English as a lingua franca

This feature involves scholars into a rather different aspect of the geographical spread of linguistic phenomena, i.e. language spread. When speakers of different languages come into contact they have to communicate. As it often happens, when a Dutchman and a Swede meet they speak using English with a great deal of fluency and expertise. However, it is still rather unusual to find a non-native speaker to use English as lingua franca in as many different social situations as a native English speaker does. In other words, when a language is used as lingua franca it normally undergoes a certain amount of simplification and reduction; with the introduction of errors through interference from the native languages of the speakers.

Simplification is, paradoxically, a rather complex notion. It prefers most often getting rid of irregularities, such as irregular verb forms, and redundancies, such as grammatical gender. The technical term for the process by which languages may be subject, in the usage of non-native speakers, to simplification, reduction and interference is pidginization. It may be slight (if the speakers are educated) and great (if the speakers can express only some bits of information in English). This point can be illustrated from the case of Swahili, which is widely used as a lingua franca in East Africa. When such a form of language is constantly employed by the speakers, it turns into a pidgin language. However, pidgin has no native speakers. It is derived from a 'normal' language through simplification, reduction and admixture from the native language of those who use it, especially so far as pronunciation is concerned. It is used only in trading or other limited-contact situations. Where contacts are more permanent, fuller language learning is more likely to result.

A true pidgin language probably springs in a contact situation involving three or more language groups: one 'dominant' language (in the case of Swahili), and at least two 'non-dominant' languages. Over time, in the speech of lingua franca users, the pre-pidgin will acquire a set of structures and norms for usage, which will be accepted by everybody. It will acquire a fixed form, which linguists can describe and write grammars of.

Now it is important to realise that pidgins, although different from other languages, are really different in degree rather than in kind. They are genuine languages with structures and most of the attributes of other languages. They are difficult to learn properly, but probably easier than other languages. Pidgins are not haphazard mixtures, nor are they 'bad', 'debased' or 'corrupt' forms of the language from which they were derived. Consider the following example of British Solomon Islands Pidgin, often known by sociolinguists as Neo-Solomonic, which is widely used as a lingua franca in the Solomon Islands:

Mifela i-go go ion solwater, lukautim fis, nau wm i-kǽm. Nau mifela i-go olebaut ion kinú, nau bigfela win i-kemn nau, mifela i-fafasi olebaut, ron tumes.

This may be interpreted into English as:

'We kept going on the sea, hunting for fish, and a wind arose. Now we were going in canoes, and an immense wind arose now, and we were thrown around and were moving very fast.'

Clearly, if one regards this as a form of English, then it is a very strange kind of English indeed. It is difficult to understand even for a native English speaker, particularly when heard rather than read, and the translation is necessary. The speaker here has learnt a second language, but the second language he learnt was Neo-Solomon, not English. The grammar and vocabulary of Neo-Solomon, although similar to English in many ways, is nonetheless quite distinct. The language has grammatical rules and words of its own. For example, the requirement that transitive verbs be distinguished from intransitives (by the suffix -im -compare lukautim) is not a grammatical rule of English at all. It is therefore quite desirable, on linguistic grounds alone, to regard Neo-Solomon, and other varieties of Pidgin English, as languages quite separate from English (although obviously related to it).

Another good, social, reason for doing this is that many people have objected to pidgins on the grounds that they have corrupted the 'purity' of English (or some other European language). Views like this are often accompanied by sentiments about racial and cultural 'purity' as well. If one regards a pidgin as a debased and inferior form of English, it may be quite easy to regard its speakers, mostly non-Europeans, as 'debased' and 'inferior'. One problem that a linguist will have to deal with when faced with views such as these is to point out that there is no such thing as a 'pure' language. All languages are ‘ a wastebasket full of varieties and dialects ’ and they are all the product of influence and admixture from other languages.

Most of the better-known pidgin languages in the world are the result of travel on the part of European traders and colonisers. They are based on languages like English, French, Portuguese, and are located on the main shipping and trading routes. English-based pidgins were formerly found in North America, at both ends of the slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean, in New Zealand and in China. They are still found in Australia, West Africa, Solomon Islands and in New Guinea, where Pidgin English is often referred to by linguists as Tok-Pisin. It has an official status in Papua New Guinea, and is used there on the radio, in newspapers, and in schools. In linguistically mixed communities where a pidgin is used as a lingua franca, children may acquire it as their native language, particularly if their parents normally communicate using this pidgin. When this occurs the language will re-acquire all the characteristics of a full (non-pidgin) language, i.e. the language will have an expanded vocabulary, a wider range of syntactic possibilities, and an increased stylistic repertoire. It will also, of course, be used for all purposes in a full range of social situations. That is, the reduction that occurred during pidginization will be repaired, although simplification and admixture will remain.

