Creole

CREOLE LANGUAGE

CREOLE GROUPS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The English term creole derives from the Portuguese antecedent crioulo, which was adopted by the Spanish as criollo (“person native to a locality”) and the French as créole. The Portuguese word crioulo is a diminutive of cria, meaning a person raised in the house, usually a servant. The derivation is from the verb criar, “to bring up or raise as children,” from the Latin crere, “to beget.” Thus, from very early on the term has indicated novel creation, usually of a lower-status person, and has implied that this novelty is “irregular,” or out of place. The term gained currency during the initial growth of European colonial power in the sixteenth century. As European powers established colonies in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, new populations were created out of unions between the colonizers, local inhabitants, and immigrants (initially slaves or laborers) transported by Europeans. Initially, the term creole was assigned to people born in the colonies, to distinguish them from the upper-class, European-born immigrants. The application of the term has varied from place to place and era to era in important ways, and has also been used to designate languages that have evolved from historical experiences of cultural contact.

CREOLE LANGUAGE

In general, a Creole language is a defined and stable language that arises from long-standing contact between two or more distinct languages. Prior to “creolization,” a rudimentary contact language is known as a pidgin. Typically, with Creole languages there are many distinctive features that do not derive from any of the parent tongues. In cases where a Creole person was simply a European born in the New World, there was usually no distinction between the language spoken by foreign colonials and their local, white, counterparts. However, as the notion of a Creole came to include anyone born in the New World, the term came to encompass hybrid linguistic forms, some of whose antecedents were not European languages. Generally, Creole populations occupied a low status in the eyes of European colonial administrators, thus Creole languages were regarded as “impoverished dialects” of the colonial languages, and eventually the term was used in opposition to the term language, rather than as a type of language. For example, one might say a French Creole as opposed to a Creole language based on French and Fon (a language of West Africa). However, in contemporary linguistics such distinctions are not made, and Creole languages are treated equally alongside other types of language. Furthermore, the term creole and its cognates in other languages—such as crioulo, criollo, and so on—are now applied to distinct languages and ethnic groups in many countries and from a variety of eras, and the terms all have rather different meanings.

CREOLE GROUPS

The Portuguese term crioulo can be traced to the fifteenth century, when it gained currency in the trading and military outposts established by Portugal in West Africa and Cape Verde. Initially it simply meant a Portuguese person born and raised in the colony. (The word then came into use, in translation, by other colonial powers.) In the Portuguese colonies the crioulo population eventually came to comprise people of mixed Portuguese and African ancestry; especially as the growing numbers of people of mixed heritage dwarfed the population of local whites. In time, crioulos of mixed Portuguese and African descent produced important ethnic groups in Africa, especially in Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, and Ziguinchor. These groups have come to think of themselves as culturally distinct from their neighbors. In Brazil, a Portuguese colony from the sixteenth century to 1822, the word came to mean a person with especially dark skin, indicating a strong African heritage. African slaves were imported into Brazil from the seventeenth century until the first half of the nineteenth century. The presence of large numbers of Africans from ethnically diverse origins led to a substantial mixed population as Africans and Europeans began to have children. Mixing was encouraged by many nationalist Brazilian intellectuals as a way of “whitening” the population thereby creating a unique, New World Brazilian identity separate from a Portuguese or European one. As a result, crioulo came to be a purely phenotypic label, with harsh, negative connotations.

As in the Portuguese colonies, the Spanish term criollo initially meant a person of unmixed Spanish ancestry born in the New World. Locally born Europeans were prohibited from holding offices of high rank and were often shunned socially by the ruling peninsulares, or Spaniards born on the Iberian Peninsula.

Eventually the exclusion of the criollos by the foreign-born Spanish led to widespread rebellion and the development of a nativist movement. By the 1830s these Creole-based nationalist wars of independence had spread throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America in the form of the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) and the South American Wars of Independence (1810–1825).

