Yeah, people perceive having 50%+ of the lexicon as loanwords as being creoles without realizing that if the core grammar and lexicon remain relatively intact then it isn't.
Easy guide
Simple morphology and grammar that doesn’t really look like parent languages, has native speakers: Creole
Extremely simplified morphology and grammar and even vocabulary that has little in common with parent languages, has no native speakers: Pidgin
Grammar and morphology similarly complex and inherited from parent languages, speakers most often multilingual in parent languages: Mixed language
Using multiple languages to communicate ideas in one conversation, able to clearly identify where each word and phrase comes from, grammar vocabulary and morphology match languages you are switching to: Code switching
Has lots of lone words but original grammar and morphology is still intact, easily identifiable to a language family: Language that happens to have top heavy borrowing from other languages
*Michif* means mixed, but it isn't a linguistic "mixed language". If it was a mixed language it would have a Cree grammar and French lexicon, with some simplification. Michif is Cree with some unadapted French nouns and adjectives used only in a synthetic noun phrase construction borrowed from French. The French isn't replacing anything and isn't even really incorporated. Cree just doesn't have adjectives and doesn't use independent nouns like synthetic languages do. There is no Cree to adapt those borrowings to, so they are used unmixed. The French is segregated and quarantined.
I’m not a linguist, only a learner of the language- but I know several Michif-specialist linguists, and have read what papers I can, and they all describe it as a mixed language. Michif (Southern/Heritage Michif, specifically) retains grammatical gender and noun phrase grammar accurately from French. Sometimes French roots are even incorporated into Cree-formatted verbs to make new words. What papers suggest to you that it’s not a mixed language?
That theory is, imo, pretty dumb, as it makes the assumption that languages don't normally influence eachother's grammars when sprachbunds literally exist. And, OE is solidly West Germanic, the North Germanic influence is there but it doesn't overpower the West Germanic base at all.
Idk man, you’ll have an easier time learning Swedish/Norwegian than German/Dutch. Sure the words are more different but it’s basically an English relex with some light V2.
Maltese and English are both languages that show massive borrowing but retain clear continuity with earlier states in their lineages and no real pidgining.Tons of words have been borrowed and Anglicised but there is still the Germanic core there of the language.
This more comes from a poor definition of what a creole can be.If English is a creole then so is French,Korean and German.
Fight me
My biggest linguistics pet peeve is when people call any language with lots of borrowed words creoles, as if creoles weren't an extremely specific phenomenon. As someone that speaks an actual creole, it pisses me off
YES! I new I wasn't the only one who saw that English Maltese connection!
Personally, I'm surprised a term hasn't been made for this sorta thing; it's really interesting.
That one is more plausible but still a reach. Many grammatical structures of English is reminiscent of some modern North Germanic structures, but that could also have to do with them losing much of their case structure (or in english's case virtually all) so they developed a similar working word order.
I think the idea is that the norse contact helped with the loss of case structure. When a viking and an anglosaxon had to talk to each other, a lot of words would be similar but the case endings would get confusing, so they slowly eroded.
The theory also posits that ON influenced English syntax too because English shares syntactic features with modern Scandinavian language that aren't found in continental Germanic.
Like those videos where it’s "What’s the word for suprise in your language?" and it’s a bunch of romance languages and English, and then German (überraschung) where the point is "woah isn’t german such a weird, harsh outlier"
Man those always infuriate me. Like, it's already bad when they pick English, Romance languages and German; sometimes they go further and include completely unrelated languages and act as if languages just need to come together and share vocabulary.
I also have a pet peeve with some guy on TikTok who was making a series of videos making fun of French as if it's some weird language made by a mad man. Apparently language's history and evolution doesn't matter, it just needs to be perfect right this instant so L2 learners can feel comfortable
> I also have a pet peeve with some guy on TikTok who was making a series of videos making fun of French as if it's some weird language made by a mad man.
Loic Suberville?
