the most prominent sources for these claims as a start, but I can find some more specific ones, just in case someone feels that these things are nonsensical.
I will be away to a conference until the end of this month, and I trust my fellow editors that a fortnight's absence will be tolerated until I can provide more specific bibliographic references.
There are some topics missing, e.g. the rise of L2A as a paradigm, but there is room to add that in.
There is also some overlap with preceding sections, so we will have to find a way how to deal with Arends et al and the current research So long Jasy jatere 13:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a "new" language, sometimes with features that are not inherited from any apparent source, without however qualifying in any appreciable way as a mixed language.

The current definition sentence says at least twice what a creole isn't (namely, it isn't what everybody has been saying it was). But as far as I can see, it doesn't say what it is. If the Flying Spaghetti Monster creates a new language out of the blue, it would seem to fit the current definition. Compare the crystal clear definition of Britannica "Any pidgin language that has become established as the native language of a speech community" (hopelessly outdated, I presume?) and Encarta "a language that began as a pidgin but has become the native language of a community" (likewise outdated?), and any other general reference tool (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=creole), as well as the Wikipedias in other languages such as German, French and Spanish. All of these may be wrong or biased, but at least they say something, whereas the current definition says practically nothing.

Also, the "however" in the sentence puzzles me, because the bit before it and the bit after it are not opposed to each other and are both vehement denials of the usual definition.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:03, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, there is perhaps something missing. I think the notion that is User:Noula69 has added to the page earlier this year is that it's not actually certain if creoles all come from pidgins. What do you suggest we do to clarify it in that first paragraph? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, as I said, I have no idea what is "true" or even accepted in modern scholarship apart from what I'm reading here and in the other reference tools above, so I can't be very helpful here. Now, if we take what you're saying, obviously the simplest way to put it is to write that: 1. a creole is commonly defined as a nativized pidgin, but 2. it's not certain/it is disputed whether all creoles come from pidgins. However, this makes little sense - if we still call them creoles despite their not coming from pidgins, then we clearly have another definition in mind. And what is that definition? No idea. Reading the article, I get the impression that it is uncontroversial that a creole language is 1.a native language; and 2.originating, OK maybe not entirely, but at least to a significant extent, from a mixture of sorts. But a generalization/synthesis of this type would need to be sourced (by the way, the current one isn't sourced either). Mentioning and sourcing both the traditional definition and the "anti-traditional" one separately would probably be easier, but unfortunately I don't know what the meaningful "anti-traditional" one would be (maybe "creoles are a myth"?) and whether it exists so as to be sourced. So it's the usual thing - you have to be acquainted with the material, but people who are also tend to have a strong POV which reflects on their edits. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 00:36, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The current definition is: A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages. So that makes English a creole, right? Mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, French. If English is not regarded as a creole then the definition of creole needs to be a bit tighter.06:35, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Currently, the article has a few sections that end in something like "Sources: McWhorter 1998, 2001, 2005, Linguistic Typology 5 2/3 (2001), Wittmann 1999." While these sources are listed in the bibliography, I think we need to use inline citation so we know what is being sourced and what isn't. Knowing the page numbers is also important. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I've replaced the refimprove tag with citations needed - in the notes section. —Viriditas | Talk 10:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I read the intro several times and still only have a vague idea of what this article is about. It jumps directly into a debate without giving a primer on what the context is. Is this a type of language or a specific language, and if it's specific, who speaks it? Am I the only one getting confused? Vicarious (talk) 19:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

You're not the only one (see #Definition above). Not sure how to remedy your confusion since it seems fairly clear to me (someone who's familiar with the subject). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Damn, I shouldn't have disclosed that I wasn't. Then you would have paid attention to what the "definition" sentence literally says, when context-free - namely that a creole language is any language created from nothing by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Shouldn't be much to ask from a linguist, either.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, there's no evidence refuting FSM intervention. The Flying Spaghetti Monster has nothing if not a sense of humor. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:57, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