In other parts of the Spanish Empire the term criollo did not enjoy the same currency. Inhabitants of the Spanish colony of the Philippines, for example, generally referred to the locally born Spanish as Filipinos or insulares (“from the islands”). (Peninsulare was still the common name for those born in the Iberian Peninsula.) Today the term Filipino means quite the opposite, indicating a locally born, often ethnically mixed inhabitant of the Philippines. This transformation came about as a result of the Filipino nationalist movements of the late nineteenth century.

In the United States the word creole has a complex cluster of meanings and is often misunderstood. In general, a Creole is a person of any race or racial mixture descended from the original European settlers of French Louisiana prior to its incorporation into the United States via the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It is quite common for Americans in other parts of the country to assume that a Creole is a person of mixed African and European ancestry in Louisiana, but this is not the way the term has historically been used locally. Creoles encompass a wide variety of people of many ethnicities and races who share a French or even Spanish background. Most commonly, a Creole person can lay claim to a francophone heritage from either France or a French-speaking Caribbean island such as Haiti (Saint Domingue prior to 1804), Martinique, or Guadeloupe. White and “colored” migrants from these regions brought their French-speaking, predominantly African slaves with them, thereby establishing a racially heterogeneous Creole population of Louisianans. The Louisiana French, who trace their ancestry to the Acadians of French Canada, usually identify themselves as Cajun. The distinction is sometimes made for local cuisine as well, with a distinction being made between Creole food, which has many African elements, and Cajun cooking, which derives from the culinary practices of mostly white, often rural Cajun-French speakers in Louisiana.

Although in the Americas Creoles were initially Europeans born in the New World, the idea of a mixed population being a “Creole” population has gained wide currency. Indeed, creolization has come to mean the blending of one or more cultural identities into a new, hybrid identity. Toward that end, people of mixed native Alaskan and Russian ancestry are frequently called “Alaskan Creoles.” In the late eighteenth century Russian adventurers, hunters, and traders known as promyshleniki came into contact with and married or formed unions with native Alaskan women, giving rise to a people who assumed a prominent position in the economy of fur trading in the northern Pacific. For example, by 1880, the U.S. census documented fifty-three “Creoles” (people of Russian-Sugpiaq ancestry) living in Ninilchik, a village located on the west coast of the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. There also exist varieties of Russian-native Alaskan languages—either pidgins or Creoles—throughout the region, such as Copper Island Aleut, a mixed Aleut-Russian language spoken on Mednyy, or Copper Island.

In the English-speaking Caribbean a Creole was originally a European born in the New World, but the term is most commonly used to describe anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, who was born and raised in the region. It is also in the English-speaking, formerly British colonial Caribbean that the term has come to indicate the syncretism or blending of the various cultural forms or institutions: African, French, British, and Spanish, among others. Creolization in this context can mean anything from syncretized religious forms such as Vodou, Santeria, and Orisha, to culinary practices, to musical forms such as calypso, reggae, mambo, zouk, merengue, and many others. Yet the term also may have a variety of local meanings. In Trinidad, for instance, Creole culture generally refers to the practices of local African-Trinidadians as opposed to local whites (often known as French Creoles) and Indo-Trinidadians (the descendants of Indian indentured laborers brought to the island from 1845 to 1917).

In Réunion island and Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, Creoles fall generally into two categories: (Malagasy) Creoles and Creole-Mazambe. The former were brought in as slaves to work the plantations of Mauritius (as well as Réunion and Seychelles). These laborers were mostly Malagasy (natives of Madagascar), but other African minorities, from Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia, also were enslaved. In present-day Mauritius Creoles of all kinds are outnumbered by the Indo-Mauritians; however, they still form the majority in Réunion and the Seychelles. Although English is the official language of Mauritius, a French-based Creole language is widely used by all ethnic groups.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Black, Lydia T. 2004. Russians in Alaska, 1732–1867. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press.

Boswell, Rosabelle. 2005. Slavery, Blackness, and Hybridity: Mauritius and the Malaise Creole. London: Kegan Paul.