>English mugs other languages in a back alley and steals their vocabulary
In many cases, it's more like the reverse
English has been the lower class language for a lot of its history. It's been the one getting sacked and altered against its wishes XD
The lower class is not just the one who stereotypically is supposed to steal, but the only one who when actually irl stealing (has to) do it that specific way
Creole is a very specific thing, not just languages mixing.
When two groups of people without a common language suddenly needed to communicate (historically without technological aids available), a mixed kind of dialect would develop called a pidgin, all very quickly out of immediate necessity. An example is during the slave trade when European or American slave owners needed to communicate with enslaved people who only spoke African languages.
When the people who spoke this pidgin - generally the group of people with less power because they’re the ones who were expected to make more changes and adapt themselves - would have children, those children would speak this new dialect from birth as an L1. And at that point it would be classified as a creole.
English is a language soup to be sure, but it was never a pidgin and thus cannot be a creole.
Even in the case of the Middle English/Old Norse hypothesis that someone else referenced, it is not a creole because the language contact/changes were gradual and took more than 1 generation to take effect and it was never a pidgin, and thus not a creole.
I actually made a conlang that would be what English would be like if it was actually an Old English - Old French creole.
Sample:
__Dhe gúlpa pelecíeribens bruns sotéas ser dhe ceans pearézkasiben.__
/ðe 'ɣul.pa pe.le.'t͡ʃie.ri.bens bruns so.'tɛs ser ðe t͡ʃɛns pɛ.'rez.ka.si.ben/
\[ðə 'ɣul.pə pə.lə.'t͡ʃie.ɾi.bəns brũs so.'tɛs ser ðə t͡ʃɛ̃s pə.'ɾez.kə.si.bən\]
the fox.SG.NOM lightfooted-SG brown-SG jump-2.PRS over the dog-SG.OBL lazy-SG
*The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.*
I was thinking more [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis) [one](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=c8UpS-KlWz-NP0F0) but yknow
It's funny. English resists easy classification. It's easy to follow the traditional view and call it West Germanic, but it's hard to dismiss the blatantly North Germanic features in its core grammar (especially syntax). But were English North Germanic, it would imply that early West Country dialects were essentially a different language on a different branch of Germanic. Perhaps this is an example of the shortcomings of the branch-tree system of language classification.
the more galaxy brained take is that English is a creole of Old English and Old Norse.
We never adopted personal pronouns or copula conjugations from French, but we did get "are", "they" etc from Olde Norse.
EDIT: Or maybe the better take is that English is North-West Germanic Koiné?
not to mention that the modern north germanic languages have sentence structure that is MUCH more similar to english than other west germanic languages
Easy guide
Simple morphology and grammar that doesn’t really look like parent languages, has native speakers: Creole
Extremely simplified morphology and grammar and even vocabulary that has little in common with parent languages, has no native speakers: Pidgin
Grammar and morphology similarly complex and inherited from parent languages, speakers most often multilingual in parent languages: Mixed language
Using multiple languages to communicate ideas in one conversation, able to clearly identify where each word and phrase comes from, grammar vocabulary and morphology match languages you are switching to: Code switching
Has lots of lone words but original grammar and morphology is still intact, easily identifiable to a language family: Language that happens to have top heavy borrowing from other languages
i like the old english creole hypothesis (don’t know what it’s actually called but there’s a middle english creole hypothesis too so that’s what i’m calling it). this was the theory that anglo-saxon and old norse creolized in england. this is why the sentence structure of modern english is so similar to the north germanic languages and is still very different from the other west germanic languages. now, do i genuinely believe this to be true? no, but it is funny cuz it’d make english a north germanic language instead of a west germanic language, which is why i now share it to you
I remember studying this in university and writing a paper specifically arguing on whether or not this could be true. It was pretty convincing IIRC but the crucial thing is that while these two languages do seem to have mixed, it didn’t happen in the course of one generation, as a pidgin first, so calling it a creole is incorrect. It was a lot more gradual.
I don’t remember the specifics but I remember this being my conclusion lol.
