tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/creole-5988/articlesCreole – The Conversation2022-11-01T12:45:19Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1931942022-11-01T12:45:19Z2022-11-01T12:45:19ZEveryday African American Vernacular English is a dialect born from conflict and creativity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491457/original/file-20221024-25-36hsxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Linguists believe Black English might have originated from West African or Creole languages.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/megaphone-message-royalty-free-image/1348357242">Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/aa5842">Dr. Walter Edwards</a> is a professor of linguistics at Wayne State University, Michigan, where he teaches courses on <a href="https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-ebonics-african-american-english">African American Vernacular English</a>, sociolinguistics and American dialects. Until Aug. 31, 2022, he was also the director of the Humanities Center at Wayne State. Below are highlights from interviews with The Conversation U.S. and another <a href="https://www.michiganradio.org/podcast/stateside/2022-02-22/stateside-podcast-african-american-vernacular-from-guyana-to-detroit">online interview</a>. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em> </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Exactly what is African American Vernacular English? A linguist explains.</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>What brought you to your field of research?</strong> </p>
<p>I grew up in the poorest section of the poorest section of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Georgetown-Guyana">Georgetown, Guyana</a>, the nation’s capital. I grew up speaking what is called <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110280128.265/html">conservative Guyanese creole</a>, a stigmatized language variety that was and is considered broken English by most Guyanese and which was not what the teachers wanted when I went to school. Guyana was a former British colony, and English was the official language, and so kids in school weren’t allowed to speak Creole, or what we call <a href="https://ewave-atlas.org/languages/30">Creolese</a>. It was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43672613">banned</a>. So, of course, it was very difficult for people like me to succeed in school and elsewhere in the society that required English. But some of us did, and managed to learn standard English enough to pass exams and to get scholarships to go to college.
I studied linguistics and English while I was a student at the <a href="https://www.uog.edu.gy/">University of Guyana</a>, where I met professor <a href="http://ling.hawaii.edu/bickerton-memorial-page/">Derek Bickerton</a>, who had a keen understanding of Guyanese Creole and its linguistic systems. His work made me realize that my native vernacular was worthy of study and was a real language. So I did a master’s degree in linguistics in England and went back to Guyana to teach linguistics at the University of Guyana.</p>
<p>Later, I emigrated to the U.S. to teach linguistics at Wayne State University and began researching and teaching what academics call African American Vernacular English, or the everyday speech of African American people, also known as “Black English” or Ebonics. I became interested in how both Guyanese Creole and African American Vernacular English are the result of “<a href="https://linguistics.uchicago.edu/contact-linguistics">contact linguistics</a>”, or communication that develops when speakers of different languages come together. This phenomenon has led to the creation of the vast number of <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/contact-language-linguistics-1689917">languages and dialects spoken today</a>. </p>
<p><strong>What is the biggest misconception about African American Vernacular English?</strong> </p>
<p>The biggest <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/%7Ezwicky/aave-is-not-se-with-mistakes.pdf">misconception</a> – in fact it’s a widespread misconception – is that this form of everyday speech is just broken English; that people who speak it are unable to speak standard English or too lazy to do it. It is a misconception that has been there since the beginning of the <a href="https://www.garfieldmessenger.org/6418/articles/news/a-brief-history-of-aave/">inhabitation of this country by Black people</a>. Stigmatized as it is, Black English is as <a href="https://oraal.uoregon.edu/facts">sophisticated and diversified as any other linguistic variety</a>; it’s a testament to the achievements of the Black people. We should celebrate the creative work that enslaved people in this country did in devising, synthesizing and bringing together the linguistic varieties that they encountered in this hostile environment.</p>
<p><strong>What effect have the internet and social media had on the acceptance and recognition of this speech?</strong></p>
<p>The internet has had both a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/17/Black-english-misidentified-internet-slang/">positive and negative effect</a>. Positively, it has made nonstandard writing more acceptable. It has a negative effect when when non-Black speakers use it incorrectly to sound cool. For example, I have heard such expressions like “He be a doctor,” which would never be used by a competent speaker of this dialect to mean “He is a doctor”. There is an erroneous perception that the nonfinite verb “be” can be <a href="https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Outline_of_AAVE_grammar___Jack_Sidnell_2002_1_Afr.pdf">stuck in anywhere</a>.</p>
<p><strong>What can educators do today to subvert stigma?</strong></p>
<p>Frankly, any educator who is involved in the education of Black English-speaking children or adults should <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/30047356">take the time to learn</a> the basic linguistic structure of the variety of Black English in the way they would learn the structure of Spanish if they were teaching Spanish-speaking children. There are nontechnical <a href="https://oraal.uoregon.edu/resources/educators">books and articles</a> on African American Vernacular English linguistics available. In the classrooms, teachers should <a href="https://www.thewindwardschool.org/the-windward-institute/the-beacon/article/%7Eboard/beacon-archives/post/bidialectal-bridges-addressing-the-need-for-inclusionary-language-instruction">empower</a> Black English-speaking children by characterizing them as speakers of <a href="https://lamarcahispanica.byu.edu/files/2011/10/Bidialectalism.pdf">two dialects</a>, and help those students to translate the language into Standard English.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/standard-english-1692137">Standard English</a> is the dialect of English that is chosen to be the official, most prestigious dialect of a particular English-speaking country, principally because it is the everyday speech of the most influential group in the society. It is by no means the most linguistically superior variety; just the most socially prestigious. Most dictionaries and grammar books describe its properties, and it is used as the default variety in schools and courts and other places. Teachers should also help the other children to respect the authenticity of African American Vernacular English and the linguistic capabilities of its speakers.</p>
<p><strong>What would you say to Black students and professionals who have to code-switch constantly?</strong></p>
<p>I have often said that Black Americans are the most linguistically sophisticated Americans because they can code-switch – alternate between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation – and style-shift with amazing facility. This ability <a href="https://www.ventrislearning.com/wp-content/uploads/Wheeler_Ed_Leadership_April_08.pdf">displays sociolinguistic competence and verbal nimbleness</a>. Regrettably, our society forces these speakers to code-switch in order to avoid social stigma in contexts where Standard English is expected. If we embraced the rich diversity of American English, we would accept that information can be coherently communicated in any of our American dialects.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Walter Edwards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>African American Vernacular English is a stigmatized dialect that is still ridiculed in education and the workplace. Its speakers are coherent and intelligent communicators, but remain disadvantaged.Walter Edwards, Professor of English, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1784482022-03-17T14:56:21Z2022-03-17T14:56:21ZChagos Islands: Chagossians in exile are fighting to keep their culture alive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452755/original/file-20220317-23-1is6m15.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 2019, Chagossian sega was listed as world heritage by Unesco.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chagos.online/files/original/6a0e1054c226709734611ce919d01340.JPG">University of Edinburgh</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Olivier Bancoult, Liseby Elysé, Suzelle Baptiste, Rosemonde Bertin and Marcel Humbert <a href="https://theconversation.com/chagos-islands-mauritiuss-latest-challenge-to-uk-shows-row-over-sovereignty-will-not-go-away-177381">set off</a> on the Bleu de Nîmes for the Chagos archipelago in February 2022, it marked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/12/exiled-chagos-islanders-return-without-uk-officials-for-first-time">the first time</a> exiled Chagos Islanders had returned without UK officials. On the surface, the expedition was both scientific (to survey Blenheim Reef) and political (the Mauritian flag was symbolically hoisted). </p>
