Dillon Blog Post 1


So far in Linguistic Anthropology class, I was interested in the use of pidgins and their eventual turning into creoles. In classes in high school and college about how the triangular trade system worked and how there was an inevitable mixing of cultures that are still prevalent today. In fact, some of my favorite foods are created from the mixing of cultures like Cajun food. When I lived in Texas, I had the opportunity to go and eat a lot of authentic Cajun food like crawfish and gumbo. I also had the chance to realize that even though being from the south my whole life, I could still not understand what the people who were serving me food were saying to me. These people were Creoles, which I would later learn had French heritage mixed African or Caribbean descents. I also thought that the video that we watched recently in class about the uses of pidgins and creoles in other parts of the world like in Africa where the first contact with European settlers made for new pidgins that would allow the two groups of people to trade. The process of which a pidgin turning into a creole is called creolization. According to our text, a pidgin that becomes the primary use language within a certain speech community is then called a creole (251). Overall, I thought that it was interesting that I was able to see first hand how cultures mix and create new things that I love, and then be able to see how that effects the language that is spoken between the two groups.  

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 30, 2018 at 10:06 PM

    I too found the use of pidgin languages interesting. It was interesting to see how useful the pidgin language was in the video when they were visiting that remote village. It is a good thing that the pidgin was available to both parties so that they could have an avenue of communication and work together. Because of this it makes me think that the pidgin languages are extremely useful for protecting native languages of these remote villages. Without a pidgin language one group or the other would need to learn an entirely new language for communication to take place, the pidgin gives them the ability to communicate without taking on a completely new language.

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