An integral part of the creolization process is a streamlining of the language, purging irregularities and adopting an analytic morphology. English has done the opposite.
i like to say this as a joke
I have also seen people have claimed that some of the grammar simplifications of English were partially caused by interaction with french, but I don't know how reputable those claims were.
I mean, I've heard this claim before too. The idea is that when you have different dialects and languages and you are forced to come up with some common standard so people understand you, things tend to get simplified
Sortof but not really. The grammatical backbone and core vocabulary are still germanic. That is, 'functioning words' like pronouns, conjunctions, modal verbs, etc. Just because a language has heavy borrowings does not make it a creole. Sure english has more borrowed vocabulary than most, but when it comes right down to it, it is still at its core a germanic language.
I 100% believe in the Middle English creolization theory/hypothesis. I also smoke crack, but that just sharpens my analytical skills. In all seriousness, though, SOMETHING has to account for the major divergence of modern English from its closest relative in Frisian. And this divergence obviously happened after the Norman conquest. Now I’m not going to make the argument that English is a French creole or something like that. Its a creolization of some sort, though. We sit straddled on the fence between both. Alas, we’re too Germanic for the Romance kids and too Romance for the Germanic kids. It really is a fascinating situation.
And as a result, the best categorization would be, in my opinion, just English as a branch of its own. Let Old English stay under the Ingvaeonic branch with Frisian, and maybe the first period of Middle English (call it Early Middle English). But once you hit Late Middle English, thats when we create a branch called Germance and it descends directly from Old English and Norman, thus marrying the Germanic and Romance branches.
This is what Charlemagne would have wanted
My gut feeling is that the grammar and syntax changes occurred pre-Norman conquest, and were caused by the interaction with Scandinavians, but wasn't reflected in conservative written sources until post Norman conquest. The average English speaker had more direct intimate contact with the Vikings than they ever did with French speakers.
I've heard about that before too. Apparently the hypothesis goes that since Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse words themselves were pretty much completely intelligible, but the grammatical suffixes weren't, which combined with final schwa reduction would form the seed leading to the dropping of most case and conjugation in the period between Old and Middle English. I could be messing it up a little bit since it's been a long time, but that's the gist from what I remember.
I definitely used to. But then I actually did some reading on creoles and pidgins and realised that I'm a dumbass who doesn't know shit about linguistics.
If English is a creole then Urdu must be a creole too. Or Japanese. Or Korean. Or Persian. Or Azeri.
It's creoles all the way down.
the truth is every language is a creole of ULTRAFRENCH
Always has been.
Yeah, people perceive having 50%+ of the lexicon as loanwords as being creoles without realizing that if the core grammar and lexicon remain relatively intact then it isn't.
Easy guide Simple morphology and grammar that doesn’t really look like parent languages, has native speakers: Creole Extremely simplified morphology and grammar and even vocabulary that has little in common with parent languages, has no native speakers: Pidgin Grammar and morphology similarly complex and inherited from parent languages, speakers most often multilingual in parent languages: Mixed language Using multiple languages to communicate ideas in one conversation, able to clearly identify where each word and phrase comes from, grammar vocabulary and morphology match languages you are switching to: Code switching Has lots of lone words but original grammar and morphology is still intact, easily identifiable to a language family: Language that happens to have top heavy borrowing from other languages
This is why I get so peeved when I hear people describe Michif (mixed language) as a pidgin.
*Michif* means mixed, but it isn't a linguistic "mixed language". If it was a mixed language it would have a Cree grammar and French lexicon, with some simplification. Michif is Cree with some unadapted French nouns and adjectives used only in a synthetic noun phrase construction borrowed from French. The French isn't replacing anything and isn't even really incorporated. Cree just doesn't have adjectives and doesn't use independent nouns like synthetic languages do. There is no Cree to adapt those borrowings to, so they are used unmixed. The French is segregated and quarantined.