The joke had a point. Anyway, let me try this approach then: the definition is uncited, so I'm placing a {{Fact}} tag.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:28, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I've tried to address some of the issues of concern here. I would appreciate some help though in the cross-referencing, especially as far as the FSM definition (a def. as valid as any other) is concerned. Eklir (talk) 00:29, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't pay close attention to your edits until I noticed that one definition of creole is "any language created from nothing by the Flying Spaghetti Monster or any other force to foster in-group cohesion." Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. While I must assume good faith on your part, I don't have to assume competence. I'm deleting that section and expect inline citations for any further edits that you make. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:09, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like it to be clear that I'm not Eklir, though I'm flattered by the fact that he used my wording. :) However, in the process of introducing it, he also removed my citation request for the definition sentence, so I'm going to restore it together with the hidden explanation. The sentence is still uncited and I still insist that it sounds very strange, makes little sense and is possibly POV (at least some linguists seem to think a creole can "qualify as a mixed language" at least in some "appreciable way"). --91.148.159.4 (talk) 18:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

All right, I've addressed your concern. I was hoping User:Noula69 would come back to defend his edits (see above) to that lead section, but he has not. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:05, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

OK. Now, as far as I understand, Noula is or represents the views of linguist Henri Wittmann, http://homepage.mac.com/noula/, whose papers he also cites. It's great that the article is edited by an expert. But it is also very important to preserve the neutrality of the article, without presenting Wittmanns's view as the only true one. This concerns in particular the definition sentence - whatever it is, it needs to be sourced in a way that shows that it is not contested and does not take a side in the scholarly debate which clearly exists and in which Wittmann is a part. The same applies to other general statements. For example, "Prototype as a typological yardstick to creoleness" (1999) (http://homepage.mac.com/noula/ling/1999a-prototype.html) is obviously part of a rather heated online discussion (the heatedness can be illustrated by the fact that Wittmann called his opponents such as McWhorter "true believers that can't be outargued in any useful scientific fashion"). Obviously this type of publication shouldn't be used as a single source for the claim that "efforts to define creoles in any meaningful way have failed", because it only shows that Wittmann thinks that, while McWhorter apparently strongly disagreed with the opinion that his efforts had failed; rather, the article needs a source showing which view, if any, is generally or at least most widely accepted today. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:02, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I did a comb through and some questions came up:

1. There are a number of references to what looks like an online forum amongst linguists. This doesn't feel reliable enough and I'm having difficulty converting to harvard referencing. Can somebody clarify this stuff?
2. What are "external history" and "internal history"?
3. "Particularly troubling is the evidence that…" troubling to whom?
4. I've removed this text:

   Taylor's latest revision of the facts^[1] relating to the similarities in grammatical structure among the Atlantic creoles seem striking, especially when taking into account that these creoles evolved mostly in communities which were isolated from one another. However, as it is, the data is open to be reclaimed to abet the African substratum hypothesis of Michael Parkvall (2000) or is open to challenge with data from non-creole congeners besides being readable in a universalist perspective à la Bickerton

   It doesn’t make sense partly because it relies on the reader knowing what Taylor’s revisions are and partly because it uses a dense style. This needs clarification before we put it back in.

I'll probably come up with more questions as I go through the rest of the article.— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I've also removed

"In some cases, the modified source language might be the substrate language when warranted by a homogeneous substrate;^[2] in other cases, the modified source language clearly is what creolists identify as the superstrate language;^[3] In some examples, no single source language can be identifiable.^[4]

The same approach must be applied to identifying individual features as inherited or non-inherited and to separating the qualities of of creole languages from mixed languages such as Michif, especially when relexification is somehow claimed to be an important aspect.^[5]

they don't make much all that much sense.— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:00, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I think I can imagine what the first of the two paragraphs means, except that the third reference (DeGraff 2001: On the origin of Creoles: A Cartesian critique of Neo-Darwinian linguistics, ) seems unsuitable in partly the same way as the Wittmann Linguist List post. The statement that Creoles may have no single source language is a little puzzling per se. Now, a brief survey of the cited essay, starting from the introductory sentences, shows that it is intended to be a "revolutionary" text, deconstructing the mainstream myths, debunking the "ancient" and "prevalent dogma in Creolistics". This is all very nice, but "the prevalent dogma" among experts, right or wrong, is precisely what is supposed to prevail on Wikipedia, because the NPOV policy specifies that all significant views should be reflected in proportion to their prevalence. An encyclopedia and especially Wikipedia is much more "conservative" and less "creative" than a scholarly article, even though one might be misled by the superficially similar referencing style. A radical scholarly critique of the mainstream view should be mentioned, but not described as true and correct, nor used to support unusual or key statements. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure where to put this or who I should approach about this, but the link in the first paragraph to Robert Hall doesn't seem to make much sense.