<p>Mauritian officials had carefully orchestrated the trip to highlight three key disputes: the maritime border between Mauritius and Maldives; the UK’s ongoing <a href="https://theconversation.com/chagos-mauritius-challenges-british-colonialism-in-a-case-with-major-implications-102680">colonial administration</a> of Chagos; and the feasibility of resettlement. For the Chagossians, however, it was an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60349040">emotional trip home</a>.</p>
<p>News footage showed them <a href="https://youtu.be/L0Swvk6R0gs">kneeling</a> on the sand and coming together in prayer as soon as they disembarked in the Peros Banhos atoll. Later, they <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60349040">removed coconuts</a> from the floor of the now roofless church and again <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/11/i-will-be-free-excitement-grows-as-cruise-ship-nears-chagos-islands">prayed together</a>. </p>
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<p>They laid flowers on their ancestors’ graves, cleared overgrown vegetation, moved <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/12/exiled-chagos-islanders-return-uk-disputed-archipelago-mauritius">a stone monument</a> commemorating a previous visit and installed a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2022/feb/26/the-chagos-islanders-taking-back-their-birthplace-from-the-british-they-uprooted-us-video?CMP=share_btn_tw">cross</a> to commemorate this visit. They danced on the beach. They sang. And on their return to Mauritius, members of the <a href="https://thechagosrefugeesgroup.com/">Chagos Refugees Group</a> gathered to feast on fish they brought from the islands.</p>
<p>Over two decades, I have conducted research with Chagossian communities in Mauritius and the UK. In the context of forced displacement, protracted dislocation and geographical dispersal, these communities – though chronically marginalised and fractured – continue to pass on vital knowledge of their homeland through music, cuisine and language. </p>
<h2>Forcible disruption</h2>
<p>When the UK government <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-and-uk-worked-together-to-recolonise-the-chagos-islands-and-evict-chagossians-177636">depopulated</a> the Chagos archipelago in the late 1960s and early 1970s, thereby creating the British Indian Ocean Territory, about 1,500 people were forcibly displaced to Mauritius or Seychelles. Because they could take only very few belongings with them, the community has lost – or rather, has been denied access to – the kind of objects, monuments, buildings and sites that often connect people to places. </p>
<p>In the absence of such tangible cultural heritage, intangible cultural heritage processes can prove crucial in maintaining that connection. For Chagossians, their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12402">coconut-based cuisine</a>, their <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/saas/18/4/j.1469-8676.2010.00126.x.xml">Kreol language</a> and their <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4623072">sega tambour music</a> are this link. </p>
<p>Today, however, only one third, roughly, of the exiled Islanders, are still alive. Given that they alone retain that cultural knowledge, the wider Chagossian community is rightly concerned that it will be lost as they pass away.</p>
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<img alt="An older man shows a child how to crack a coconut." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452753/original/file-20220317-27-1gv5tre.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452753/original/file-20220317-27-1gv5tre.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452753/original/file-20220317-27-1gv5tre.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452753/original/file-20220317-27-1gv5tre.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452753/original/file-20220317-27-1gv5tre.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452753/original/file-20220317-27-1gv5tre.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452753/original/file-20220317-27-1gv5tre.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chagossian elders are the repositories of traditional knowledge – culinary and cultural – that risks being lost as they pass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chagos.online/exhibits/show/coconut-preparation/item/168">University of Edinburgh</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13527258.2018.1555671">My research</a> shows that the loss of Chagossian cultural heritage is the direct result of historical injustices and ongoing marginalisation. The British government’s forcible removal <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17411912.2012.641733?needAccess=true">disrupted</a> the processes by which cultures change over time. </p>
<p>Distinctions between Chagossian and other Creole cultures have become central to <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781847797896/">the Chagossian community’s struggle</a> for their right of return. On the one hand, they must emphasise the endurance and distinctiveness of their culture with regards to their Mauritian or Seychellois counterparts. As one Chagossian elder told me, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have our own culture, they took us from our islands, but we have kept our culture. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the other hand, to show that they are victims worthy of recompense, they must emphasise the cultural losses and fragmentation that they have suffered. Another Chagossian elder put it plainly: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our culture that we had on the islands is dying out.</p>
</blockquote>
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<img alt="A girl in a purple top watches as a old man with white hair and a blue cap weaves a basket." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452759/original/file-20220317-19-1kxodp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452759/original/file-20220317-19-1kxodp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452759/original/file-20220317-19-1kxodp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452759/original/file-20220317-19-1kxodp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452759/original/file-20220317-19-1kxodp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452759/original/file-20220317-19-1kxodp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452759/original/file-20220317-19-1kxodp3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An elder demonstrates traditional basket weaving techniques.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chagos.online/files/original/c5e65e084609bfea7726f568c3f0f6f1.JPG">University of Edinburgh</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Transmitting knowledge</h2>
<p>Between 2017 and 2018, in collaboration with the Chagos Refugees Group and other partners in Mauritius and the UK, I led a community engagement project aiming to address this injustice. The idea was to support displaced Chagossians to valorise and preserve their intangible cultural heritage. At workshops coordinated by Olivier Bancoult and his team in Mauritius and by Sabrina Jean and her team in the UK, elders shared <a href="https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.12402">their knowledge</a> of medicinal plants, coconut preparation, coconut handicrafts, coconut-based cuisine, musical instruments and song and dance with the younger generations.</p>
<p>We showed the photographs, films and artefacts resulting from these workshops in subsequent exhibitions in Mauritius, Réunion and the UK. Photographs, films and recipes are also accessible on our open-access <a href="https://chagos.online/">digital archive</a>.</p>
<p>People told us they took part because they wanted to teach or to learn from others about their culture. Over three-quarters of participants said they had gained new skills, as well as a deeper knowledge of Chagossian history, identity and traditions. Almost all said they wanted to share this knowledge with others.</p>
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<img alt="Young girls and older ladies twirl in colourful skirts." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452754/original/file-20220317-15-1b0yawt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452754/original/file-20220317-15-1b0yawt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452754/original/file-20220317-15-1b0yawt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452754/original/file-20220317-15-1b0yawt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452754/original/file-20220317-15-1b0yawt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452754/original/file-20220317-15-1b0yawt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452754/original/file-20220317-15-1b0yawt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children take part in a sega dance workshop led by Chagossian elders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chagos.online/files/original/4db0e828d012da44e11fa4fd5b8df43a.JPG">University of Edinburgh</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Chagos-born islanders told us they were pleased to have an opportunity to “learn things that I have lost during my childhood”, to “rediscover my little island”, or to “share our culture, our traditions with others and with our future generations”. </p>
<p>Younger participants reported learning about the Chagossian “way of living”, “way of sharing” and “team spirit”. Several said the project had taught them about the differences between Chagossian and other Indian Ocean cultures.</p>
