A Paper Presented by Fortune Nwaiwu in the Department of English and Communication Arts, Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Rivers State of Nigeria.
Abstracts
Many scholars claim that pidgin is a language of its own with community of speakers who pass it on from one generation to another (Hudson 2001:p.62), but this paper examines pidgins from the historical perspectives and presents a stunning fact about the linguistic status of pidgins as corrupted variety of English. With the influx of words from their lexifier language into their substrate variety, pidgins are then seen as debased and corrupted variety of the prestige language. This claim is supported by Krapp (1924) and Kurath (1928) and is validated with the imperfect second language learning hypothesis which states that pidgins are the result of failed attempts at learning the prestige language, (see Brown and Attardo 2009:p.126). This paper is very significant in the sense that it sheds more light in the understanding of the nature of pidgins, wherever they are being spoken, and their implications in relation to academic performance of students. However, in this paper, we have discovered some linguistic levels where the corruptions of some prestige language occur.
1.0 Introduction
European civilizations have come into contact with people of other races, especially Africa, who worked on the plantation with mutually incomprehensible languages, whose only means of communication was the broken English they had picked up from the whites. And the natives learn this language from each other, (Landtman in Jespersen 1922:216).
Pidgin English must have developed immediately after the first beginning of commercial relations between the English and Chinese, (Jespersen 1922: 222), and is in relation to this that pidgin is said to be an outcome of language contact which is created by people who do not share a common language for the purpose of communication, and is based on the linguistic features of one or more other languages which is very simplified. Kperogi (2010) claims that Pidgin is a technical term in linguistics that refers to a “contact” or “trade” language that emerged from the fusion of foreign (usually European) languages and indigenous (usually non-European) languages. In this linguistic fusion, the European languages provide most of the vocabulary and the indigenous languages provide the structure of the language. A pidgin is not the native language of any group. Where pidgins still exist, their use is confined to the market place or similar domain. There are many theories seeking to trace the origin of pidgins. Some pidgins are called ‘trade languages,’ or ‘trade jargons’ and have clearly arisen as the result of contact situations between people, without a language in common, who were seeking to do business with each other, Sourtherland and Katamba (1996). Some scholars have claimed that jargons called ‘nautical English or ‘maritime French’ served as the basis for later pidgins in various parts of the world. Clearly sailors did play an important role in spreading major colonial languages such as English, French, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese all over the world, and their jargons formed the basis for formation of pidgins. On this note, we shall examine pidgin to see if actually it’s a language of its own or a debased form and corrupted variety of some prestige language like English.
2.0 Pidgins as the debased and corrupted variety of some prestige language
Pidgins are the debased and corrupted variety of some prestige language. From the etymological viewpoint, pidgin is a Chinese corruption of the English word ‘business,’ and a corruption of the Portuguese word ‘occupaçăo, meaning ‘trade.’ Pidgin is then seen as a form of language which corrupts standard European language in the course of deviating from the correct pronunciation of the superstrate words and simplification for the purpose of communication between people who do not share a common language in order to carry out business activities. It is on this note that pidgins are generally seen as a trade language because the primary aim for this contact between the people is trade where there is need for simplified language, Brown and Attardo 2009:p.123). Historically, when this contact was made the European merchants and explorers did not know about the language of the natives nor did the natives know about the Europeans’ language. So there was the need for the European merchants and explorers to use baby talk and foreigner talk to communicate with the natives. And using this baby talk with the natives made the European merchants to use a debased variety of the Standard English. This claim is supported by the work of Mufwene (2015:p. 139). Mufwene is of the view that African slaves perhaps on the plantation were thus considered as incapable of learning the more evolved structures of the European languages, and therefore in order to be understood, the Europeans had to speak to the Africans like to babies. More or less the same idea is to be found in the foreigner hypothesis, according to which Europeans reproduced the non-Europeans’ inaccurate approximations of their languages, and this therefore gave birth to pidgin.
More so, due to the influx of English words in a pidgin, many Europeans consider pidgins to be a debased form of their own language (see Holmes 2008:p87). The Europeans assume they can guess the meanings as illustrated below:
a. I dey buy de benana
I am buying the banana
b. Im waka go hom
He walked home
c. Im bring am for mi
He brought it for me
d. Yu dey here?
Are you here?
e. Yu de rid nus pepa?
Are you reading a newspaper?
Bickerton cites the following in his work:
f. Wok had dis pipl (Hawaii Pidgin English): These people work hard.
g. Da pua pipl awl poteito it
The poor people ate only potatoes.
The above samples of pidgin variety show that pidgin is no doubt a debased form of English language because the words of the superstrate (English) are spoken in and used inside the syntax of the substrate thereby debasing the standard of superstrate. Thus pidgins have a grammar that is very different from the standard variety of its lexifier called acrolect.