Brading, David A. 1993. The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492-1866. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Garraway, Doris. 2005. The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Holm, John. 2000. An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Kein, Sybil, ed. 2000. Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Lambert, David. 2005. White Creole Culture, Politics, and Identity During the Age of Abolition. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Sansone, Livio. 2003. Blackness without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Philip W. Scher

CREOLE A term relating to people and LANGUAGES especially in the erstwhile colonial tropics and subtropics, in the Americas, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. In Portuguese, crioulo appears to have referred first to an animal or person born at home, then to a black African slave in Brazil who was born in his or her master's house. In the 17–18c, particularly in the West Indies, the term creole could mean both a descendant of European settlers (a white creole) or a descendant of African slaves (a creole Negro or Negro creole). Later, it came to apply also to life and culture in creole societies: for example, the (French) Creole cuisine of Louisiana. Since the later 19c, the term has extended to include a language spoken by creoles and has acquired a new sense in LINGUISTICS, associated with the development of PIDGIN languages.

Creole languages

In sociolinguistic terms, these languages have arisen through contact between speakers of different languages. This contact first produces a makeshift language called a pidgin; when this is nativized and becomes the language of a community, it is a creole. Such languages are often known locally as pidgin or creole, but may have such specific names as AKU in Gambia and Papiamentu in the Netherlands Antilles. They are usually given labels by sociolinguists that refer to location and principal lexifier language (the language from which they draw most of their vocabulary): for example, JAMAICAN CREOLE, in full Jamaican Creole English or Jamaican English Creole, the English-based creole spoken in Jamaica. Haitian Creole French is spoken in Haiti and is French-based. Creoles based on English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese occur in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Creole English

There are many English-based creoles. In West Africa, they include Aku in GAMBIA, KRIO in SIERRA LEONE, Kru English in LIBERIA, and KAMTOK in CAMEROON. In the Caribbean and the neighbouring mainland they include BAJAN in BARBADOS, CREOLESE in GUYANA, MISKITO COAST CREOLE in Nicaragua, Sranan in SURINAM, Trinbagonian in TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, and the creoles of the Bay Islands of Honduras. In North America, they include Afro-Seminole, Amerindian Pidgin English, and GULLAH. In Oceania, they include BISLAMA in Vanuatu, BROKEN in the Torres Straits, HAWAII CREOLE ENGLISH, KRIOL in Northern Australia, PIJIN in the Solomon Islands, and TOK PISIN in Papua New Guinea. It has been argued that AFRICAN-AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH in the US has creole origins since it shares many features with English-based creoles in the Caribbean. In the UK, British Black English, spoken by immigrants from the Caribbean and their children, has features inherited from CARIBBEAN ENGLISH CREOLE.

Shared features

Typical grammatical features in European-based creoles include the use of preverbal negation and subject-verb-object word order: for example (from Sranan in Surinam) A no koti a brede He didn't cut the bread. Many use the same item for both existential statements and possession: for example, get in Guyanese Creole Dem get wan uman we get gyal pikni There is a woman who has a daughter. They lack a formal passive: for example, in Jamaican Creole no distinction is made in the verb forms in sentences such as Dem plaan di tri (They planted the tree) and Di tri plaan (The tree was planted). Creoles tend to have no copula and adjectives may function as verbs: for example, Jamaican Creole Di pikni sik The child is sick. Most creoles do not show any syntactic difference between questions and statements: for example, Guyanese Creole I bai di eg dem can mean ‘He bought the eggs’ or ‘Did he buy the eggs?’ (although there is a distinction in intonation). Question words in creoles tend to have two elements, the first generally from the lexifier language: for example, Haitian Creole ki kote (from qui and cˆté, ‘which’ and ‘side’) meaning where, and Kamtok wetin (from what and thing) meaning what. It has been claimed that many syntactic and semantic similarities among creoles are due to an innate ‘bioprogram’ for language, and that creoles provide the key to understanding the original evolution of human language.