Konrad Rybka has created some articles detailing several theories of Creole genesis. I suggest we merge these articles into this one once we've eliminated the "essay" style that they're written in and unsourced statements. These are the articles I'm referring to

• Foreigner talk theory (merged)
• The Language Bioprogram theory
• Imperfect second language learning theory (merged)
• Creole Monogenesis Theory (merged with Monogenetic theory of pidgins)
• Slave trade and nautical language theory of Creole Genesis (merged)
• Superstrate Theories (merged)
• Substrate Theories (merged)
• Evolutionary Theory (redirected to evolution)

I've gone through the first two and cleaned them up, so they're ready to merge (though one could argue that the second one is developed enough to be its own article). Thoughts? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:05, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

All right, I've merged the ones I think should be merged. The bioprogram article seems strong enough to stand on its own (especially with the nifty table that I added). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:37, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Really, for someone who has no background in linguistics, they'll have a seriously difficult time trying to understand what the first sentence of the introduction means (without clicking on those links, that is). Can we maybe change its definition to something slightly simpler? And it is true that in some instances "creole" simply means the combination of more than one language. Colipon+(T) 05:33, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a reader to click on a link to get an understanding of "pidgin" if they don't already have one. That's one of the main reasons we have such links. There's just no lay word or phrase that's equivalent. As for nativization, we could instead say "...a stable language that originates seemingly as a pidgin that has aquired native speakers." — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Kotabatubara (talk) 20:13, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

It looks like there is some bug where it says "monkey booty" in the "Classification of creoles> Whose creole problem" section —Preceding unsigned comment added by Interfaced (talk • contribs) 22:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't see it. I guess the problem has been fixed. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City guide book, creole language is mentioned as an official language in little haiti. I'm not sure if it's mentioned on the article but in the guide there is tottaly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.103.248.236 (talk) 20:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That hardly seems notable. Plus, it's actually a reference to Haitian Creole. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I have some objections to the presentation of this section.

(1) What is "L2 learning"? The term is not described in the article, and the uninformed reader must do a separate search to find its meaning. Perhaps it should be rewritten as "second language learning" or some such.

(2) The first sentence of this section assumes what might be too specific a context:

"The imperfect L2 learning hypothesis claims that pidgins are primarily the result of the imperfect L2 learning of the dominant lexifier language by the slaves."

Not all pidgins arise from a slave-master relationship. Is the imperfect L2 learning hypothesis only attempting to describe pidgins that do arise from such a relationship? If so, this context should be made explicit. If not, then sentence should be changed. (Indeed, this is a concern that permeates the article as a whole: it seems to be assumed that the only creoles in existence are those formed from European interaction with Africans.)

Cpryby (talk) 13:14, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The following claim is unsourced:

"Features that are said to be true of all (or most) creole languages are in fact true of all isolating languages."

I have tagged it as such. The sentence should also be rewritten to remove the weasel words "said to be."

Cpryby (talk) 13:22, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

it has repeatedly been claimed that the Creole Prototype is more indicative of isolating languages than of creoles, and that the "tonal criterion" was only included to get rid of otherwise annoying cases like Chinese. You find a lot of discussion of the relation between isolating languages and creoles in Linguistic Typology 5:2/3, that is from 2001. For the claim you tagged, one could use the following quote from Matthews&Ansaldo from the same issue (p.313)

"In a typological diachronic approach the class of creoles dissolves: creoles are a subset of isolating languages and each of their properties are [sic] all attested in “non-creoles” as well."

That is not exactly the same as what is stated in the wp article now, but I think the two statements can be reconciled. Jasy jatere (talk) 08:42, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

As a mostly Chomskyian linguist, I am confused about the current definitions and wording of this page. During my time with coursework, I mostly studied Neurolinguistics and Syntax, so I'm definitely not an expert on Creoles and the theory of Language development and change. However, what I remember from talks by Creolists and Sociolinguists, as well as Psychologists and from Introduction to Linguistics, a Creole is typically not designated as a "language." During discussion, the most common term was just Creole. I specifically remember the termnology "creole language" as being discouraged. If this isn't universally agreed upon, it might be good to add some content to the page about this academic discussion.