<p>Participants highlighted learning about Chagossian sega. This syncretic Indian Ocean musical genre emerged on the colonial plantations of the 17th and 18th centuries. It came about through encounters between enslaved labourers with diverse ancestral origins, who played music, danced and sang lamentation and protest songs to resist their everyday hardship and domination. </p>
<p>Our project supported the production of a new album of Chagossian sega tambour music, which was subsequently made available on the <a href="https://www.airmauritius.com/docs/default-source/inflightentertainment-movies/waves-ife-guide_a350-a340-a330-feb20.pdf?sfvrsn=aaf06721_2">Air Mauritius inflight entertainment</a> system. Its associated <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmugNsWL03w">music videos</a> have reached over a cumulative quarter of a million views on YouTube.</p>
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<img alt="Musicians sit on chairs outdoors playing and singing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452757/original/file-20220317-15-15vdjnp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452757/original/file-20220317-15-15vdjnp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452757/original/file-20220317-15-15vdjnp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452757/original/file-20220317-15-15vdjnp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452757/original/file-20220317-15-15vdjnp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452757/original/file-20220317-15-15vdjnp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452757/original/file-20220317-15-15vdjnp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tambour drummers and singers take part in a Chagossian sega performance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chagos.online/files/original/36fe87745b3a3ebd11e35434e5429454.JPG">University of Edinburgh</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Several Indian Ocean island states have successfully nominated sega and cognate musical genres to be officially listed by Unesco as intangible cultural heritage. My research was included in the Mauritian government’s nomination for <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/USL/sega-tambour-chagos-01490">Chagos tambour music</a> to be listed as intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent <a href="https://ich.unesco.org/en/publications-of-the-lists-00492">safeguarding</a>. The nomination was successful and it resulted in a sega tambour school being opened in Mauritius.</p>
<p>Displaced Chagossians consider <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13527258.2018.1555671">their heritage</a> to be neither static nor homogeneous. Drummers will sometimes use synthetic rather than animal-skin tambour drums. For them, demonstrating authentic drumming techniques and rhythms is more important than using instruments made with traditional materials. They are concerned less about the “authenticity” of cultural objects than about their utility as tools for transmitting valued heritage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This work was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Rebecca Rotter was Co-Investigator on the AHRC project CHAGOS: Cultural Heritage Across Generations.</span></em></p>When the British government expelled Chagos Islanders from their homeland, it put a unique culture at risk of erasure.Laura Jeffery, Professor of Anthropology of Migration, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1758392022-03-11T11:42:21Z2022-03-11T11:42:21ZAsk or aks? How linguistic prejudice perpetuates inequality<p>Teacher and artist <a href="https://alp.fas.harvard.edu/people/sunn-mcheaux">Sunn M'Cheaux</a> has been posting on social media about “linguicism” after a reader asked him about the word “ax”, saying: “Why did we struggle saying ‘ask’? Like when I was little, I always said ‘ax’. Like I couldn’t say the word correctly.” </p>
<p>M'Cheaux’s <a href="https://twitter.com/sunnmcheaux/status/1432795413103497216?cxt=HHwWgMC-ncj1p-InAAAA">response</a> counters the common idea that “ax” (spelled also “aks”) is incorrect: “ax” isn’t a mispronunciation of “ask” but an alternative pronunciation. This is similar to how people might pronounce “economics” variously as “eck-onomics” or “eek-onomics”, for example. Neither of these pronunciations is wrong. They’re just different.</p>
<p>Linguicism is an idea invented by human-rights activist and linguist <a href="http://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/">Tove Skutnabb-Kangas</a> to describe discrimination based on language or dialect. The prejudice around “aks” is an example of linguicism. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03740463.2005.10416087">Decades of research</a> shows that the idea that any variation from <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-things-people-get-wrong-about-standard-english-168969">standard English</a> is incorrect (or, worse, unprofessional or uneducated) is a smokescreen for prejudice. Linguicism can have serious consequences by worsening existing socio-economic and racial inequalities.</p>
<h2>Flawed argument</h2>
<p>Pegging “ax” as a mark of laziness or ignorance presumes that saying “aks” is easier than saying “ask”. If this were the case, we would – and we never do – hear “desk”, “flask” and “pesky” pronounced “deks”, “flaks” and “peksy”. </p>
<p>The “s” and “k” being interchanged in “aks” and “ask” is an instance of what linguists call <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0242.xml">metathesis</a> – a process which is very common. For example, wasp used to be pronounced “<a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/wasp#etymonline_v_4850">waps</a>” but the former has now become the go-to word. Many of the pronunciations bemoaned as “wrong” are in fact just examples of <a href="https://theconversation.com/haemorrhaging-why-some-words-are-so-easy-to-mispronounce-and-why-that-could-be-a-good-thing-175746?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton">language changing</a>.</p>
<p>“Aks” has origins in Old English and Germanic over a millennium ago, when it was a formal written form. In the first English Bible – the Coverdale Bible, from 1535 – Matthew 7:7 was written as “Axe and it shall be given you”, with royal approval. </p>
<p>Beyond written English, “aks” was also the typical pronunciation in England’s south and in the Midlands. “Ask”, meanwhile, was more prevalent in the north and it is the latter that became the standard pronunciation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A scan of a 16th century Bible folio" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451308/original/file-20220310-17-1tes23s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451308/original/file-20220310-17-1tes23s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451308/original/file-20220310-17-1tes23s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451308/original/file-20220310-17-1tes23s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451308/original/file-20220310-17-1tes23s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451308/original/file-20220310-17-1tes23s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451308/original/file-20220310-17-1tes23s.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Matthew 7:7 in the Coverdale Bible (top left, five lines down): ‘Axe and it shall be given.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AThe_Holy_Scripture_(Myles_Coverdale).djvu&page=460#globalusage">Public domain | Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Contemporary prevalence</h2>
<p>In North America, “aks” (or “ax”) was widely used in New England and the southern and middle states. In the late 19th century, however, it became stereotyped as exclusive to African American English, in which it remains prevalent. American linguist John McWhorter <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2014-jan-19-la-oe-mcwhorter-black-speech-ax-20140119-story.html">considers </a> it an “integral part of being a black American”. </p>
<p>Today, “aks” is also found in UK varieties of English, including <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/language/research/projects/mle/">Multicultural London English</a>. This dialect, spoken mainly by people from ethnic minority backgrounds, came about through contact between different dialects of English and immigrant languages, including <a href="https://apics-online.info/">Caribbean Creoles</a>, such as Jamaican Creole.</p>
<p>Multicultural London English was initially referred to in the media <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2013/aug/30/mind-your-language-jafaican">in a derogatory fashion</a> as “<a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/jafaican#:%7E:text=Definition%20of%20'Jafaican'&text=1.,person%20who%20adopts%20this%20dialect">Jafaican</a>”. That label wrongly reduced the dialect to something imitated or used inauthentically.</p>
<p>Other languages have, of course, influenced Multicultural London English. But the English language has been in a constant state of flux for millennia, precisely as a result of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/English-language">contact</a> with other languages. When we talk about “salad”, “beef” or the “government” we are not imitating French, despite the French origin of these words. They have simply become English words. In the same way, Multicultural London English is a fully formed dialect in its own right and “aks”, as with any other pronunciation in this and other English dialects, is in no way wrong.</p>
<h2>Linguistic prejudice</h2>
<p>Accents or dialects have no logical or scientific claim to “correctness”. Instead, any prestige of which they might boast derives from being spoken by high-status groups. </p>
