Creoles ?

[janilta]

Hello, Mike,

I just wanted to add some comments on your message about Creoles (sorry
for the delay !!!).
Sally already answered (btw, Sally, why semi-creole for Reunionnais ?)
but I wanted to do so again for Yiddish, Ladino and Lingua Franca.
There are quite strict definitions for the words 'language', 'dialect',
'creole', 'pidgin' in linguistics, even if for some linguistical or
political reasons (mainly) some confusions appear from time to time...
(and everything can ever be discussed)...

Yiddish is a language definitively. For linguistic reasons, it can be
classified as a Germanic dialect but not as a Creole I think. The
influence of Hebrew, Aramaic, Romance and Slavic languages is important
on the vocabulary, much less on its structure (mainly verbs). Its
features were mainly due to its isolation amongst Slavic (mainly)
languages but it could have stayed very close to its Germanic neighbours
if it remained in its Rhineland birth place (cf Alsatian and
Judeo-alsatian are very close).

Ladino is an improper term. It should be called Judezmo (meaning Jewish
language) since Ladino is only the written form of this language used by
scholars for the translation of liturgical texts.
Judezmo was the Spanish spoken by Jews when they were expelled from
Spain at the end of the 15th century. As Yiddish, it changed amongst
different languages (Turkish, Arabic, Slavic languages) but originally
was very similar to the other standard forms of Spanish, except for some
words (Hebrew influence f ex).

As Sally said, Lingua Franca was a pidgin (that is without native
speakers) based mainly on Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Occitan and
Portuguese (ie Romance languages), with some Arabic influence (but
almost no Greek I think) and used in the Mediterranean for centuries for
communication (Christian slaves and Arab masters f ex) and trade
purposes.

Sorry for being out of the Tsinuk Wawa context... but hope this is of
any help/interest for some... ;-)
Cheers, Yann, Tokyo.