My biggest concern is that from reading this, the article does not seem to represent modern Creole theory. This might be expected as most of the reference content and much of the related publications date back to the 60s and 70s. I may be off the mark by saying this, but I suspect that the hypotheses of language change and specifically creole formation vary as per different understandings of the language model, or, specifically, the relevance of Morphology. Especially after reading the introduction, I was offput. I'm sure that the theoretical existence of a unified morphological component or a Lexicon change how one can view the characteristics and formation of a Creole in terms of "words inherited from the parent languages."

In any case, reading this feels like reading a paper written fifty years ago written by an English "Grammarian." I am curious if anyone else feels a necessity to revamp the article -- specifically in the vain of updating the article to use language typically accepted by linguists and definitions of words as defined by linguistics (I'm mostly thinking of refining the usage of the word grammar, for instance). Dantiston (talk) 23:20, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Revamping seems fine. But I'm surprised if your creolist and sociolinguist friends tell you that creoles aren't languages or aren't real languages. I've heard that said in passing if pidgins, which modern understanding pegs as the predecessors of creoles, so maybe they're putting them in the same category since there isn't necessarily a fine line between them. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I'll try to make a list of some changes that jumped out at me. The more I think about it, I might have just been thinking of pidgins, though I definitely haven't heard someone say "creole language" before -- just a creole. That may have been what was throwing me off. Speaking of fine line, maybe there needs to be some discussion in the article about the differences. I know I think of a pidgin as secondary communication system between two or more groups of people. The creolization then typically happens when the pidgin is taught to children, and the children gather and make it into their own native language. Of course it's a process, so there's still not distinct point of juncture, but there is definitely a difference.Dantiston (talk) 05:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

There are several Creoles in Australia and all of my colleagues who work on them certainly describe them as being languages. In fact, that's part of the definition of the technical term 'Creole'. Another point, which should I think be in the introduction to the article, is that 'Creole' is a term used in Linguistics to refer to a language that has developed from a Pidgin, which is (again, by definition) not a true language but rather a simplified system of communication used between people who only have irregular or limited contact, but need some level of communication (the usual example is occasional trade contact). This definition is necessary to distinguish Creoles from Mixed Languages, and both of those from language shift situations (where people speaking one language shift to using another, but their original 'substrate' language has effects which result in changes in the language towards which the shift occurs, the 'superstrate'). The various Creolization theories try to address the questions of how/why the extraordinary development from Pidgin to Creole occurs, and why Creoles seem to have so much in common, despite the very diverse background linguistic situations.

While the above is, to some extent, mentioned in the 'Overview' para, I think it should be summarised as clearly as possible for the intro para. For some reason the emphasis seems to be on accurately representing modern theory regards Creoles, but I think we should also make the intro easy for non-specialists to understand--most of them will just read the intro and move on. Dougg (talk) 02:58, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this article could use a map showing places in the world where creole languages are prevalent. It seemed odd to me that it didn't already have one. 70.116.76.173 (talk) 17:27, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

While this subject/page definitely seems to me to be a bit more thorough and complicated than the Pidgin page, the two pages don't seem to quite synch up. In fact, this Creole page seems to be a bit more focused on what appear to be old and outdated theories of Creoles, creole creation, creole development, etc. which may be misleading. I'm not a linguist, so I don't feel I should be editing this too much, but I'm going to try to do some editing to add information, especially from the last paragraph of the Pidgin article which reads:

"Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene, argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged among trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions". Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European slaves, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary."

And, in fact, it appears that, based upon my own reading of the Creole article, the introduction is in great need of clean-up. Their appear to be controversies surrounding the definition and categorization of Creoles and so I"ll see what I can read and learn to try to improve the article, but it would probably be best if someone currently studying and with up-to-date knowledge on this article would expand it (Yes, an expert. Scary, right?). It seems best for wikipedia to try to maintain consistency and clarity, so perhaps clean up is necessary for this article, but, as I said, I'm not really knowledgeable in this area, so it may just have to be left up to someone who is an expert.