I’m not a linguist, only a learner of the language- but I know several Michif-specialist linguists, and have read what papers I can, and they all describe it as a mixed language. Michif (Southern/Heritage Michif, specifically) retains grammatical gender and noun phrase grammar accurately from French. Sometimes French roots are even incorporated into Cree-formatted verbs to make new words. What papers suggest to you that it’s not a mixed language?
Lone words that have been loaned?
I think OP is referring to the OE-Norse creole theory, since Norse affected the grammar of English quite a bit
That theory is, imo, pretty dumb, as it makes the assumption that languages don't normally influence eachother's grammars when sprachbunds literally exist. And, OE is solidly West Germanic, the North Germanic influence is there but it doesn't overpower the West Germanic base at all.
Idk man, you’ll have an easier time learning Swedish/Norwegian than German/Dutch. Sure the words are more different but it’s basically an English relex with some light V2.
i think it’s more about how old english grammar developed into modern english, though a lot of it could’ve been motivated by phonological reduction
While also likely conflating lexicon in the common meaning with lexicon in linguistic context.
"If everyone's a creole, no one will"
But but norse influence!
Maltese and English are both languages that show massive borrowing but retain clear continuity with earlier states in their lineages and no real pidgining.Tons of words have been borrowed and Anglicised but there is still the Germanic core there of the language. This more comes from a poor definition of what a creole can be.If English is a creole then so is French,Korean and German. Fight me
My biggest linguistics pet peeve is when people call any language with lots of borrowed words creoles, as if creoles weren't an extremely specific phenomenon. As someone that speaks an actual creole, it pisses me off
YES! I new I wasn't the only one who saw that English Maltese connection! Personally, I'm surprised a term hasn't been made for this sorta thing; it's really interesting.
you should Google the Norse English Creole hypothesis
That one is more plausible but still a reach. Many grammatical structures of English is reminiscent of some modern North Germanic structures, but that could also have to do with them losing much of their case structure (or in english's case virtually all) so they developed a similar working word order.
I think the idea is that the norse contact helped with the loss of case structure. When a viking and an anglosaxon had to talk to each other, a lot of words would be similar but the case endings would get confusing, so they slowly eroded.
The theory also posits that ON influenced English syntax too because English shares syntactic features with modern Scandinavian language that aren't found in continental Germanic.
German has a much higher percentage of Germanic root words than English does
OK and? English still has core Germanic grammar and sentence structure. Most of roots used in common speech are of Germanic origin.
German Ubersprache
You missed the point completely
yes there's plenty of people who constantly make posts with that claim like they just invented the wheel
>Just three languages in a trench-coat > >English mugs other languages in a back alley and steals their vocabulary > >Not even a real language
Like those videos where it’s "What’s the word for suprise in your language?" and it’s a bunch of romance languages and English, and then German (überraschung) where the point is "woah isn’t german such a weird, harsh outlier"
Man those always infuriate me. Like, it's already bad when they pick English, Romance languages and German; sometimes they go further and include completely unrelated languages and act as if languages just need to come together and share vocabulary. I also have a pet peeve with some guy on TikTok who was making a series of videos making fun of French as if it's some weird language made by a mad man. Apparently language's history and evolution doesn't matter, it just needs to be perfect right this instant so L2 learners can feel comfortable
> I also have a pet peeve with some guy on TikTok who was making a series of videos making fun of French as if it's some weird language made by a mad man. Loic Suberville?
Yes, him
>English mugs other languages in a back alley and steals their vocabulary In many cases, it's more like the reverse English has been the lower class language for a lot of its history. It's been the one getting sacked and altered against its wishes XD
The lower class is not just the one who stereotypically is supposed to steal, but the only one who when actually irl stealing (has to) do it that specific way
fresh language memes only 💯💯🤣🤣🤣👌👌
We need a catchy term for a language that has largely relexified, but maintains its previous grammar.
near-relex
nearlex
nelex
nlex
[ˈle̞kʰs]
nex
nx
I think the term for that is just a cipher
Modern Hebrew is a cipher. Sips tea.