Krapp (1924) and Kurath (1928) in Mufwene (2015) traced the origin of pidgin and the class of people who started speaking it not as a language but a variety. They claimed that this variety known as pidgin was an archaic retention of the non-standard speech of low-class European colonists with whom the African slaves had been in contact. No wonder that pidgins do not have a high status, and their functions are restricted in some set of domains. People who claim that pidgin is a language of its own are completely unaware of its implication on a child’s academic performance that it is capable of corrupting a child's use of the standard English, both in writing and speaking. This has happened to many Nigerian students who often use pidgin and it reflects in their formal letter writing and essay examinations. They tend to misspell some English words, and at times use this expression ‘*make I come or make I go’ thinking that it is the standard form because of the influence of pidgin, and they fail. To support this claim, renowned linguists, Jespersen and Bloomfield, maintained that the characteristics of pidgins result from ‘imperfect mastery of a language which in its initial stage, in the child with its first language and in the grown-up with a second language learnt by imperfect methods, leads to a superficial knowledge of the most indispensable word, with total disregard of grammar’ (Jespersen 1922: 234).
Pidgins are rarely used in formal education because of three arguments as listed by Siegel (2014). (1) They are debased languages, (2) it is a waste of time to use a pidgin when the standard language is the key to success in education and employment, and (3) the use of a pidgin will interfere with students' subsequent acquisition of the standard language. Siegel strongly claim that linguists can easily refute the first two arguments, but not the third, because of the special circumstances when a pidgin is LI and its lexifier language is L2. The question is if pidgin is really a language of its own, and not a bastardized form, why should it evolve to creole, and from creole to decreolization in order to come to the standard of the lexifier language?
Language is said to be corrupted when there is a degradation in the quality of a language, especially when the change originates historically from human error or prescriptively discouraged usage. Descriptive linguistics typically does not support this concept, since from a scientific point of view such changes are neither good nor bad.
Words are commonly said to be "corrupted" or "bastardized" if they undergo a change in spelling or pronunciation when borrowed from one language to another (e.g. Uni wan make I com with mai komputa - - “you want me to come with my computer”. "komputa” in this Nigerian pidgin is borrowed from English “computer”). This example illustrates that normal phonological developments or modifications that can be labelled by some as "corruption", a position which supports the thesis that any language change from a previous state is thus labelled as a corrupted variety. In this view, the pidgin sampled above would be a "corruption" of English. Although labelling a language as "corrupted" is a subjective value judgement which often leads to linguistic discrimination, some linguists who claim that pidgin is a language of its own may misquote me, but since pidgins are no man’s language, we therefore back our claims up with the approach or notion of the language purists (prescriptivists) who see language as corrupt when it deviates too much from the written standard, uses too many foreign words, or involves a mixture of languages, (Sebba, 1997). Jesperson (1922:225) said that there is corruption of language even at the pronunciation. Thus, pidgin is a corrupted variety of English as it deviates from the correct English, pronunciation, and grammar.
Let's consider the various linguistic levels pidgin corrupts some prestige language like English.
1. Corruptions in the pronunciation of some English words:
Some English words found in the structure of Pidgin are distorted and pronounced differently e.g.
A. Im no gree com.
He not agree come.
He refused to come.
B. Im no wan com.
He not want come.
He doesn't want to come.
Note: from the two instances from Nigerian English-Based pidgin, it has been noted that the words "gree", "com", "wan", are distortions of English words "agree", "come", and "want", which are corrupted at both spelling and pronunciation. Phonetically, / Ә / sound is omitted in the word "agree" /Әgri:/ , /t/ sound in the word "want" /wΛ̭nt/ is omitted too and at the level of graphology "e" which is though silent in the word "come" is equally omitted. With these instances, we see that pidgin corrupts mostly English words in terms of pronunciation.
2. Corruptions in the written standard:
Below are some instances of Pidgin that show how written pidgin virtually deviates from the written standard of English e.g.
A. Yu tuu mọch.
You too much.
You are wonderful.
B. Yu go com tu mai haus?
You go come to my house?
Will you come to my house?
Note that in the above two examples (a) and (b), English words are corruptly written. "Yu" in the standard English is written as "you", "tuu" is "too", "mọch" is "much", "com" is "come", "tu" is "to", "mai", is "my", and "haus" is "house" in the written standard of English.
3 Corruption in the use of too many foreign words:
When pidgin is spoken one could imagine whether it is English being spoken or not because of too many English words in the utterance. For examples:
a. I no come for the bible study yesterday.
I didn’t come for the Bible study yesterday.
I didn’t come for the Bible study yesterday.
b. Im go school yesterday.
He go school yesterday.
He went to school yesterday.
We see from the above pidgin utterances that too many English words are used in the substrate variety, and based on this influx of foreign words in the structure of pidgin, many Europeans consider pidgin a debased form of English. The truth about this claim is that a native speaker of English can guess the meanings because the words are mostly English.