Zanotam (talk) 20:44, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a list of creoles that have official status? BigSteve (talk) 08:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Are there any? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 17:48, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Haitian Creole and Tok Pisin are the two that I can think of at the moment.--MacedonianBoy (talk) 17:58, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

This may be nitpicking, but is it really valid to say that the vocabulary consists of cognates? That term typically refers to words with common etymological origin. True, the term is used in foreign language acquisition often to refer collectively to historical cognates, loanwords, etc. Since creoles are not properly dialects of the superstrate(s) nor genetically related varieties, I think it would be more precise to say "words" (if we don't want to make the article extremely technical) or reword it like such:
"The vocabulary of a creole language is (largely supplied) by the parent languages"
Maybe I'm not looking at this issue clearly? Iank125 (talk) 18:59, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Cognates isn't inaccurate, but it is more technical. I like your reword. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:27, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I'll add it then.Iank125 (talk) 00:02, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

No doubt, a creole is understood to have cognates with superstrates. It is a necessary part of the definition. A dialect on the other hand is restricted geographically within the area of the dominant (official, standard as used in public addresses, education, publications, and media) language; mostly they are just pronunciation variants with nary a difference in morphological and syntactical grammar, whereas a creole includes words not from the parent languages and has an altered simplified grammar, some derived from parent languages. A dialect will have cognates with only one parent language, possibly more than for creoles. 74.104.151.38 (talk) 00:44, 26 May 2018 (UTC)Hartmut, 25 May 2018

It was observed, in particular, that definite articles are mostly prenominal in English-based creole languages and English whereas they are generally postnominal in French creoles and in the variety of French that was exported to the colonies in the 17th and 18th century.

If the article is suggesting that Quebec French primarily uses postnominal definite articles, that is not correct. 69.136.131.33 (talk) 22:52, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

You might want to read the article the note refers to (Fournier 1998). It appears that the etymological definite articles no longer function as such taking on classifier functions remindful of some African languages whereas the syntactic segments signalling definiteness appear mostly in post nominal positions. 24.226.208.126 (talk) 04:50, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

My advisor once gave an interesting cautionary example: In Russenorsk, there is a tendency towards verb-finality (at least when adverbs are present in the sentence), a feature which is found neither in Russian nor in Norwegian. Universalists/exceptionalists are quick to point to such examples as evidence that there is some kind of innate grammar default which comes to the fore here, but the real reason is different according to him (if I remember this correctly): There is a stereotype in Russian that foreigner talk is verb-final, so this supposedly influenced the rise of this feature in Russenork. The origin of this stereotype, however, is not found in Northern Europe but in Central Asia, where native speakers of Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages tended to carry verb-finality from their L1 into Russian. (Also compare Kyakhta Russian–Chinese Pidgin.) Also, I remember now that another prof mentioned that the Russian spoken in Dagestan typically occurs in a pidginised or in any case morphologically strongly impoverished form, but it was not formed by direct contact between Russian and local Northeast Caucasian languages, but by contact of Russian with Kumyk, the traditional lingua franca of the region. Again, a researcher not aware of these complications could come to wrong conclusions. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:11, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

The lead defines a creole as follows:

"a creole is a stable, natural language that has developed from a pidgin"

However, in the overview section it is stated:

"Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene, argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin."

Thus it would appear that the origin of creoles is a (debated) detail/aspect of creoles rather than the essence of what a creole is. Which begs the question - what exactly is (the definition of) a creole? Yaakovaryeh (talk) 16:15, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

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This isn't English. Points in time aren't sudden. The expression might be recast to the effect that the emergence of the creole takes just a few years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.153.173.106 (talk) 10:46, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

See also above, § Caption

"ti moun" resembles the French "petits monde". I don't know the word "ni" but in the wiktionary definitions, Wiktionary:ni could imply "our". So "our little ones play here" could be a better literal translation. SlightSmile 14:20, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Slightsmile: The current translation is correct, and also "literal" from the Antillean Creole perspective. Ni means "to have" and "there is/are", see here; ti-moun literally means "little people", but is the common term for "children". –Austronesier (talk) 14:54, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Cr. 'la' means Fr. 'ici' ('here'). Fr. 'là' is 'there'. Although in the common speech 'là' can also be used to denote what is 'near'.'

Cr. 'ka' is the present; it means that the children are here 'now'. The second Creole sentence could be translated as 'il y a [des] petits gens jouant ici !' in 'standard' French, or as 'il y a [des] petits gens [qui] jouent là !' in 'common' French. Azerty82 (talk) 00:18, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! So, changes needed! (Thanks for acting on the petit[e]s typo.)