<p>Many people now wag their finger at the word “ain’t” or at people dropping the “g”, rendering words like “running” as “runnin’”, and “jumping” as “jumpin’”. In, 2020, British home secretary Priti Patel <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/watch-priti-patel-lashes-out-at-alastair-campbell">bore the brunt</a> of this mistaken criticism, when journalist Alastair Campbell tweeted, “I don’t want a Home Secretary who can’t pronounce a G at the end of a word.” </p>
<p>Criticisms of “dropping g” exist despite the pronunciation’s origins in Middle English, and not to mention the fact that well into the 20th century, the British upper classes spoke in this way too. This was satirised in a 2003 episode of the British comedy show Absolutely Fabulous, entitled <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0504673/">Huntin’, fishin’ and shootin’</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SOo5_twAtIA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Now that “dropping g” is stereotyped as working class, however, it is stigmatised as wrong. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/English-with-an-Accent-Language-Ideology-and-Discrimination-in-the-United/Lippi-Green/p/book/9780415559119">Research shows</a> that linguistic prejudices, however unintentional, against immigrant, non-standard and regional dialects have held back generations of children from achieving their best in school and, of course, beyond it. </p>
<p>Schoolchildren who naturally say “aks” (or any other non-standard form of English) are tasked with the extra burden of distinguishing between how they speak and how they are <a href="https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/86129/">expected</a> to write. Conversely, no such barrier is faced by children who grow up speaking standard English at home, which can further entrench inequality. These children are already advantaged in other ways as they tend to come from high-status groups. </p>
<p>The way we speak has real implications in how we are perceived. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-linguistic-geography/article/disambiguating-language-attitudes-held-towards-sociodemographic-groups-and-geographic-areas-in-south-east-england/650982BA00C290DFAB93504BFD0A3CFE">Research</a> in south-east England found that young adults from working-class or from ethnic minority backgrounds tend to be judged as <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-57071805">less intelligent</a> than others – a prejudice based solely on the way they spoke. The effect was worsened if the person was from Essex or London, or even if they were thought to have an accent from these places. </p>
<p>The example of “aks” neatly demonstrates the absurdity, the baselessness and, crucially, the pernicious impact of deeming any one form of English to be “correct”. Accent prejudice and linguicism is a reframing of prejudice towards low-status groups who, simply, speak differently.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Linguicism sees people penalised for speaking in non-standard forms of English.Amanda Cole, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Institute for Analytics and Data Science) Department of Language and Linguistics, University of EssexElla Jeffries, Lecturer in linguistics, University of EssexPeter L Patrick, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1454112020-09-06T09:26:25Z2020-09-06T09:26:25ZMauritius must protect vulnerable coastal communities from the effects of the oil spill<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356531/original/file-20200904-18-1i7u3nj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Citizens rallied to stem the oil tide. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Daphney Dupre</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 25 July 2020, the Japanese ship, MV Wakashio, ran aground the coral reef off the eastern coast of Mauritius. The vessel <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53754751">discharged</a> more than 1,000 tonnes of oil into the island’s pristine lagoon including its Blue Bay Marine reserve. </p>
<p>The situation is critical because Mauritius is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/mauritius-oil-spill-how-coral-reefs-mangroves-and-seagrass-could-be-affected-144954">biodiversity hotspot</a>. But beyond the environmental consequences, there’s the human impact. Oil spills have major social and health implications. People exposed <a href="https://www.mun.ca/harriscentre/reports/arf/2011/11-12-ARF-Final-Chen.pdf">can suffer from</a> liver damage, skin and lung disorders, increased cancer risk, reproductive damage and post traumatic stress.</p>
<p>Responding to the crisis, Mauritius’ government temporarily <a href="https://www.lemauricien.com/actualites/wakashio-fermeture-des-etablissements-scolaires-dans-la-region-sud-est-ce-mercredi/368607/">closed schools</a> and gave fishermen a small <a href="https://www.lemauricien.com/actualites/societe/mv-wakashio-a-pointe-desny-une-compensation-de-rs-10-200-evoquee/368419/">compensation.</a>. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/08/28/35-days-of-mauritius-oil-spill-drama-seen-through-the-lens-of-14-local-photographers/#5270625b71bb">Citizens also admirably rallied</a> to stem the oil tide. </p>
<p>Over the years Mauritius has transitioned into a middle-income country, growing its financial, industrial, tourism and IT industries. But the ocean continues to be <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248962710_Heritage_Tourism_and_Identity_in_the_Mauritian_Villages_of_Chamarel_and_Le_Morne">hugely important</a> to many poorer Mauritians who rely on it for subsistence, culture and leisure. </p>
<p>It’s particularly important for vulnerable communities that live in villages along the coastline, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-22874-3_24">most</a> of whom are Creoles, the descendants of African and Malagasy people. From the mid 17th to the 18th Century, the ancestors of Creoles were brought to Mauritius and forced into slavery. After the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Slavery-Mauritius-Seychelles-1810-1875/dp/0838623980">abolition of slavery</a> in 1835, many Creoles settled in coastal villages. </p>
<p>When Mauritius attained independence in 1968, it remained a <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BoswellMalaise">hierarchical society</a>. It continues to be led by <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/SalverdaFranco">powerful Franco-Mauritian families</a> and influential ‘high caste’ Hindu Mauritians. <a href="http://www.mauritiustimes.com/mt/nita-chicooree-mercier-122/">Dynastic politics</a> became the norm. </p>
<p>Despite tourism and human development <a href="https://www.nber.org/digest/may11/w16569.html">gains</a>, certain communities <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/3886">struggle with</a> poverty and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290878206_Le_malaise_Creole_Ethnic_identity_in_Mauritius">are marginalised</a>. </p>
<p>Though the collection of ethnic data on who lives where ceased in the early 1980s, I have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rosabelle_Boswell">conducted research</a> on racism, poverty and social change in Mauritius for over 20 years. From my experience, the villages most affected by the oil spill are amongst the <a href="http://statsmauritius.govmu.org/English/StatsbySubj/PublishingImages/Chart%202-200607.jpg">poorest</a> areas of the island and have many Creole inhabitants. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2012/02/truth-commission-mauritius">Truth and Justice Commission (TJC)</a> in 2011 documented that African descendants in Mauritius still suffer from racism and poverty. It also <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/ROL/TJC_Vol1.pdf">called for</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>reparations by way of positive discrimination and an integrated rehabilitation plan concerning schooling of children, better housing conditions, elimination of discrimination on the employment market, whether in the public and private sector, review of the electoral system in order to pave the way for better representation in electoral constituencies of Creoles. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The oil spill highlights the plight of impoverished communities that live along the coastline, and policymakers must act on the recommendation of the report to address the inequalities in Mauritian society. </p>
<h2>Poverty</h2>
<p>The areas most affected by the oil spill <a href="https://africageographic.com/stories/mauritius-oil-spill-pictures-map-and-details/">include</a> the main town of the Grand Port District, Mahebourg, and seven other southeastern villages. Based on language use and religious practices captured in the 2011 Mauritian Census, these villages are <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-22874-3_24">inhabited</a> by vulnerable communities, including Creole communities, whom rely on the ocean for their livelihood.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://web.facebook.com/groups/1598893050367118">Facebook group</a> titled “Rivière des Creoles”, after a river in southeastern Mauritius, has shared images of oil soaked mangroves, beaches and dead fish, and images of locals knee deep in oil residue. This is but a snapshot of what these communities now grapple with.</p>
<p>Artisanal fishery is vital in providing employment opportunities and protein <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/artisanal-fishery">to over</a> 4,000 households in the coastal regions. </p>
<p>The beaches and sea are also culturally important in Mauritius. Creole communities <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325223438_Sonic_landscape_of_seggae_Mauritian_sega_rhythm_meets_Jamaican_roots_reggae">created</a> the music and dance of the Sega. Traditionally performed on the beach, Sega music and dance <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19480881.2016.1270010">still provides</a> a reprieve from hard labour. Public beaches and lagoons are environmental and cultural assets. </p>