4. Corruptions involving a mixture of languages
No language can be isolated from others. Language borrows words and/ or structures from other languages to enrich its communicative demands. Based on the view of language purists, language is corrupt when it mixes itself with others. At this level of emphasise, there is corruption of English in the use of pidgin. For examples:
a. How una dey?
How you-people are?
How are you?
b. Mu na Joy don go see dem
I and Joy did go see them
I and Joy had gone to see them
Note: in example {a} una is an Igbo word meaning all of you or you people while mu in example b. is an Igbo word too meaning I. in respect to these examples, we see that there are mixtures of English {the superstrate}, and Igbo{the substrate} which are simplified. This language mixing is regarded by the purists as language corruption, (see Sebba 1997).
5. Corruption at the lexical and phonological levels:
English words are used in pidgin expressions and are adapted to the substrate phonology. For example: “Wetin dey hapun?” The informal Standard English equivalent of this expression would be “What’s up?” Now, “wetin” is a distortion of “what is,” and “hapun” is the corruption of “happen,” Kperogi (2010).
6. Corruption at the semantic level:
Some meanings of English words are distorted and corrupted to mean another thing in a Pidgin. For instance, consider these Nigerian Pidgin expressions:
a. Shit dey hungry me.
Shit is hungry me.
I want to defecate
b. Tek-am suffering.
Take it suffering.
Take it easy.
Sentence (a) could be translated as “I want to eat faeces or I am hungry and wish to eat faeces. But the equivalent meaning which the speaker has in mind in the Standard English is “I want to defecate”. In this case, the English word “hungry” which means “desiring of food”; “having a physical need for food,” is semantically corrupted to mean “eager to expel faeces”. Also in sentence (b) the English word “suffering” which means a state of pain or distress or misery resulting from affliction is corrupted to mean “easy” which is translated to the Standard English as “Take it easy”.
In the above sentence, the vocabulary is mostly English but the structure of the sentences is decidedly African.
Factors/causes of language corruption with respect to pidgins
1. Economy: pidgin users tend to make their utterances as efficient and effective as possible to reach communicative goals. Pidgin is said to be a very simplified variety due to its nature of economy which by principle tends to result in consonant omission {wan instead of want, de instead of the, dey instead of they}, vowel omissions {gree instead of agree, com instead of come}, and vowel reductions e.g. (greet becomes grit etc). These omissions and vowel reductions create a phonetic reduction of speech forms.
2. Language contact: when a language is in contact with others, it will result in borrowing of words and constructions from other languages. As the African natives were in contact with the Europeans, it became possible for them to learn their colonial masters’ language which they learnt imperfectly which of course resulted to a debased form of their masters’ prestige language
3. Geographic separation: when people move away from each other, their language will digress, at least for the vocabulary, due to different experiences.
4. Cultural environment: the environment a pidgin user finds himself will likely influence him to learn new words to add up to his existing vocabulary. Take for instance a pidgin user whose linguistic sources are English and Igbo who moves to Hausa, a new environment, he will not only learn Hausa language but also use some Hausa words in his pidgin {e.g. I dey grit the man sanu but im no hear - I was greeting the man good morning, but he did not hear}. “Sanu” is an Hausa word meaning “good morning”. We see here that cultural environment causes language corruption. This is because a group of speakers will reflect new places, situations, and objects in their language for communication.
5. Migration/Movement: Speakers will change and create languages, such as pidgins and creoles. This factor is related to the cultural environment discussed above.
6. Imperfect learning: According to one view, children regularly learn the adult forms imperfectly, and the changed forms then turn into a new standard. Alternatively, imperfect learning occurs regularly in one part of society, such as an immigrant group, where the minority language forms a substratum, and the changed forms can ultimately influence majority usage.
7. Social prestige: Language may not only change towards a prestigious accent, but also away from one with negative prestige, as in the case of creolization.
Conclusion:
Pidgins can serve many functions, and can be used in formal settings by professors including other educated individuals, but their significant functions do not mean that they are standard languages like English. So scholars should believe me that users of pidgins speak the debased form of their lexifiers, and pidgins as variety languages are very unique and very easy to learn. Since they are debased forms, government is yet to standardize them.
There’s no doubt for instance that English-Based Pidgin is not purely English — in fact, no language is pure without borrowing from other languages. Languages like Chinese and German have similarly picked up English phrases and words, while the American English language has its fair share of French-influenced words and an ever-increasing adoption of Spanish words and phrases. Linguistic exchange is a basic fact of the modern globalized world we live in. Unless a country and its citizens are linguistically isolated from other languages with no means of internet, it is then that language corruption will not suffice or happen. Language influence is a fact that needs to be accepted. After all, what language today remains totally pure and devoid of external influence? Every living language could be considered “corrupt” in the purists’ point of view.
In this day and age, foreign language influence should not be attacked as a type of language corruption. But since pidgin is no one’s native language, it is however seen as a corrupted variety of English with no sad feelings.
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