Do U think it's best to offer French translations in what U've termed the common speech? - or standard? Maybe it depends on whether the difference is one of dialect or Register? If it's just register, I'd think that's a complication we don't need to bring into it, and we should use common. If it's dialect - I guess the standard dialect will be clearer to Wikipedia's readership generally?

-- SquisherDa (talk) 09:03, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

By 'common' I meant 'colloquial speech', distinguished from 'formal' or 'standard' French'. The Creole text is closer to 'colloquial French' than to 'formal French', that is why I mentioned the use of 'là' as 'here' rather than 'there'.

From the closest translation to the formal one: 'Lève ton pied, il y a des enfants qui jouent là' > 'Levez le pied, des enfants jouent ici'.

Now word by word:

Lévé pied (Lift foot/Lève [le] pied) aw (of you/à toi)

Ni (There are/Il y a) ti moun (small people/petits gens)* ka ([present tense]) joué la (play here/jouent ici).

* = ti moun is a contraction of French 'petit monde' (English: 'small people' or 'small crowd'). Azerty82 (talk) 09:41, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

In my terms, the difference U describe comes across as a matter of register, so for the translations I'd go for the common form. Does that seem right to U?

Ka: is that a grammatical particle? so tht (*)Ni ti moun joué la! would be anomalous (= outside the grammar)? (or would mean a different tense / aspect?) Or is it more specific (maybe even conveying some emphasis)? so the translations should include something meaning "now"?

Thanks again for your help with this, by the way.

-- SquisherDa (talk) 10:05, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

There a is nice overview of tenses/aspects in Antillean Creole. Lack of a tense marker would result in a default reading as past tense. –Austronesier (talk) 10:29, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes exactly, the past tense must be assumed without a marker. SquisherDa you can go with the common form, since it's the closest to the Creole text; it'll be easier for the reader to see the involved mutations.

PS: 'ka' is an auxiliary that indicates that the verb 'joué' (to play) is at the present tense; it's similar to the auxiliary 'will' indicating a future tense in English. Azerty82 (talk) 11:01, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Great! I aim to get back to the article itself later in the day.

Fascinating! - a language in which the unmarked aspect / tense is the present perfective! Makes a lot of sense - but still makes me wonder about the sociolinguistics of the origin context!

-- SquisherDa (talk) 11:28, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

  Translations are OK : Unless I've got muddled somewhere along the line, our conclusion is tht the article as it stands - = with Azerty82's typo fix - has all four translations as they should be. (My queries, above, about the semantics of ka and about translating la, are both cleared in favor of no change.)

I'll have another go at making the caption easier to read: but, as before, without changing the content.

-- SquisherDa (talk) 13:24, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

You could even replace '[qui] jouent là' with 'jouant là'. It's a more formal form but it's probably closer to the original Creole structure, denoting that the verb is at the present tense and the action ongoing. (i.e., in English: '[who] are playing there' > 'playing there'). Azerty82 (talk) 13:36, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I kind-of assumed Cr.joué was from Fr.jouer, the infinitive? (rather than from a participle, such as jouant) -- SquisherDa (talk) 21:35, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I mean, 'ka' is a present progressive. If you take 'ka joué' as a single block, it means 'play [present progressive tense]', or 'playing':'jouant'. Azerty82 (talk) 22:53, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Ah - I see what U mean. I was thinking more of the 'etymology' of the Cr. inflected form. I'm inclined to favor the earlier proposal, for the literal translation: [qui] jouent. I kind-of like jouant (? or jouants), because yes, it seems to match the Creole more neatly - in both ways: grammatical structure and inflectional 'etymology'. But I'm afraid tht as a literal translation into French it's likely to be criticised as not actually real French (of any variety). Or perhaps I'm wrong about that? (French isn't exactly my specialist subject!) --SquisherDa (talk) 07:16, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Material re Old to Middle English challenged by @Megaman. I inserted link to entire sourced article discussing hypothesis in more detail. (IMO that article could also use some reorganization, as this one could.) Should these simply be copied into this material? Part of my purpose was introduce *early* the idea that creoles are a fundamental linguistic development, with an exceptionally prominent example, not merely a recent historical artifact with modest numbers of speakers of less familiar languages.

Can we find a suitable way improve the presentation of those points? Jmacwiki (talk) 13:50, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I have reverted back. Information in the lead should be sourced, not necessarily in the lead itself, but somewhere else in the article if it is obvious from the TOC where to look for it. But, without matching detailed info in this article, the link to the other page is not enough.