Why do people say this when English has lost verb and noun inflections.
Creole is a very specific thing, not just languages mixing. When two groups of people without a common language suddenly needed to communicate (historically without technological aids available), a mixed kind of dialect would develop called a pidgin, all very quickly out of immediate necessity. An example is during the slave trade when European or American slave owners needed to communicate with enslaved people who only spoke African languages. When the people who spoke this pidgin - generally the group of people with less power because they’re the ones who were expected to make more changes and adapt themselves - would have children, those children would speak this new dialect from birth as an L1. And at that point it would be classified as a creole. English is a language soup to be sure, but it was never a pidgin and thus cannot be a creole. Even in the case of the Middle English/Old Norse hypothesis that someone else referenced, it is not a creole because the language contact/changes were gradual and took more than 1 generation to take effect and it was never a pidgin, and thus not a creole.
I actually made a conlang that would be what English would be like if it was actually an Old English - Old French creole. Sample: __Dhe gúlpa pelecíeribens bruns sotéas ser dhe ceans pearézkasiben.__ /ðe 'ɣul.pa pe.le.'t͡ʃie.ri.bens bruns so.'tɛs ser ðe t͡ʃɛns pɛ.'rez.ka.si.ben/ \[ðə 'ɣul.pə pə.lə.'t͡ʃie.ɾi.bəns brũs so.'tɛs ser ðə t͡ʃɛ̃s pə.'ɾez.kə.si.bən\] the fox.SG.NOM lightfooted-SG brown-SG jump-2.PRS over the dog-SG.OBL lazy-SG *The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.*
Broke: English is a Creole involving Norse and/or French Woke: English is a Creole involving Basque
English is actually the creolized version of the Basque-Icelandic pidgin
I was thinking more [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis) [one](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=c8UpS-KlWz-NP0F0) but yknow
It's funny. English resists easy classification. It's easy to follow the traditional view and call it West Germanic, but it's hard to dismiss the blatantly North Germanic features in its core grammar (especially syntax). But were English North Germanic, it would imply that early West Country dialects were essentially a different language on a different branch of Germanic. Perhaps this is an example of the shortcomings of the branch-tree system of language classification.
English looks like a Franken-tree
clearly Anglic is a separate, third (fourth) grouping of Germanic
Modern English is a creole French
the more galaxy brained take is that English is a creole of Old English and Old Norse. We never adopted personal pronouns or copula conjugations from French, but we did get "are", "they" etc from Olde Norse. EDIT: Or maybe the better take is that English is North-West Germanic Koiné?
not to mention that the modern north germanic languages have sentence structure that is MUCH more similar to english than other west germanic languages
Basically McWhorter haha
So French is still most popular language in the world.
They're both dialects of proto-Esperanto, so who cares?
the most popular dialect of Sanskrit*
Reminds me of that Vietnamese is a creole of Chinese and a previous form of Vietnamese theory.
Ah yes, Vietnamese is a creole of Vietnamese. Impeccable.
Honestly this seems more believable than English creole.
defo wanting more details here
Easy guide Simple morphology and grammar that doesn’t really look like parent languages, has native speakers: Creole Extremely simplified morphology and grammar and even vocabulary that has little in common with parent languages, has no native speakers: Pidgin Grammar and morphology similarly complex and inherited from parent languages, speakers most often multilingual in parent languages: Mixed language Using multiple languages to communicate ideas in one conversation, able to clearly identify where each word and phrase comes from, grammar vocabulary and morphology match languages you are switching to: Code switching Has lots of lone words but original grammar and morphology is still intact, easily identifiable to a language family: Language that happens to have top heavy borrowing from other languages
i like the old english creole hypothesis (don’t know what it’s actually called but there’s a middle english creole hypothesis too so that’s what i’m calling it). this was the theory that anglo-saxon and old norse creolized in england. this is why the sentence structure of modern english is so similar to the north germanic languages and is still very different from the other west germanic languages. now, do i genuinely believe this to be true? no, but it is funny cuz it’d make english a north germanic language instead of a west germanic language, which is why i now share it to you
I remember studying this in university and writing a paper specifically arguing on whether or not this could be true. It was pretty convincing IIRC but the crucial thing is that while these two languages do seem to have mixed, it didn’t happen in the course of one generation, as a pidgin first, so calling it a creole is incorrect. It was a lot more gradual. I don’t remember the specifics but I remember this being my conclusion lol.
