+Jordan-Nesu Scown Wow, thanks for commenting! We really appreciate the comment. I think I originally heard of the language in my undergraduate classes, but it's come up a few times since then. And there are whole books about it - we have links in the description! I don't speak Tok Pisin myself, but I played with a Tok Pisin-English dictionary, and I think you are saying you're asking because not many people know about Tok Pisin, which is unfortunate - it's a very interesting language. Maybe we can help spread the word. ^_^
Thanks for the explanation. I'm an academic with only a passing side curiosity for linguistics and I've always wondered about the difference between a creole and a pidgin. So ... Indonesian with its reduplicated plurals and simple phonetics and fairly uncomplicated grammar began as a pidgin didn't it. I'll check out Tok Pisin
I am from Brazil and I discovered your channel a few days ago. It is simply wonderful. I did my sign here and I intend to learn more and more each day with your lessons. Thanks a bunch since my country.
I am a tokpisin speaking and it is my mother tongue, my question is how did you come to know of tokpisin? Mi askim kos em i nogat planti ol man igat save lo tokpisin ya.
I think it's widely studied in undergraduate courses. I go to uni in South Africa and we learnt about Tok Pisin to study pidgins and creoles. We even have pidgin and creole languages here (Afrikaans, Fanagalo) and studies Tok Pisin in depth rather than those.
So when does a creole turn into just a regular language, like Spanish or French, which I assume went through this process with Roman colonialism (and in France, Lombardi colonialism)?
Diana Kennedy Thanks for the question! It's good to hear from you again. ^_^ This is a bit of a tricky question, as the answer can depend on your point of view for what regular language means. As soon as a population of kids was growing up learning that early French or Spanish as their native language - in other words, as soon as creolization occurred - the languages would have qualified as regular languages, since they'd be as legitimate as any other natural language would have. On the other hand, maybe you mean when do we stop thinking of them as a creole. And that question is somewhat more difficult. I'm not a historical linguist (I'm an experimentalist), and so I've only done some research on this question, rather than a ton. But both Spanish and French emerged from versions of Vulgar Latin, and Vulgar Latin has the hallmarks of a creole, stemming from an imperial power coming and developing a pidgin with the local communities in their lands. So both of them could be said to creoles initially, just in different areas. This makes me think that what turns a creole into a language people don't think of as a creole really anymore is just time. Since the initial fusion of each language, there's been centuries and a lot more language change and influence from other languages, such that while the influence of the original languages can still be felt, they're also very clearly their own things. And we don't have to think about their roots as much. Maybe that'll be the case in a few hundred years if we look at some of the more recent creoles, too. ^_^
@@thelingspace Oh my God this is insanely wrong. Vulgar Latin is absolutely not considered to have been creolized, and Spanish and French were NEVER pidgins. Dear God I mean this isn't even close to right. Why are you commenting on this topic?
I love the stuff you have on the shelves behind you! I've noticed you have what looks like a little white index card with a picture of CGPgrey on it? Is that right? Also what are the pink, blue, and green books in the bottom left?
Alex Pigeon Thanks! We definitely have fun with setting up different things for each episode. And yeah, I've been supporting Grey for a while on Subbable and then Patreon, and I got a postcard from him, so we stuck it on the shelves. And those books are Volumes 2-4 of Anthony Yu's translation of Journey to the West. Volume 1 is there, too - it's just off to the side there. ^_^
There's Russenorsk (although that may be considered a lingua franca) that came from trade between Russians and Norwegians. There are also languages that arise from war, such as Vietnamese Pidgin English.
Soooo many errors in this video. Why do you only present one creole genesis scenario/hypothesis, that of the pidgin-to-creole life-cycle? Don't the many, many criticisms of this from people like Robert Chaudenson, Mervyn Alleyne, Albert Valdman, and Salikoko Mufwene, among others, deserve any consideration? Almost all French-based creoles have no pidgin stage attested for them, including the most spoken creole language, that of Haiti. Also, why promote the idea that children are responsible for the elaboration and stablization of a creole grammar? Particularly with respect to Tok Pisin, spoken for decades by adults with ever-increasing, well-documented expansion without nativization (and you can read Peter Mühlhäusler's pidgin and creole textbook for more on it), this claim leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Do kids play some role? Of course they do, and sometimes it's significant. But it's not always the kids leading the way in nativization (and perhaps even not usually-- we need more information on this). In Hawaiian Creole, for instance, we see a huge influence of the syntax of Portuguese, whose adult speakers were the first to shift to Hawaiian Pidgin as their main language with their kids. Unsurprisingly, as we know from lots of studies of language shift and from SLA, their first language syntax transferred extensively to their second language, and lo and behold, their kids picked up on these regularities in the second language discourse and nativized them. Furthermore, you appear to conflate a jargon, which is highly unstable, with a pidgin, which has much more stability. Additionally, you give the impression that pidgins and creoles are common results of people coming into contact who don't know each other's language. Bilingualism and language shift are far more common, and the video doesn't even mention that its subject is a rare, rare phenomenon. It's unclear what languages of the Caribbean you're referring to when discussing the idea of Caribbean pidgins. Perhaps the maroon creoles, but hopefully not the creoles of places like Belize and Antigua, which are more likely to have emerged in Africa and been exported to the Caribbean (I believe John Holm has written on this, as has Mervyn Alleyne). Certainly not any French Caribbean creole language, since we have very little evidence of a pidgin having ever preceded them. What do you mean when you say that pidgins don't obey Universal Grammar? If they do not obey UG, how are they learnable? People like Rex Sprouse, Lydia White, Laurent Dekydtspotter, and Bonnie Schwartz have given a lot of evidence that UG is in effect in second language acquisition. Wouldn't we expect the same thing to be true in pidgin formation? If not, why not? This video's information seems woefully out of date.