Creolization

The process of becoming a creole may occur at any stage as a make-shift language develops from trade jargon to expanded pidgin, and can happen under drastic conditions, such as where a population of slaves speaking many languages has to develop a common language among slaves and with overseers. In due course, children grow up speaking the pidgin as their main language, and when this happens it must change to meet their needs. Depending on the stage at which creolization occurs, different types of structural expansion are necessary before the language can become adequate. In the case of Jamaican Creole, it is thought that a rudimentary pidgin creolized within a generation, then began to de-creolize towards general English. Tok Pisin, however, first stabilized and expanded as a pidgin before it became creolized; in such cases, the transition between the two stages is gradual rather than abrupt.

The term is also applied to cases where heavy borrowing disrupts the continuity of a language, turning it into a creole-like variety, but without a prior pidgin stage. Some researchers have argued that Middle English is a creole that arose from contact with Norse during the Scandinavian settlements (8–11c) and then with French after the Norman Conquest (11c). In addition to massive lexical borrowing, many changes led to such simplification of grammar as loss of the Old English inflectional endings. It is not, however, clear that these changes were due solely to language contact, since other languages have undergone similar restructurings in the absence of contact, as for example when Latin became Italian.

De-creolization is a further development in which a creole gradually converges with its superstrate or lexifier language: for example, in Hawaii and Jamaica, both creoles moving towards STANDARD ENGLISH. Following the creolization of a pidgin, a POST-CREOLE CONTINUUM may develop when, after a period of relatively independent linguistic development, a post-pidgin or post-creole variety comes under a period of renewed influence from the lexifier language. De-creolization may obscure the origins of a variety, as in the case of American Black English.

Conclusion

Pidgin and creole languages were long neglected by the academic world, because they were not regarded as ‘real’ or ‘fully-fledged’ languages, but their study is currently regarded as significant for general linguistics as well as the study of such languages as English. The study of pidgins and creoles has been rapidly expanding as linguists interested in language acquisition, language change, and universal grammar have taken more notice of them. Since pidgins and creoles are generally spoken in Third World countries, their role and function are intimately connected with a variety of political questions concerned with national, social, and economic development and transition into post-colonial societies. Some countries give official recognition to pidgin and creole languages, among them PAPUA NEW GUINEA, VANUATU, and Haiti. Pidgin and creole languages also function as symbols of solidarity in many parts of the world where their use is increasing.

See ABORIGINAL ENGLISH, ACROLECT, AFRICAN ENGLISH, ATLANTIC CREOLES, BAHAMAS, BASILECT, BELIZE, CAYMAN ISLANDS, GHANA, HAWAIIAN ENGLISH, JAMAICAN ENGLISH, MAURITIUS, MELANESIAN PIDGIN ENGLISH, MESOLECT, MONTSERRAT, NEW ORLEANS, NIGERIA, SAINT CHRISTOPHER AND NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES, SOLOMON ISLANDS PIDGIN ENGLISH, TALK, WEST AFRICAN ENGLISH, WEST AFRICAN PIDGIN ENGLISH.

creole , Span. criollo [probably from crío =child], term originally applied in West Indies to the native-born descendants of the Spanish conquerors. The term has since been applied to certain descendants in the West Indies and the American continents of French, Portuguese, and Spanish settlers. The creoles were distinguished from the natives, the blacks, and from people born in Europe. A sharp distinction of interest always lay between the creoles, whose chief devotion was to the colony, and the foreign-born officials, whose devotion was to the mother country. Never precise, the term acquired various meanings in different countries. It has biological and cultural connotations. The term was early adopted in the United States in Louisiana, where it is still used to distinguish the descendants of the original French settlers from the Cajuns, who are at least partially descended from the Acadian exiles. The word is also commonly applied to things native to the New World, such as creole cuisine and creole horses. The term is also used in places distant from the Americas, such as the island of Mauritius, but there it has lost much of its original meaning. The picturesque life of the Louisiana creoles has been ably depicted in the works of Lafcadio Hearn, George Washington Cable, and Grace King.

