Languages in contact 8

LING2040 Languages in Contact 8: Basic Mauritian Creole

The term 'Creole' in Mauritius:
i) a person of mixed ancestry, not belonging to any of the other established ethnic groups (Indo-Mauritian, Sino-Mauritian, French);
ii) the contact language (also of mixed ancestry) spoken by the 'creoles' but also by other groups. Also called Kreol to distinguish it from (i).
The language is also called morisien or morisyen, especially by linguists and writers:

Depi lontan mo ti anvi ekrir enn roman an Morisien me mo ti mank konfians dan momem
since long I ANT wish write a novel in Mauritian but I ANT lack confidence in myself
"I had wanted to wirte a novel in Mauritian for a long time, but I lacked confidence in myself"

e mo pa ti sir ki lang la ti ase evolie pou reponn lapel
and I not ANT sure that language that ANT enough evolved to respond call
"and I was not sure if this language was sufficiently developed to respond to the call. (Dev Virahsawmy)

Orthography
(a) etymological: following the French conventions.
Advantage: words are easily recognised by French speakers.
Disadvantage: poor correspondence with creole phonology, e.g. homard 'lobster' ('h' pronounced as glottal stop, 'd' silent)
(b) phonemic, based on IPA, e.g. omar
(c) practical: a compromise between phonemic accuracy and practical constraints such as typewriters, printing presses, html etc

Phonemes:

p    b    f    v
t     d    s    z
k    g
m    n    l
w    y    r
i     e    a    o    u     (oral vowels)
    en    an    on       (nasal vowels)

Nasal vowels

fen (< French faim) 'hunger'
manze (<French manger) 'to eat'
balon (<French ballon) 'ball'

Problem: if we use 'vowel + n' to represent nasal vowels (as in French roman 'novel'), we need a different symbol to show syllables ending with the consonant [n]. Solutions:
(a) use 'nn', e.g. Dev writes enn roman "a novel", bann mo "words".
(b) use 'nne' as in French orthography, e.g. banne la roue "the tyres" .
Consequence: words ending in -en, -an and -on are potentially ambiguous between nasal consonant and nasalized vowel!

Phrases

sa va? How are you?' - mo bien 'I'm fine'
ki manier? 'how's it going?' - korek! 'fine!'
ki position? how are things?' - en place! 'fine!'

ou kapav koz angle? Do you speak English? (koz < French causer 'to chat')
eski ou kapav koz kreol avek mwa 'Can you talk creole to me?'
ou koze komie lang 'How many languages do you speak?'
koze pli lantman si'ouple 'Please speak more slowly'

note the alternation between koz and koze. Most verbs have a long and a short ('truncated') form
The short form (e.g. koz) is used when a verb is followed by a complement as in koz kreol
otherwise the long form is used (koze), in which the last syllable reflects the French infinitive (as in causer 'to chat') and/or past particple (causé 'chatted')
There is also a reduplicated form koz-koze 'chat' combining the short and long forms

mo pa konpran 'I don't understand'
ki ou dir? 'what did you say?
koman ou appele? 'What's your name?'
ou kontan li? do you like it? - li tro ser It's too expensive

Question words

ki 'what?' ki lang 'what language' ki lere 'what time' ki kote 'where' kot 'where is...?'
kan 'when?' koma 'how?' komie 'how much?'

French monomorphemic forms: kan 'when?'
Creole birmorphemic forms: ki kote 'where' (< Fr. qui 'which' + coté 'side')
shortened forms: kot 'where is...?'

Pronouns

Person/Number	Subject	Object/Oblique
1 singular	mo	mwa
2 singular	to, (v)u	twa, (v)u
3 singular	li, i	li
1 plural	nu	nu
2, 3 plural	zot	zot

Possessive pronouns

mo kamarad 'my friend'
ou pay 'your country'
so kouzen 'his cousin'

Vocabulary

(a) from French (often borrowed by English too)

gato (< gateau 'cake')
lotel (< l'hotel 'the hotel')
vizite (< visiter 'to visit')

(b) from sources other than French

paise 'money' < Bhojpuri
rougaille (creole dish) < Tamil urkukay 'pickled vegetable'
frangourin 'cane sugar juice' < Malagasy fangorinana
malang dirty < Malagasy

"Les chiffres": numbers as code/slang

4 kat 'death'
14 katorz 'head'
17 diset 'girlfriend'
21 venteen 'drunk'
24 vennkat 'hungry'
28 ventwit 'crazy'
32 trande 'Chinese person'

Assignment no. 3: Louisiana creole

Read the following story from Pointe Coupée Creole, spoken in Lousiana.
(a) describe as precisely as possible how tense and aspect are encoded in this creole.
(b) compare the results with Mauritian creole (see lecture 6)
(c) discuss how the similarities between Louisiana creole and Mauritian creole might be explained.

[1] En fwa de franse te ape treverse en swamp. La nwi trape ye dan milye la rut.
"Once two Frenchmen were crossing a swamp. Nightfall caught them half way across."

[2] Sa te fe si nwa, ye te pa kontinwe. Sa fe, ye garde alantu pu en plas pu kuche
"It was so dark, they were unable to continue. And so, they looked for a place to sleep"

[3] e meyer choz ye wa te en ti labit ki te ase sek pu ye kuche san muye ye-mem.
"And the best thing they could see was a low mound that was dry enough for them to sleep without getting wet."

[4] Ye alonje ye-mem par ter-la, krwayan komanse dromi ben vit, paske ye te si las.
"They lay down on the ground, thinking they would get to sleep quickly, because they were so tired."

[5] Kom ye kuche, marongwan-ye tombe mord ye. Ye te jame wa de marongwan
"As they lay down, the mosquitoes began to bite them. They had never seen mosquitoes"

[6] E ye te pa kone ki kalite betay sete ki te ape mord ye.
"And they did not know what kind of beast it was which was biting them."

This assignment due April 10, 2006; tutorials from April 11-13