+emo2803 I definitely do! Our whole team does. And I disagree that it's an outdated approach. There's quite a lot of research going on within the generative framework right now, from theoretical work to acquisition and processing studies. I particularly believe in UG in the sense that there must be something innate to language - we learn it too quickly to start off without any constraints on what language can do, as shown in the statistical learning models done by Charles Yang, Lisa Pearl, Jon Sprouse, and more. So we should characterize what that innate knowledge is. We haven't solved everything yet, but we're learning more all the time! I think it's an exciting time in linguistics because of this - you can really make a big impact on the field fairly easily. I wrote a bigger thing about UG and science recently for our Tumblr, if you want to read it over here: thelingspace.tumblr.com/post/132966156433/linguisten-ichbinkahless-could-you-imagine
Watching this video is my homework. You know you're doing something good when university teachers are using your work to teach.
+idannen That's definitely true! I hope you liked doing your homework, then. ^_^
@@thelingspace 4 years later and it’s still happening today 😊 and yes I’m enjoying this homework
+Jordan-Nesu Scown
Wow, thanks for commenting! We really appreciate the comment. I think I originally heard of the language in my undergraduate classes, but it's come up a few times since then. And there are whole books about it - we have links in the description!
I don't speak Tok Pisin myself, but I played with a Tok Pisin-English dictionary, and I think you are saying you're asking because not many people know about Tok Pisin, which is unfortunate - it's a very interesting language. Maybe we can help spread the word. ^_^
Thanks for the explanation. I'm an academic with only a passing side curiosity for linguistics and I've always wondered about the difference between a creole and a pidgin.
So ... Indonesian with its reduplicated plurals and simple phonetics and fairly uncomplicated grammar began as a pidgin didn't it.
I'll check out Tok Pisin
I am from Brazil and I discovered your channel a few days ago. It is simply wonderful. I did my sign here and I intend to learn more and more each day with your lessons. Thanks a bunch since my country.
We watched this in my sociolinguistics class at university in Germany :) love your channel!
This is such an amazing channel - thank you for spreading your breadth of knowledge!
Eden Suoth Yes!
Man, I love your channel! It´s one of the best channels I´ve found so far on youtube! Please keep posting videos! Felipe, from Brazil.
+Felipe Pazello Glad to hear it! Hope you stick with us. We're not planning on going anywhere. ^_^
He sounds like Ernie from Sesame Street! Haha great videos. They definitely help me with my Linguistics 1 class. Thank you!
Your channel definitely deserves more views and support! :D
Audun Holland-Goon Thanks! We definitely like hearing that. I hope we do get more! If you know anyone who'd be interested, spread the word. ^_^
Audun H-G I agree.
I am a tokpisin speaking and it is my mother tongue, my question is how did you come to know of tokpisin? Mi askim kos em i nogat planti ol man igat save lo tokpisin ya.
I think it's widely studied in undergraduate courses. I go to uni in South Africa and we learnt about Tok Pisin to study pidgins and creoles. We even have pidgin and creole languages here (Afrikaans, Fanagalo) and studies Tok Pisin in depth rather than those.
Could you do one on Nigerian pidgin or any west African pidgin?. Its the largest pidgin/Creole spoken in the world.
So when does a creole turn into just a regular language, like Spanish or French, which I assume went through this process with Roman colonialism (and in France, Lombardi colonialism)?
Diana Kennedy Thanks for the question! It's good to hear from you again. ^_^
This is a bit of a tricky question, as the answer can depend on your point of view for what regular language means. As soon as a population of kids was growing up learning that early French or Spanish as their native language - in other words, as soon as creolization occurred - the languages would have qualified as regular languages, since they'd be as legitimate as any other natural language would have.
On the other hand, maybe you mean when do we stop thinking of them as a creole. And that question is somewhat more difficult. I'm not a historical linguist (I'm an experimentalist), and so I've only done some research on this question, rather than a ton. But both Spanish and French emerged from versions of Vulgar Latin, and Vulgar Latin has the hallmarks of a creole, stemming from an imperial power coming and developing a pidgin with the local communities in their lands. So both of them could be said to creoles initially, just in different areas.
