Popular article, "A New Kind of English"

[Patti J. Kurtz]

Stop me if I'm wrong, but I thought a pidgin was a linguistically
simplified blending of two languages usually used in trade-- and that
once a pidgin was learned as a first language and became more complex in
structure, it was a Creole.

English is a pidgin?  Sure, it's undergone changes over the centuries,
but all languages change.  Just because speakers borrow from other
languages, to me, that doesn't make them "pidgins." Borrowing to me is
different from the combining which happens when a pidgin is created. Or
am I completely off base here?

Chaucer and other storytellers "decided" to fuse French and English?
(all by themselves?) I don't buy that either.  Wasn't the French
influence more because of the Norman Conquest-- so English speakers
"borrowed" Latinate French words into the language because it was the
language of government and state?  My understanding is that Chaucer
simply was one of the first to write in the language used by everyday
speakers and not that used by educated scholars.

That article seems way off base to me-- (or is it me?)

Patti Kurtz
English Department
Minot State University


mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU wrote:

>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
>Subject:      Popular article, "A New Kind of English"
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I feel rather dubious about some of the definitions and examples of
>"dialect" in this article, of which I have reproduced only the first three
>paragraphs here. Comments, anyone?
>
>
>

--

Freeman - And what drives you on, fighting the monster?



Straker - I don't know, something inside me I guess.



Freeman - It's called dedication.



Straker - Pig-headedness would be nearer.