I think the best way to integrate the material is somewhere in the section "Controversy", maybe in a small subsection with a hatnote to the main article. –Austronesier (talk) 13:57, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Usefully concrete and thoughtful. Thanks, I will consider. I also encourage you to consider how to make the point about how fundamental (and arguably familiar) the process is. Jmacwiki (talk) 14:03, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't say too much here about it as long as the main article still is in a somewhat frustrating state, as you also have noted yesterday. IMO, the "construction work" is more urgently needed there than here. As I have mentioned in a late reply to an old comment, John McWhorter has initiated a lively discussion about imperfect adult-acquisition of languages, and although many peers disagree with him, the discussion has helped to develop a more clinal view on reduction phenomena typically associated with creolization. This includes the simplifcation of English inflection which some consider to be diagnostic of creolization. –Austronesier (talk) 14:21, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out some back-story. Concur that the other article has more notable problems, perhaps even quite fixable (but not by me, mostly). I do hope this can be ironed out, as the underlying thesis could have broad interest, but both articles seem to be written mostly for professional linguists, or at least their grad students. Jmacwiki (talk) 20:37, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Comment by 72.80.121.203 moved from article: The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian Creole, with over ten million native speakers,^[1] followed by Tok Pisin with about 4 million, most of whom are second-language speakers [Citation? Nigerian Pidgin English, a Creole language, has more native and total speakers than Haitian Creole]. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 17:57, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

See Special:Diff/1066506369, Special:Diff/1066496776. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 18:01, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

The article states: "Mufwene (2002) argues that some Romance languages are potential creoles but that they are not considered as such by linguists because of a historical bias against such a view." I wanted to investigate this further, but it seems there is no actual "Mufwene (2002)" cited. Mufwene's website doesn't sort his publications by year, either. Does anyone know what source this is referring to? ZeegoTheDeer (talk) 15:43, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I’m Cajun born in south LA. The sign says “pick up your feet, children are playing here. There is no Chinese or other exotic influence on Cajun or creole language. 2600:1700:7060:2A10:A8CB:4F25:AA27:ED9E (talk) 04:17, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

What's your point?? BilCat (talk) 04:45, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Wolfdog, in reference to this edit, and I'll tag you too BilCat because you have an interest in this, I did NOT check all the "first few sources" but I checked the first one, the book by Calvet, which does have the term "simplification" (p. 169)--but only to describe the origin of the term "creole". On p. 174, he uses the term "advanced", and says "the difference between certain linguistic forms is quite simply a phenomenon of linguistic evolution". On the next page, he talks about such a movement as "a self-regulated phenomenon of dialectal evolution". The term "simplification" simply does not apply, and does no justice to reality: it is pejorative and POV. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 01:25, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Ha, I'm not sure how you interpreted the Calvet source as "the first one"; to me it appears as the fourth citation on the page. The source labeled "The study of pidgins and creoles" (which could be better cited) says, while discussing some of the subjectivity of what makes a creole, "Creole languages are often assumed to be more simple than other languages. There is a wide-spread belief that creole languages are not just morphologically, but also syntactically and phonologically simpler than other languages" (9). The second source, "Language Varieties", straightforwardly defined pidgins as a "simplified form of language" and then creoles as "when a pidgin becomes a first language of a new generation" (118). The next source admittedly addresses some of the controversy that concerns you. (Obviously "simplicity" is subjective and not some technically defined term in linguistics. Still, McWhorter, a creolist quoted variously throughout this page, argues "The world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars" and even has an article with that very title). Anyway, can you think of a better wording? Perhaps we can qualify the type of simplifying, if you have sources that can support that? I don't think we can just leave the sentence as saying "mixing" since WP already has a mixed language page. Wolfdog (talk) 02:19, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

No tanks, mum. Mi a sit dis wun out. BilCat (talk) 02:28, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

• Translation into from (poorly written) Jamaican Patois/Creole into plain English: "No thanks, ma'am. I will sit this one out." (I do speak, but can't write, Jamaican Patois, so while its use was intended as humorous code-switching, it wasn't meant to be disrespectful to anyone. I spoke Patois as a child from age three on, so it's my second language, though I am no longer fluent.) BilCat (talk) 19:13, 25 January 2023 (UTC)