<p>The oil spill will be disastrous for these communities. Looking at the effects of the <a href="https://www.usf.edu/news/2020/first-gulf-of-mexico-wide-survey-of-oil-pollution-in-fish-completed-10-years-after-deepwater-horizon.aspx">Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico</a> ten years later, researchers found dangerous toxins in popularly consumed fish, similarly toxic outcomes are apparent in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266629618_Crude_Oil_Spill_Exposure_and_Human_Health_Risks">humans</a>.</p>
<p>My concern is that the oil spill will be especially disastrous for vulnerable coastal communities, not only because of immediate and long-term health implications, but because these groups are marginalised. They are at greater risk of not being assisted in instituting damages claims.</p>
<h2>Moving forward</h2>
<p>To ensure that the vulnerable coastal communities are protected, leadership response to the disaster must be transparent, coordinated, caring and swift. </p>
<p>Leaders must attend to the immediate effects of disasters and anticipate long-term consequences. Communities exposed to oil for example, need to be monitored to allow for early detection of exposure-related harm. </p>
<p>The government, together with civil society, must also claim damages from the de jure owners of the MV Wakashio, who in turn must pay for the immediate and anticipated loss of ecological, economic, health and cultural benefits. Apologies are not enough. </p>
<p><strong><strong>Editor’s note: Due to insufficient data, the author requested an amendment of her statement that Creoles are the predominant community living in the villages affected by the oil spill. The article has since been updated to reflect this.</strong></strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosabelle Boswell receives funding from the UK GCRF One Ocean Hub project and the South African National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>Mauritius’ oil spill highlights the plight of impoverished communities that live along the coastline.Rosabelle Boswell, Professor of Ocean Cultures and Heritage, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1275192020-01-27T18:53:10Z2020-01-27T18:53:10ZIndigenous languages matter – but all is not lost when they change or even disappear<p>UNESCO’s <a href="https://en.iyil2019.org/">International Year of Indigenous Languages</a> recently came to an end after a year of celebration of linguistic diversity. And with a “<a href="https://en.unesco.org/news/building-legacy-2019-international-year-indigenous-languages">decade of Indigenous languages</a>” now under consideration, it’s a good time to review what these celebrations mean. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/four-things-happen-when-language-dies-and-one-thing-you-can-do-help-180962188/">the media report</a> on the crisis of endangered languages, the view there’s an <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-languages-die-we-lose-a-part-of-who-we-are-51825">associated loss</a> of culture, identity and even memory, is widely expressed. </p>
<p>While there are very good reasons to deplore the loss of small languages, assuming this loss condemns cultural identity may be unhelpful and reductive to those who have already shifted away from their heritage language. </p>
<hr>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-largest-language-spoken-exclusively-in-australia-kriol-56286">Explainer: the largest language spoken exclusively in Australia – Kriol</a>
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<p>To test the claim “losing language means losing culture”, I carried out <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Difference-and-Repetition-in-Language-Shift-to-a-Creole-The-Expression/Ponsonnet/p/book/9781138601352">linguistic research</a> on <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-largest-language-spoken-exclusively-in-australia-kriol-56286">Kriol</a>, a postcolonial language now spoken by thousands of Indigenous Australians in the north of the country. </p>
<p>I found that regardless of the language they speak, people still find ways to express old ways of speaking in a new language, so language doesn’t fundamentally alter their cultural identity. In other words, their culture can shape their language, not just the other way around. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Yugul Mangi Ranger Maritza Roberts speaking in Kriol, showing the uses of the stringybark tree.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Reclaiming suppressed languages</h2>
<p>UNESCO’s year-long campaign has highlighted the role of language in preserving cultural identities: <a href="https://en.iyil2019.org/about/#action-plan">its action plan</a> says languages </p>
<blockquote>
<p>foster and promote unique local cultures, customs and values. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Highlighting the role of language with respect to culture is important to help minorities access the support they need to maintain or reclaim heritage languages.<br>
Many people experience strong emotional attachment to their mother tongue. In Australia and other colonised countries, many Indigenous languages have been actively suppressed. </p>
<p>In such contexts, language maintenance and reclamation constitute responses to historical trauma, as well as acts of resistance. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/some-australian-indigenous-languages-you-should-know-40155">Some Australian Indigenous languages you should know</a>
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</em>
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<p>However, when praise of linguistic diversity does not go hand in hand with nuanced discussion about the complex relationship between language and culture, it can feed the already prevalent misconceptions that language “conditions” culture.</p>
<h2>Post-colonial languages</h2>
<p>In a country like Australia, where more than 80% of the Indigenous population has <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-state-of-australias-indigenous-languages-and-how-we-can-help-people-speak-them-more-often-109662">adopted new, post-colonial languages</a>, this thinking is oversimplified. </p>
<p>Today, most Indigenous Australians speak <a href="http://www.tesol.org.au/esl/docs/whatis.pdf">Aboriginal English</a>, a form of English with dialectal differences. A few thousand others speak <a href="https://theconversation.com/while-old-indigenous-languages-disappear-new-ones-evolve-32559">creoles or mixed languages</a> – languages that combine English-like forms with some features of older Australian languages. </p>
<p>This means for the vast majority of Indigenous Australians – and perhaps for descendants of migrants as well – singling out language as one of the main ways to maintain culture may be misplaced, and sometimes plainly hurtful. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/while-old-indigenous-languages-disappear-new-ones-evolve-32559">While old Indigenous languages disappear, new ones evolve</a>
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<p>Under Australian Native Title laws, for instance, Indigenous groups must demonstrate cultural continuity to be granted legal rights over their traditional land. While language isn’t mentioned in the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00054">Native Title Act 1993</a>, the ways language can be used as evidence, and how it can influence court proceedings, is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0075424208321142">well-documented</a>. </p>
<p>In this context, putting emphasis on traditional languages is a
<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299873235_The_Cost_of_Language_Mobilization_Wangkatha_Language_Ideologies_and_Native_Title">disadvantage</a> for English-speaking Indigenous groups. </p>
<p>This shows that broader colonial ideology is still in play, where Indigenous populations are expected to conform to a static concept of Indigeneity, defined by the coloniser. </p>
<h2>Languages can reflect values</h2>
<p>The linguistic and anthropological literature provides many examples of how <a href="https://www.dynamicsoflanguage.edu.au/news-and-media/latest-headlines/article/?id=video-nick-evans-on-the-language-of-poetry-in-indigenous-australian-song">languages can reflect cultural values and knowledge</a>. This often surfaces in the way languages <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-seasonal-calendars-of-indigenous-australia-88471">organise their vocabularies</a>. </p>
<p>For instance, some Australian languages, including Kriol, have a word that means both “feel sorry” and “give”, which fits in well with the <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520074118/pintupi-country-pintupi-self">moral values</a> of many Indigenous Australian societies. Other examples of possible correlation between language and culture are metaphors, or the expression of kinship relations. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/countering-the-claims-about-australias-aboriginal-number-systems-65042">Countering the claims about Australia's Aboriginal number systems</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>While researchers often note such correlations between language and culture, little scientific research has explored <a href="https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02105741">what happens to such linguistic properties</a> when people adopt a new language. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Difference-and-Repetition-in-Language-Shift-to-a-Creole-The-Expression/Ponsonnet/p/book/9781138601352">recent linguistic study</a> has shown how <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-largest-language-spoken-exclusively-in-australia-kriol-56286">Kriol</a> can preserve many of the meanings and convey the same emotions in the older Australian languages it replaces, such as the critically endangered <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalabon_language">Dalabon language</a>.</p>
