OT: German West African colony?

[Herb Stahlke]

Value judgments in the names of creoles?  Also in the names of other
people's languages.  Older maps of Nigeria show an east central area
called "Moontshie" (multiple variant spellings), a name that the Tiv
people find insulting.  A language I worked on for a couple of years,
Ekpari, is known by its neighbors as Yache, also multiple variant
spellings, and that's the official government name as well.  At UCLA I
for one of my doctoral language exams I chose Yoruba, a language I
planned to use in fieldwork.  My exam was to elicit data for two hours
on tense/aspect/modality from a Nupe speaker.  Nupe was the language
being used that term for a field methods course, and the native
speaker was a friend and fellow student of mine.  He kept suppressing
laughter throughout the exam, and afterwards, over a beer, he told me
that the Yoruba word I had been using for Nupe, "Takpa." was regarded
by Nupe speakers as an ethnic slur.

Herb

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: OT: German West African colony?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 4/30/2012 10:11 AM, Amy West wrote:
>>On 4/28/12 12:03 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
>>>Date:    Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:09:08 -0400
>>>From:    Herb Stahlke<hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
>>>Subject: Re: OT: German West African colony?
>>>
>>>And of linguistic interest, there were also some German based creoles,
>>>including Kuechendeutsch in Namibia and Unterdeutsch in Papua New
>>>Guinea.  I heard anecdotally of a pidgin German in Cameroun, but I've
>>>seen nothing written on it.   I understand the Keuchendeutsch is still
>>>in use but Unterdeutsch is nearly extinct.
>>>
>>>Herb
>>Vielen dank! Ich habe das nicht gewusst!
>>
>>(Think there's some value judgements inherent in the names of the creoles?)
>
> Yes.  But I didn't look up what Keuchen were until just
> now.   "Wheezing" German? (I knew it wasn't "cakes"; that would have
> been "ue".)
>
> Joel
>
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