Bibliography: See F. J. Woods, Marginality and Identity (1972).

Creole a person of mixed European and black descent, especially in the Caribbean; descendant of Spanish or other European settlers in the Caribbean or Central or South America; a white descendant of French settlers in Louisiana and other parts of the southern US.

Creole also denotes a mother tongue formed from the contact of a European language (especially English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese) with local languages (especially African languages spoken by slaves in the W. Indies), usually through an earlier pidgin stage.

The name comes via French and Spanish, probably from Portuguese crioulo ‘black person born in Brazil, home-born slave’, from criar ‘to breed’, from Latin creare ‘produce, create’.

Creoles

The label "Creole" is used in the Caribbean and Middle America with considerable imprecision. Today it usually means a person or group of African or African and some other—such as Indian or European—ancestry. Such groupings include Creoles of Belize, Costa Rica, Dominíca, the Grenadines, and the Miskito Coast. Other groups, such as Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Katicians, also fit this definition of "Creole" but are not referred to as such. Thus, the label "Creole" serves to distinguish those of African ancestry from those of European, Indian, or mixed European and Indian ancestry in multiethnic nations.

Creole, name applied to American‐born descendants of the French and Spanish settlers of Latin America. The term did not originally mean persons of mixed white and Negro blood, although this is one of its various connotations in popular usage. In Louisiana it is used to distinguish descendants of the original French settlers from the “Cajun” heirs of the exiles from Acadia. Creole life in Louisiana has been depicted by such local‐color authors as Cable, Hearn, Grace King, and Kate Chopin, and been the subject of critical comment by a descendant, Adrien Rouquette.

Cre·ole / ˈkrēˌōl/ (also cre·ole) • n. 1. a person of mixed European and black descent, esp. in the Caribbean. ∎  a descendant of Spanish or other European settlers in the Caribbean or Central or South America. ∎  a white descendant of French settlers in Louisiana and other parts of the southern U.S. 2. a mother tongue formed from the contact of two languages through an earlier pidgin stage. • adj. of or relating to a Creole or Creoles.

Creole Person born in the West Indies, Latin America, or s USA, but of foreign or mixed descent. Generally, a Creole's ancestors were either African slaves or French, Spanish or English settlers. In the USA, it also refers to someone of mixed European and African ancestry. Creole language is a pidgin, adopted as the native language of a community (English, French, Portuguese) and influenced by the native languages of the community's ancestors.

Creole (descendant of) European or Negro settler in the W. Indies, etc. XVII (criole). — F. créole, earlier criole — Sp. criollo, prob. — Pg. crioulo Negro born in Brazil, home-born slave, formerly of animals reared at home, f. criar nurse, breed :- L. creāre CREATE.

créole The traditional cuisine of Louisiana and the French‐speaking Caribbean. See also criolla.

Creole •barcarole, bole, bowl, cajole, coal, Cole, condole, console, control, dhole, dole, droll, enrol (US enroll), extol, foal, goal, hole, Joel, knoll, kohl, mol, mole, Nicole, parol, parole, patrol, pole, poll, prole, rôle, roll, scroll, Seoul, shoal, skoal, sole, soul, stole, stroll, thole, Tirol, toad-in-the-hole, toll, troll, vole, whole •Creole •carriole, dariole •cabriole • capriole •aureole, gloriole, oriole •wassail-bowl • fishbowl • dustbowl •punchbowl • rocambole • farandole •girandole • manhole • rathole •armhole • arsehole • hellhole •keyhole, kneehole •peephole •sinkhole • pinhole • cubbyhole •hidey-hole • pigeonhole •eyehole, spyhole •foxhole •knothole, pothole •borehole, Warhol •porthole • soundhole • blowhole •stokehole • bolthole • loophole •lughole, plughole •chuckhole • buttonhole • bunghole •earhole • waterhole • wormhole •charcoal • caracole • Seminole •pinole