<h2>Language is shaped by culture</h2>
<p>The basic grammar of Kriol and the shape of its words resemble English, and differ sharply from Dalabon. </p>
<p>But many of the meanings of Kriol words match the meanings of Dalabon words, so culturally specific concepts are preserved, even though the words sound different.</p>
<p>For instance, in Dalabon the word <em>marrbun</em> means both “feel sorry” and “give”, as mentioned. In Kriol, we find the word <em>sori</em>, which sounds like “sorry” in English, but its meanings include “feel sorry” and “give”, just like <em>marrbun</em>. Similar adaptation mechanisms occur throughout the grammar.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-remote-indigenous-community-where-a-few-thousand-people-use-15-different-languages-107716">Meet the remote Indigenous community where a few thousand people use 15 different languages</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>What this shows is that language and meaning are highly plastic: they adapt to what speakers have to say. In this way, language is shaped by culture, and even when language is replaced, culture can continue. </p>
<p>This aligns well with the way Kriol speakers perceive their own language. Working with many Kriol speakers in communities near Katherine, Northern Territory, I have learned they regard Kriol as <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1918825/_Brainwash_from_English_Barunga_Kriol_Speakers_Views_on_Their_Own_Language">part of their identity</a>. Some wish to maintain Dalabon or other Australian languages, just like they wish to maintain artistic traditions or story telling. </p>
<p>But this doesn’t mean the language they currently speak, although much closer to English, distances them from their own culture and identity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127519/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maïa Ponsonnet has received funding from the Australian Research Council (Australian) and from the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (France). </span></em></p>People still find ways to express old ways of speaking in a new language, so that language does not fundamentally alter their cultural identity.Maïa Ponsonnet, Senior lecturer, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/918912018-03-02T11:42:41Z2018-03-02T11:42:41ZHow people talk now holds clues about human migration centuries ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208303/original/file-20180228-36680-1gzt1zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=349%2C349%2C4132%2C2645&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What can a modern-day Creole language tell us about its first speakers in the 1600s?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paramaribo,_Suriname_(11987836025).jpg">M M</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Often, you can tell where someone grew up by the way they speak.</p>
<p>For example, if someone in the United States doesn’t pronounce the final “r” at the end of “car,” you might think they are from the Boston area, based on sometimes exaggerated stereotypes about American accents and dialects, such as “Pahk the cahr in Hahvahd Yahd.”</p>
<p>Linguists go deeper than the stereotypes, though. They’ve used <a href="http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/">large-scale surveys</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html">map out many features of dialects</a>. The more you know about how a person pronounces certain words, the more likely you’ll be able to pinpoint where they are from. For instance, linguists know that dropping the “r” sounds at the end of words is actually common in many English dialects; they can map in space and time how r-dropping is widespread in the London area and has become increasingly common in England over the years. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0055">In a recent study</a>, we applied this concept to a different question: the formation of Creole languages. <a href="https://mona-uwi.academia.edu/ASherriah">As a linguist</a> and a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vwQdgAYAAAAJ&hl=en">biologist who studies cultural evolution</a>, we wanted to see how much information we could glean from a snapshot of how a language exists at one moment in time. Working with linguist <a href="https://www.mona.uwi.edu/dllp/jlu/staff/devonish.htm">Hubert Devonish</a> and psychologist <a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/ewart-thomas">Ewart Thomas</a>, could we figure out the language “ingredients” that went into a Creole language, and where these “ingredients” originally came from?</p>
<h2>Mixing languages to make a Creole</h2>
<p>When a <a href="https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/cll.25/main">Creole language forms</a>, it’s generally because <a href="http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Sociolinguistics/Theoriesofgenesis">two or more populations come together</a> without a common language to speak. Across history, this was often in the context of colonialism, indentured servitude and slavery. For example, in the U.S., <a href="http://www.afropedea.org/louisiana-creoles-people">Louisiana Creole</a> was formed by speakers of French and several African languages in the French slave colony of Louisiana. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/000000008792525228">As people mix</a>, a new language forms, and often the origins of individual words can be traced back to one of the source languages.</p>
<p>Our idea was that, if specific dialects were common among the migrants, the way they pronounce words might influence the pronunciations in the new Creole language. In other words, if English-derived words in a Creole exhibit r-dropping, we might hypothesize that the English speakers present when the Creole formed also dropped their r’s.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-244" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/244/d0929212fe8463b2bd63c88f0474e341fd78aee8/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Following this logic, we examined the pronunciation of Sranan, an English-based Creole still spoken in Suriname. We wanted to see if we could use language clues to identify where in England the original settlers came from. Sranan developed around the mid-17th century, due to contact between speakers of English dialects from England, migrants from elsewhere in Europe (such as Portugal and the Netherlands) and enslaved Africans who spoke a variety of West African languages.</p>
<p>As is the case with most English-based Creoles, the majority of the lexicon is English. Unlike most English Creoles, though, Sranan represents a linguistic fossil of the early colonial English that went into its development. In 1667, soon after Sranan was formed, the English ceded Suriname to the Dutch, and most English speakers moved elsewhere. So the indentured servants and other migrants from England had a brief but strong influence on Sranan.</p>
<h2>Using historical records to check our work</h2>
<p>We asked whether we could use features of Sranan to hypothesize where the English settlers originated and then corroborate these hypotheses via historical records.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=703&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208295/original/file-20180228-36700-182it7d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The similarity of each English dialect to Sranan. The most similar dialect, Blagdon, is indicated by a red arrow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0055">source</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First, we compared a set of linguistic features of modern-day Sranan with those of English as spoken in 313 localities across England. We focused on things like the production of “r” sounds after vowels and “h” sounds at the start of words. Since some aspects of English dialects have changed over the last few centuries, we also consulted historical accounts of both English and Sranan.</p>
<p>It turned out that 80 percent of the English features in Sranan could be traced back to regional dialectal features from two distinct locations within England: a cluster of locations near the port of Bristol and a cluster near Essex, in eastern England. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208294/original/file-20180228-36696-1505m3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Circles represent the origin locations listed in ship records. The area of the circle is proportional to the number of individuals from that location. Bristol is marked by a yellow star, London by a blue star.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0055">source</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then, we examined archival records such as the <a href="http://www.virtualjamestown.org/indentures/search_indentures.html">Bristol Register of Servants to Foreign Plantations</a> to see if the language clues we’d identified were backed up by historical evidence of migration. Indeed, these boat records indicate that indentured servants departing for English colonies were predominantly from the regions identified by our language analysis.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0055">Our research was proof of concept</a> that we could use modern information to learn more about the linguistic features that went into the formation of a Creole language. We can gain confidence in our conclusions because the historical record backed them up. Language can be a solid clue about the origins and history of human migrations. </p>
