CREOLE & CREOLISATION

BY MELAM DANIATI
Atlantic Slave Trade
• What is creole language?
PIDGINS AND CREOLES
• The similarities
• The differences
 Characteristic Features of Creole

• First, creole had been learned by

children as the first language
• a creole had more regular structured
grammar and rich in vocabulary
• the status of creole which differed
from pidgin
How different are these creoles with the
parent languages?
• E.g. from Bislama, Vanuatu
This is my house
Hem ya haos blong mi
Him here house belong me

I have already been to town

Mi bin long taon finis.
Me been long town finish
 Haitian Creole
• the sentence Ki jan ou rele? "What is your
name?" which corresponds to
French Comment vous appelez-vous?
Creole French English
ki qui what
jan genre manner
ou vous you
appeler héler to call
 Creolization
• a “cultural process that took place within a
creole society – that is, within a tropical
colonial plantation polity based on slavery. As
such, Carribean islands were attached to and
dependent on the British; for it’s economic
well-being, its proection, its cultural models.”
(Brathwaite,1971)
 Consequences of creolisation

• Racial Conflicts;
• Split sense of identity – in between Europe
and Africa
• Diverse and dinamic culture (Walcott on
music and language)
Creolisation process
 Theories of origin
• 1) The baby-talk theory
• 2) Independent parallel development theory
• 3) Nautical jargon theory
• 4) Monogenetic/relexification theory
• 5) Universalist theory
Creole and Pidgin Map
THANK YOU FOR YOUR
ATTENTION