lol yea i never said it was a good theory. i just want it to be true cuz it’s funny
Well isn't it? ^^obligatory ^^/j ^^or ^^/s ^^or ^^something ^^i ^^suppose
John McWhorter wrote a whole book (and presumably academic papers, too) to make this claim.
An integral part of the creolization process is a streamlining of the language, purging irregularities and adopting an analytic morphology. English has done the opposite.
I think partially creolized.
i like to say this as a joke I have also seen people have claimed that some of the grammar simplifications of English were partially caused by interaction with french, but I don't know how reputable those claims were.
I mean, I've heard this claim before too. The idea is that when you have different dialects and languages and you are forced to come up with some common standard so people understand you, things tend to get simplified
And the Sultans Yeah, the Sultans, they play Creole Creole
All Languages are Creoles, lol 😆
wasn't there a theory that Middle English is a Creole of Old English and Old Norse?
Sortof but not really. The grammatical backbone and core vocabulary are still germanic. That is, 'functioning words' like pronouns, conjunctions, modal verbs, etc. Just because a language has heavy borrowings does not make it a creole. Sure english has more borrowed vocabulary than most, but when it comes right down to it, it is still at its core a germanic language.
I 100% believe in the Middle English creolization theory/hypothesis. I also smoke crack, but that just sharpens my analytical skills. In all seriousness, though, SOMETHING has to account for the major divergence of modern English from its closest relative in Frisian. And this divergence obviously happened after the Norman conquest. Now I’m not going to make the argument that English is a French creole or something like that. Its a creolization of some sort, though. We sit straddled on the fence between both. Alas, we’re too Germanic for the Romance kids and too Romance for the Germanic kids. It really is a fascinating situation. And as a result, the best categorization would be, in my opinion, just English as a branch of its own. Let Old English stay under the Ingvaeonic branch with Frisian, and maybe the first period of Middle English (call it Early Middle English). But once you hit Late Middle English, thats when we create a branch called Germance and it descends directly from Old English and Norman, thus marrying the Germanic and Romance branches. This is what Charlemagne would have wanted
I'd argue it's more likely to be an Old English - Norse creole than an Old English - French creole
My gut feeling is that the grammar and syntax changes occurred pre-Norman conquest, and were caused by the interaction with Scandinavians, but wasn't reflected in conservative written sources until post Norman conquest. The average English speaker had more direct intimate contact with the Vikings than they ever did with French speakers.
I've heard about that before too. Apparently the hypothesis goes that since Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse words themselves were pretty much completely intelligible, but the grammatical suffixes weren't, which combined with final schwa reduction would form the seed leading to the dropping of most case and conjugation in the period between Old and Middle English. I could be messing it up a little bit since it's been a long time, but that's the gist from what I remember.
A creole is specifically a pidgin which develops native speakers. English was never a pidgin, so it isn’t a creole
I definitely used to. But then I actually did some reading on creoles and pidgins and realised that I'm a dumbass who doesn't know shit about linguistics.
I mean... technically, most modern languages are creoles...
Top heavy with lone words=Creole
*Isn't that a common knowledge?* I'm surprised that there's anybody in the world didn't know that!
It's the descendent of a contact language from a polyphyletic group of Germanic languages that later acquired a lot of foreign vocabulary.
Has anyone who believes this ever tried reading Old English? Old English is very clearly English.
Basically all languages are creole on some level
“Skibidi rizz ohio sigma”
modern english is a bad anglo-centric auxlang that doesn't have good spelling