<p>We hope to use a similar approach to examine the African languages that have influenced Creole languages, since much less is known about the origins of enslaved people than the European indentured servants. Analyses like these might help us retrace aspects of forced migrations via the slave trade and paint a more complete linguistic picture of Creole formations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Creanza has received funding from the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Stanford Center for Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>André Ché Sherriah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research suggests that hints left in Creole languages can identify where the original speakers came from – even hundreds of years after they migrated and mixed together.Nicole Creanza, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt UniversityAndré Ché Sherriah, Postdoctoral Associate in Linguistics, University of the West Indies, Mona CampusLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/671802016-11-01T15:30:54Z2016-11-01T15:30:54ZTreatment of foreign workers lends a lie to myth of the Mauritian ‘miracle’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144009/original/image-20161101-15821-53w9xm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Workers process tuna at the Thon des Mascareignes factory in Port Louis, Mauritius</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mauritius, an island with <a href="http://www.antrocom.net/upload/sub/antrocom/060110/08-Antrocom.pdf">no indigenous populations</a> and a history of multiple European colonisations, is a multi-ethnic society <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mp.html">made up</a> of just over two thirds Indo Mauritians, nearly one third Creoles and small groups of Sino-Mauritians and Franco-Mauritians. </p>
<p>The social fabric of the island of <a href="http://countrymeters.info/en/Mauritius">nearly 1.3 million people</a> is a reflection of its history of involuntary and voluntary migrations. Its population has been constituted by flows of people since the 16th century. These flows have consisted of colonial administrators and merchants, sugar plantation owners, African slaves, Indian indentured labourers, traders and, most recently, large numbers of Chinese and Bangladeshi migrant workers. </p>
<p>On November 2 Mauritius commemorates the arrival of the first indentured migrants with a national holiday. It is a timely moment to reflect on current labour conditions on the island, and to ask to what extent they reproduce colonial indenture practices. </p>
<p>Since its independence Mauritius has been showcased as an economic “<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9781400845897/9781400845897-010/9781400845897-010.xml">miracle</a>” and a peaceful society where several ethnic groups live in harmony. In reality this harmony is precarious and the idea of the “Mauritian miracle” masks a significant social malaise that cannot be separated from contemporary labour conditions.</p>
<h2>From slavery to indenture</h2>
<p>The first inhabitants of Mauritius were African slaves and the French settlers that forcibly brought them there. With the spread of sugar cultivation on the island, by 1806 the slave population had grown to <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/creating-the-creole-island/?viewby=title">63,000</a>. </p>
<p>After the British conquest in 1810 and following the abolition of slavery in 1835, Indian indentured labourers were brought to the island to continue work on the sugar plantations. </p>
<p>Indenture is generally considered “free labour” when compared with slavery. Indentured labourers are generally recruited rather than kidnapped and they are paid wages. </p>
<p>But in reality the system of recruitment and contractual arrangements placed the indentured workers under the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2013.780039?scroll=top&needAccess=true">total control</a> of plantation owners. Many were deceived into migrating and several were confined in poor accommodation, completely isolated from relatives on other plantations. Planters relied on punishment and confinement to extract maximum labour from migrants. They also curtailed their mobility and prevented them from leaving the plantation. </p>
<p>This led some, like scholar Hugh Tinker, to conclude that the indentured labour system was merely “<a href="http://www.hansibpublications.com/A-NEW-SYSTEM-OF-SLAVERY">slavery by another name</a>”.</p>
<h2>From indenture to independence</h2>
<p>Indentured labour formally came to an end in 1910. Between 1834 and 1910 more than <a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/41258/sample/9780521641258wsc00.pdf">450,000 migrants</a> of Indian origin (mainly Hindus) disembarked in Port Louis. This mass migration drastically changed the island’s ethnic distribution. From a Creole island, Mauritius became a Hindu dominated society. </p>
<p>In the 1880s and 1890s a process gained momentum that would once again reshape the power structures of Mauritian society. Morcellement schemes – involving the sale of small tracts of land to former labourers – saw land passing into the hands of many Indo-Mauritians. These former indentured labourers came to form a new Indian small <a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/41258/sample/9780521641258wsc00.pdf">planter class</a> which played an active role in colonial economic life. </p>
<p>The descendants of indentured migrants would eventually come to political power in 1968 when the island gained independence from Britain.</p>
<h2>The “Mauritian miracle” and foreign labour</h2>
<p>Independence saw the establishment of a garment manufacturing sector, a rise in luxury tourism and the recovery of the sugar industry. These resulted in impressive growth rates in post-colonial Mauritius. By the 1990s, in what has been dubbed the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9781400845897/9781400845897-010/9781400845897-010.xml">“Mauritian miracle”</a>, the island established itself as a middle income country.</p>
<p>But newly industrialised Mauritius once again faced a labour scarcity problem. It addressed this by importing contract workers from low-wage economies in the developing world. This came more than 80 years after the end of the colonial indentured labour system. </p>
<p>As the demand for factory workers in the flourishing <a href="http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/export-processing-zone-EPZ.html">export processing zones</a> increased in the 1980s, Mauritian employers began looking to other South Asian countries to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3876101?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">recruit</a> labour migrants.</p>
<p>Employers soon realised that “foreign labour” was more flexible and that migrant workers were ready to accept poor conditions of work and overtime. By 2014 more than <a href="http://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mp_mauritius_26aug2014.pdf">38,000</a> workers, mainly from Bangladesh and China, were employed on the island.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.die-erde.org/index.php/die-erde/article/view/313/140">Recent studies</a> have drawn parallels between colonial indenture practices and the modern day contracting of migrant workers. </p>
<p>Despite government regulations and controls there are reports of ongoing <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/274687/travailleurs-bangladais-largent-lespoir-galeres">abuse</a> of migrants. The local newspaper L’express <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/274687/travailleurs-bangladais-largent-lespoir-galeres">has described</a> Bangladeshi migrant labour in Mauritius as “a real trafficking of modern coolies”. </p>
<p>The challenges they face include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The threat of deportation. Recently <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/279677/travailleurs-etrangers-dix-bangladais-ji-yun-deportes">10 Bangladeshis</a> working in a factory had their mobile phones confiscated and were deported without any explanation. </p></li>
<li><p>Overcrowded and poorly furnished <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/271311/trafic-humain-dans-usines-cas-flagrants-dexploitation-travailleurs-etrangers">accommodation</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>The recruitment process often leads to bitter disappointment and high levels of debt bondage. This is because migrant workers pay middlemen and unscrupulous recruiters to get employment. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>It seems ironic that a nation made up mainly of descendants of slaves and immigrants should treat its foreign workers poorly. Today’s migrant workers may not be coerced by colonial economic imperatives such as the mass transportation of “coolies” in the 19th century. But, arguably, postcolonial capitalist economies exploit the vulnerabilities and inequalities that globalisation has produced without weighing the long term consequences.</p>
<h2>Ethnic vulnerabilities and Mauritian nationalism</h2>
<p>Mauritian <a href="http://ile-en-ile.org/lit-mauricienne/">fiction writers</a> are increasingly exposing the darker side of the Mauritian “miracle” –- its <a href="https://www.amazon.in/Rethinking-Global-Mauritius-Srilata-Ravi-ebook/dp/B00Q5HSKGI?ie=UTF8&qid=1477924234&ref_=sr_1_5&s=books&sr=1-5">communalism, intolerance and social prejudices</a>. </p>
<p>They suggest that it has not provided equal access to resources for all Mauritians. Nor has it improved the lot of disadvantaged Creole communities, referred to as the “<a href="http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BoswellMalaise">malaise créole</a>”. </p>
