Neo-creolization in today’s colonial times

Neo-creolization is any situation of language formation that resembles a Creole, but it does not fit the classic Creole paradigm. Creole languages were formed in times of slavery when the traders mixed together speakers of various languages to discourage communication of revolt. They created a new version of their oppressor’s language in order to communicate. When that new version became the native language of a new generation, a Creole language was formed. The oppressor’s language would provide the words, and the grammar comes from a mixture of other languages along with the native-like creativity. The oppressor’s language is called superstratum, and the underlying languages comprise a substratum. Examples of English-based Creole languages include Jamaican English or “patois”, Hawaiian Creole, or Afrikaans in South Africa. French spoken in Haiti is considered a French Creole, while the only recognized Spanish-based Creole is Palenquero at San Basilio de Palenque (Northern coast of Colombia). These Creoles have African languages as substratum, but on the surface, the main source of words is the colonizer’s language (Hall, 1966).

Another source of Creoles is just the speaker’s innovation. Creoles may have certain commonalities that are not explainable by a common substratum, and may be due to an inner grammatical force in the human being. That force is called in linguistics “the Universals.” Not the Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. Universals is just the tendency of the human being to say the same types of things when developing a language. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar is quite the opposite, the human ability to diversify ad infinitum the things they say.

The same types of things humans say when developing an European language include: 1) not saying articles, as most languages don’t have articles (the, a), 2) not saying the verb “to be,” as this verb is not a real verb (also not existent in most languages), 3) plain negation or question, with no auxiliaries (did, does) or without twisting the word order to make that happen, 4) creating a simple system of verb conjugation. Creolization is just any attempt to speak a European language with a grammar that makes sense to the greatest amount of speakers.

Universals emerge when a child is acquiring their native language, when someone is learning a second language, and in Creole languages. When something is high ranked in the Universals, it means it’s more marked, or universally difficult: for children, for second language learners, and for adult speakers of Creole languages. One universally difficult thing to say is the verb “to be.” This verb does not mean anything, it just marks a connection of identity. Saying “my mom is a nurse” implies a connection between “my mom” and her identity as a nurse, but it does not express an action. That’s why it’s called “the copula,” two items in the sentence just “copulate” (yes, as in sex) with each other, they’re just connected. Children acquiring English may take longer saying “to be” because it’s too abstract.

Deletion of copula has been found in second language speakers whose native language DOES have copula, which is astonishing. Any foreigner who’s been nervous enough trying to speak English may have said, “dog, under the car” meaning “the dog is under the car,” even when their native languages have equivalents for each of those grammatical words. When I studied English in New Orleans in 2003, we spoke English as the lingua franca among Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Germans, Italians, and others. It was like a mini-Creole was formed. I found myself saying “me, so tired” meaning “I am so tired” when I wasn’t sure of the English proficiency in my interlocutor, which is called “foreigner talk” (another way of pidgin, the earliest stage of a Creole). A native speaker of Spanish is quoted saying: “Like they cold” (Pease-Alvarez, L., & Alvarez, 2020, p. 141) instead of “they ARE cold” even when Spanish has a rich system of copulative verbs. That means, Universals can take over a second language grammar by depleting the speaker from their native language resources.

The absence of copula is found in a number of Creoles, as in the Jamaican dance by Shabba Ranks that gave birth to reggaeton “man under table mi say dem bow”=if the man IS under THE table, I say (he’s doing) the bow (oral sex).” The deletion of copula can also be found in African American Vernacular English as in Nicky Minaj featured in Tusa by Karol: “until I realized you a epic failure” instead of “you ARE a epic failure.” Notable the elision of copula is also found in Chicano English, whose Spanish substratum does not explain why Chicano speakers do that. The popularity of hip-hop and Afro contacts in Chicano neighborhoods may be at play. So, why is not Chicano English a Creole as any other?

