Popular article, "A New Kind of English"

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

There are (or at least there were) serious academic arguments about whether English went through pidgin or creole stages in its history. My sense, as a non-specialist, is that the case for pidginization is stronger for the contact with Old Norse than for the contact with French. In any event, pidgins don't result from any conscious decision to fuse languages, certainly not by the literary elite.

The author of this piece is remarkably ill-informed. It seems like his primary source was _The Story of Engish_ which he apparently watched on video 10 years ago, probably with the sound muted.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Patti J. Kurtz
Sent: Sun 8/15/2004 3:23 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: Popular article, "A New Kind of English"
 
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.