<p>The segregation and discrimination imposed on migrant labourers only compounds the tension between groups. Problems of rising unemployment and the continued creole malaise are social problems that have not been resolved. The presence of “foreign” workers could very easily further fuel <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/08/migrant-labour-fuels-tensions-in-mauritius">violent ethnic tensions</a>. </p>
<p>The danger is that the arrival of modern day “coolies” could easily transform the persisting “malaise créole” into a “malaise Mauricien”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67180/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Srilata Ravi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Slavery, indenture and industrialisation have all contributed to Mauritius’ multiculturalism - and to its deep social tensions.Srilata Ravi, Professor of French, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/576732016-07-24T20:02:32Z2016-07-24T20:02:32ZHow the Queen’s English has had to defer to Africa’s rich multilingualism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131229/original/image-20160720-31159-1n6tyga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">English has been reshaped in Africa's exceptionally multilingual context.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/johannekekroesbergen/15423307746/">johannekekroesbergen/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the first time in history a truly global language has emerged. English enables international communication <em>par excellence</em>, with a far wider reach than other possible candidates for this position – like Latin in the past, and French, Spanish and Mandarin in the present.</p>
<p>In a memorable phrase, former Tanzanian statesman Julius Nyerere once characterised English as the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=-9MwAAByvf0C&lpg=PP1&dq=swahili%20state%20and%20society&pg=PA63#v=onepage&q&f=false">Kiswahili of the world</a>. In Africa, English is more widely spoken than other important <em>lingua francas</em> like Kiswahili, Arabic, French and Portuguese, with at least <a href="https://www.booksforafrica.org/assets/documents/2013-ASA-Conference---English-Language-in-Africa-PAPER.pdf">26 countries</a> using English as one of their official languages.</p>
<p>But English in Africa comes in many different shapes and forms. It has taken root in an exceptionally multilingual context, with well <a href="http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/african_languages.htm">over a thousand</a> languages spoken on the continent. The influence of this multilingualism tends to be largely erased at the most formal levels of use – for example, in the national media and in higher educational contexts. But at an everyday level, the Queen’s English has had to defer to the continent’s rich abundance of languages. Pidgin, creole, second-language and first-language English all flourish alongside them.</p>
<h2>The birth of new languages</h2>
<p>English did not enter Africa as an innocent language. Its history is tied up with trade and exploitation, capitalist expansion, slavery and colonisation. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131235/original/image-20160720-31121-1umdw2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131235/original/image-20160720-31121-1umdw2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131235/original/image-20160720-31121-1umdw2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131235/original/image-20160720-31121-1umdw2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131235/original/image-20160720-31121-1umdw2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131235/original/image-20160720-31121-1umdw2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131235/original/image-20160720-31121-1umdw2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The history of English is tied up with trade, capitalist expansion, slavery and colonialism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?country_code=ZA&page_number=1&position=9&safesearch=1&search_language=en&search_source=search_form&search_type=keyword_search&searchterm=trade%20africa&sort_method=relevance2&source=search&timestamp=1469012552&tracking_id=3leqtkH4lhTpx5btfVJ-9Q&use_local_boost=1&version=llv1&page=1&inline=252141640">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>As the need for communication arose and increased under these circumstances, forms of English, known as pidgins and creoles, developed. This took place within a context of unequal encounters, a lack of sustained contact with speakers of English and an absence of formal education. Under these conditions, English words were learnt and attached to an emerging grammar that owed more to African languages than to English. </p>
<p>A pidgin is defined by linguists as an initially simple form of communication that arises from contact between speakers of disparate languages who have
no other means of communication in common. Pidgins, therefore, do not have mother-tongue speakers. The existence of pidgins in the early period of West African-European contact is not well documented, and some linguists like Salikoko Mufwene judge their early significance to be <a href="http://mufwene.uchicago.edu/pidginCreoleLanguage.html">overestimated</a>.</p>
<p>Pidgins can become more complex if they take on new functions. They are relabelled creoles if, over time and under specific circumstances, they become fully developed as the first language of a group of speakers.</p>
<p>Ultimately, pidgins and creoles develop grammatical norms that are far removed from the colonial forms that partially spawned them: to a British English speaker listening to a pidgin or creole, the words may seem familiar in form, but not always in meaning.</p>
<p>Linguists pay particular attention to these languages because they afford them the opportunity to observe creativity at first hand: the birth of new languages.</p>
<h2>The creoles of West Africa</h2>
<p>West Africa’s creoles are of two types: those that developed outside Africa; and those that first developed from within the continent. </p>
<p>The West African creoles that developed outside Africa emerged out of the multilingual and oppressive slave experience in the New World. They were then brought to West Africa after 1787 by freed slaves repatriated from Britain, North America and the Caribbean. “Krio” was the name given to the English-based creole of slaves freed from Britain who were returned to Sierra Leone, where they were joined by slaves released from Nova Scotia and Jamaica. </p>
<p>Some years after that, in 1821, Liberia was established as an African homeland for freed slaves from the US. These men and women brought with them what some linguists call “Liberian settler English”. This particular creole continues to make Liberia somewhat special on the continent, with American rather than British forms of English <a href="http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED226617.pdf">dominating</a> there. </p>
<p>These languages from the New World were very influential in their new environments, especially over the developing West African pidgin English. </p>
<p>A more recent, homegrown type of West African creole has emerged in the region. This West African creole is spreading in the context of urban multilingualism and changing youth identities. Over the past 50 years, it has <a href="http://www.academia.edu/25521924/_The_only_language_we_speak_really_well_The_English_creoles_of_Equatorial_Guinea_and_West_Africa_at_the_intersection_of_language_ideologies_and_language_policies">grown spectacularly</a> in Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Sierra Leone, and it is believed to be the <a href="http://apics-online.info/contributions/17">fastest-growing language</a> in Nigeria. In this process pidgin English has been expanded into a creole, used as one of the languages of the home. For such speakers, the designation “pidgin” is now a misnomer, although it remains widely used. </p>
<p>In East Africa, in contrast, the <a href="https://prezi.com/9hf4dypg3pfa/rise-of-the-swahili/">strength and historicity</a> of Kiswahili as a <em>lingua franca</em> prevented the rapid development of pidgins based on colonial languages. There, traders and colonists had to learn Kiswahili for successful everyday communication. This gave locals more time to master English as a fully-fledged second language.</p>
<h2>Other varieties of English</h2>
<p>Africa, mirroring the <a href="https://theconversation.com/english-the-empire-is-dead-long-live-the-empire-55676">trend</a> in the rest of the world, has a large and increasing number of second-language English speakers. Second-language varieties of English are mutually intelligible with first-language versions, while showing varying degrees of difference in accent, grammar and nuance of vocabulary. Formal colonisation and the educational system from the 19th century onwards account for the wide spread of second-language English. </p>
<p>What about first-language varieties of English on the continent? The South African variety looms large in this history, showing similarities with English in Australia and New Zealand, especially in details of accent. </p>
<p>In post-apartheid South Africa many young black people from middle-class backgrounds now speak this variety either as a dominant language or as a “second first-language”. But for most South Africans English is a second language – a very important one for education, business and international communication.</p>
<p>For family and cultural matters, African languages remain of inestimable value throughout the continent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajend Mesthrie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Africa, standard English dominates in formal institutions. But in everyday usage it is supplanted by the continent’s abundance of languages – and the varieties of English these gave rise to.Rajend Mesthrie, Professor of Linguistics, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.