The notion of Creole involves the stabilization of contact phenomenon into new languages. However, many situations of language contact may lead to new varieties such as Chicano English or Miami English (Carter, Lopez-Valdez, and Sims, 2020), where Spanish-like speech spread among English-only speakers. Andean Spanish is the Spanish spoken among the indigenous languages of the Andes, especially Quechua. Even Spanish speakers who do not speak Quechua in the area may use Spanish with Quechua substratum (Cerrón-Palomino, p. 76-77). Afro-Peruvian also has Creole-like features without being considered a Creole (Sessarego). Belizean Creole, while English based, has also received contributions from Spanish (Balam) which posit a controversy whether those should be part of the Creole. On the other hand, our observation of the English spoken by Navajo speakers at the Southwest (in a forthcoming entry) will reveal aspects of second language stabilization, with Universals. In Diaz-Collazos’s research of Japanese speakers in Colombia, a native speaker of Spanish born in Colombia, who reported not speaking Japanese, was identified as having influence from Japanese into her native Spanish.

Today’s colonial times do not involve open slavery, yet such contacts are still part of a new detour in colonial processes. In today’s times, oppressed individuals choose the path of slavery on their own, as alternative forms of social control make it unnecessary to mix up speakers to avoid potential revolts. The stable varieties derived from language contact are hesitant to stay within the label of “dialects” because the cause for variation is mostly linked to the original language of the bilinguals, and some of the peculiarities are not connected to the regional variation of the mainstream language. They share patterns of Creole languages such as: 1) having a lexifier language (the superstratum), 2) not following the patterns of the lexifier language, 3) receiving action of the Universals, and 4) using grammar from the underlying languages (the substratum). These varieties manage to stabilize within a larger community of speakers who do not necessarily speak the second language, following a “pidgin” to “Creole” continuum process. Pidgin is when the new language creation does not have native speakers, and Creole is when the new language is learned by a new generation of native speakers, becoming stable in the community.

Yet there’s a long bureaucratic process linguists must follow in order to propose a newly found variety derived from contact is a Pidgin or Creole, or to even propose creolization-in-progress of certain variety. The process is merely bureaucratic as everyone knows Miami English, Chicano English, Peruvian Afro-Vernaculars or Andean Spanishes are Creoles, but someone in their dissertation committee or their paper’s peer reviewers, who want to show how smart they are, just say with deep worrisome demeanor: “but that’s not a Creole.” Then a linguist in the making needs to resource themselves to detour terms such as “vernacular”, “mesolectum”, “contact-induced variety”, “socially fossilized second language grammar” among other terms that just describe a pidgin or a Creole that does not fully fit the classic description.

Creole-like behavior in language contact should be named Creole, or at least neo-Creoles, and that would save linguists from reading long lit reviews. If we built a new theoretical concept like this, socially-fossilized second language grammar may raise their status and gain greater research attention. Moreover, speakers of those varieties may enhance their Creole-like behavior because of the new identity in their languages. That would create pathways to keep vernacular grammars alive through the lexifier languages. Creole languages in contact with other varieties may be adding new substrata as languages are never static systems. That way, Belizean English may be re-Creolizing constantly through the Spanish underlying influences.

This would also allow to fit supposedly de-Creolized varieties such as Afro-Peruvian Spanish and African American Vernacular English. In these cases, linguists have hypothesized a greater variety of early Creoles, as the case of Caribbean Colombia (Gutiérrez Maté). Thus, Palenquero might have been among a myriad of Creoles existing around the region. Some of them disappeared, and some others would gradually lost Creole-like features, but then developed into dialectal varieties by gradual assimilation into the colonial language. Most of them, however, would not be attested by written sources due to their lack of social status during the Colonial times. In any case, even classically accepted Creoles may not attest their true origins with written sources, thus lack of evidence is something that also affects accepted Creole languages.

I know my fellow linguists just bite their tongues to avoid saying they have discovered a Creole, but they are unable to do so because of some classic Creole theory disallowing them to say that. They know those varieties fit the description of Creole categories, entertain for a while they are dealing with Creoles, then someone else discourages from naming those varieties like that. Yet no one is ever able to find a better term for those varieties. They’re not dialects, they are no one’s interlanguage, and they are well-established in a community of speakers. Instead of keeping us revolving around whether something is a Creole or not, we can call them a Creole-like variety, a neo-Creolized variety, a neo-Creole, or just Creole.

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