This makes me think that what turns a creole into a language people don't think of as a creole really anymore is just time. Since the initial fusion of each language, there's been centuries and a lot more language change and influence from other languages, such that while the influence of the original languages can still be felt, they're also very clearly their own things. And we don't have to think about their roots as much. Maybe that'll be the case in a few hundred years if we look at some of the more recent creoles, too. ^_^
@@thelingspace Oh my God this is insanely wrong. Vulgar Latin is absolutely not considered to have been creolized, and Spanish and French were NEVER pidgins. Dear God I mean this isn't even close to right. Why are you commenting on this topic?
Any tips for learning Pidgens and Creoles of English if you already know English well?
Is Patois a creole? Like Jamaican Patois? Love your video's, currently revising for a Sociolinguistics exam! Tairing my hair out! x
I love the stuff you have on the shelves behind you! I've noticed you have what looks like a little white index card with a picture of CGPgrey on it? Is that right? Also what are the pink, blue, and green books in the bottom left?
Alex Pigeon Thanks! We definitely have fun with setting up different things for each episode. And yeah, I've been supporting Grey for a while on Subbable and then Patreon, and I got a postcard from him, so we stuck it on the shelves. And those books are Volumes 2-4 of Anthony Yu's translation of Journey to the West. Volume 1 is there, too - it's just off to the side there. ^_^
Which of your videos talk about universal grammar? This video also really helped me understand. :)
Could you explain what the grammar is that all creoles use?
Is Hawaiian pidgin a full-fledged creole by now? because ive seen no one call it that, just a pidgin.
Hey! Just realized that you literally start all your videos with "so let's talk about..." :D
Please answer me why pidgins do not live longer?
some become Creole, some not.
really great video. Are their any well known pidgins that haven't come from colonial times?
There's Russenorsk (although that may be considered a lingua franca) that came from trade between Russians and Norwegians. There are also languages that arise from war, such as Vietnamese Pidgin English.
Delight! Thank you for the video
Nicely put!
Ur videos r super informative n fun
I like the content of these videos but I find them stressful.
why do not pidgins live longer?
Haitian creole is the most spoken creole in the world
Soooo many errors in this video. Why do you only present one creole genesis scenario/hypothesis, that of the pidgin-to-creole life-cycle? Don't the many, many criticisms of this from people like Robert Chaudenson, Mervyn Alleyne, Albert Valdman, and Salikoko Mufwene, among others, deserve any consideration? Almost all French-based creoles have no pidgin stage attested for them, including the most spoken creole language, that of Haiti.
Also, why promote the idea that children are responsible for the elaboration and stablization of a creole grammar? Particularly with respect to Tok Pisin, spoken for decades by adults with ever-increasing, well-documented expansion without nativization (and you can read Peter Mühlhäusler's pidgin and creole textbook for more on it), this claim leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Do kids play some role? Of course they do, and sometimes it's significant. But it's not always the kids leading the way in nativization (and perhaps even not usually-- we need more information on this). In Hawaiian Creole, for instance, we see a huge influence of the syntax of Portuguese, whose adult speakers were the first to shift to Hawaiian Pidgin as their main language with their kids. Unsurprisingly, as we know from lots of studies of language shift and from SLA, their first language syntax transferred extensively to their second language, and lo and behold, their kids picked up on these regularities in the second language discourse and nativized them.
Furthermore, you appear to conflate a jargon, which is highly unstable, with a pidgin, which has much more stability.
Additionally, you give the impression that pidgins and creoles are common results of people coming into contact who don't know each other's language. Bilingualism and language shift are far more common, and the video doesn't even mention that its subject is a rare, rare phenomenon.
It's unclear what languages of the Caribbean you're referring to when discussing the idea of Caribbean pidgins. Perhaps the maroon creoles, but hopefully not the creoles of places like Belize and Antigua, which are more likely to have emerged in Africa and been exported to the Caribbean (I believe John Holm has written on this, as has Mervyn Alleyne). Certainly not any French Caribbean creole language, since we have very little evidence of a pidgin having ever preceded them.
What do you mean when you say that pidgins don't obey Universal Grammar? If they do not obey UG, how are they learnable? People like Rex Sprouse, Lydia White, Laurent Dekydtspotter, and Bonnie Schwartz have given a lot of evidence that UG is in effect in second language acquisition. Wouldn't we expect the same thing to be true in pidgin formation? If not, why not?
This video's information seems woefully out of date.
CGP Grey!
Yep! I've been supporting him for rather a while, first on Subbable and then on Patreon. Getting the postcard was pretty fun. ^_^
Do you really believe in UG? It's such an outdated approach.
+emo2803 I definitely do! Our whole team does. And I disagree that it's an outdated approach. There's quite a lot of research going on within the generative framework right now, from theoretical work to acquisition and processing studies. I particularly believe in UG in the sense that there must be something innate to language - we learn it too quickly to start off without any constraints on what language can do, as shown in the statistical learning models done by Charles Yang, Lisa Pearl, Jon Sprouse, and more. So we should characterize what that innate knowledge is. We haven't solved everything yet, but we're learning more all the time! I think it's an exciting time in linguistics because of this - you can really make a big impact on the field fairly easily. I wrote a bigger thing about UG and science recently for our Tumblr, if you want to read it over here: thelingspace.tumblr.com/post/132966156433/linguisten-ichbinkahless-could-you-imagine