Process of language creolization

The process whereby reduction is 'repaired' by expansion is known as creolization and is one of the most fascinating processes in linguistic change. Creole languages, in other words, are perfectly normal languages - only their history is somewhat unusual. Of European-based creole languages - those that have developed out of pidgins based on European languages - the best known are French, English, Portuguese and Spanish creoles.

Most of the better-known English Creoles are spoken in different parts of both Americas and are a consequence of the slave trade. Sranan, for example, is an English creole spoken by several tens of thousands of native speakers in the coastal areas of Surinam, and is also widely used by others in the area as a lingua franca. Here is an example:

Ala den bigibigl man de na balkon e wakti en. A kon nanga en buku na ondro en anu. A puru en ati na en ede, en a mekl kosi gi den.

'All the important men were on the balcony waiting for him. He came with his book under his arm. He took off his hat and bowed before them.

Sranan is one of the most 'conservative' of English Creoles, i.e. it has been very little affected by the influence from English, and it gives us a good idea of what other less isolated creoles may have been like at the earlier stages of their history. Inland in Surinam other English creoles are spoken, mainly by the descendants of runaway slaves who succeeded in fleeing into the jungle. The best known of these Creoles - which are apparently not intelligible to Sranan speakers - is Djuka. Just to make things more complicated, Djuka is apparently also spoken in a pidginized form as a lingua franca by groups of Amerindians living in the area.

Both Sranan and Djuka are uncontroversial, socially and linguistically. They are recognised by all to be Creoles, and as languages distinct from English: it would be difficult to make out a good argument for Sranan as a type of English, as in:

Hendrik doro tide, a no taki no wan sma odi (When Hendrik arrived today, he didn’t greet anyone).

Mutual intelligibility between Sranan and English is nil. Socially, too, there are no reasons for regarding Sranan as a form of English.

In other parts of the world, however, the position is much less clear. In parts of West Africa, for instance, Pidgin English is widely employed as a lingua franca, and in certain areas, notably in parts of Nigeria, it has become creolized. The difficulty is that, in contrast to Surinam, English is an official language there and is used as a 'world language' of high prestige, and functions throughout the country in many spheres. The result of this is that Nigerian Pidgin, even in its creolized form, has become heteronomous with respect to Standard British or Nigerian English. Pidgin English is subject to considerable influence from English, and is widely considered simply to be a 'bad' or 'corrupt' form of English.

Krio is an English creole with about 30,000 native speakers living in and around Freetown. The language developed from an English creole spoken by slaves returned from Jamaica, North America and Britain, and is not directly connected with West African Pidgins. The following four versions of the same sentence illustrate some of the similarities and differences involved:

British English: [ai’m gouing to we:k]

Sierra Leone English: [aim goin to wok]

West African Pidgin: [a di go wok]

Krio: [a de go wok]

In parts of the British West Indies the position is again similar, but the problems it brings are considerably more severe. Let us take Jamaica. Some linguists writing about the language spoken in Jamaica refer to it as Jamaican English while others, preferring to give it the status of a separate language, call it Jamaican Creole. This disagreement is the result of discreteness and continuity problem. In Jamaica, Standard English is the official language and is spoken there, at the top of the social scale, by educated Jamaicans and some people of the British origin. At the other end of the social scale, particularly in the case of peasants in isolated rural areas, the language used is an English-based creole, which is not in itself mutually intelligible with Standard or any other form of English. The linguistic differences are great enough for us to be able to say Jamaican Creole is a language related to but distinct from English.

The problem is, however, that between these two extremes there is a social-dialect continuum ranging from Standard English to the 'deepest' Jamaican Creole. This means that all language varieties in Jamaica have become heteronomous with respect to Standard English, even if they are not really mutually comprehensible with it. In fact the social-dialect continuum itself may well have arisen in the first place as a result of the influence of high-prestige English on low-status Creole: the stronger the influence, the more decreolization would take place.

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