Pidgins and Creoles

                    Pidgin

A pidgin is made when members of different speech communities need to communicate with each other and have no common language. It combines two or more languages. Pidgins are developed when two different languages are forced together due to trade, colonization, war etc.. A pidgin has no native speakers and grammatical structure and also have limited vocabulary. Like, during world war One and Two, so many pidgins were made.

According to R.L. Trask " A pidgin is nobody's mother tongue, and it is not a real language at all: it has no elaborate grammar, it is very limited in what it can convey, and different people speak it differently" (Taken from “Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts, 2007”).

   Tok Pisin derived from “talk pidgin” can be said as the most studied. It was made in 19^th century and is spoken in Papua New Guinea.

Some Tok Pisin Words :-

Mi  = I,Me | Yu = You | Maus = Mouth | Dok = Dog 

                Creoles

 When new generations of pidgins speakers continue to speak this language, pidgins convert into creoles. Vocabulary of creoles majorly come from parent languages.

According to Wikipedia.org, “The English term creole comes from French créole, which is cognate with the Spanish term criollo and Portuguese crioulo, all descending from the verb criar ('to breed' or 'to raise'), all coming from Latin creare ('to produce, create').”

           

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Nouns With All Types

                           Nouns

              Naming words can be determined as nouns. Nouns are the names which are given to people, objects, feelings, places, ideas etc.

Examples : man, Atlantic, wealth, bird, cat, milk, eyeglasses, bunch, baby, my book.

                   Types of nouns

 There are two main types of noun which are given below :

Proper Nouns :-

              Proper nouns are generally referred to specific people and places.

E.g :-  Sun, London, Andrew.

Common Nouns :-

              As proper nouns are referred to specific people, common nouns are referred to  less specific people, places, feelings.

E.g :- city, country, happiness, man

           Commons nouns can also be divided into three types which are given below :

Concrete Nouns :-

             The things which have physical existence and which can be seen and felt, are called concrete nouns.

E.g :- hand, house, photograph, flowers

Abstract Nouns :-

            The things which don’t have physical existence are referred as Abstract Nouns.

E.g : feelings, friendship, love, communication

Collective Nouns :-

            Groups of people, animals or objects can be categorized as collective nouns.

E.g :- Team, Family,Band.

          Some Other types of Nouns

Countable Nouns :-

          Countable nouns are the nouns which can be counted.

E.g :- Bed, Pen, Fingers

UnCountable Nouns :-

          UnCountable nouns are the nouns which can’t be counted.

E.g :- food, water.

Compound Nouns :-

          Compound nouns are the nouns which are made up of two or more words.

E.g :- Photograpgh, Sunlight.

Singular Nouns :

         These are belong to name of a person, a thing  or a place.

E.g:- boy, train, cat.

Plural Nouns:-

        These are belong to names of more than one person, things  or places.

E.g :- cats, babies

Possessive Nouns:-            

       Nouns which shows possession are termed as Possessive Nouns.

E.g :- My car, Teacher’s book

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Difficulties And Solutions Of Pronunciation Of Spoken English

                            Difficulties

A student who wishes to learn spoken English or any other spoken language has to face many difficulties. Five of them are given as follows :

Difficulty No. 1 :-

He has to learn different speech sounds occuring in English language through readily and even when he hears those sounds pronounced ;  the acoustic qualities related to those sounds must be remembered.

Difficulty No. 2 :-

Making foreign sounds with his own organs of speech is also a difficult part of learning spoken English.

Difficulty No. 3 :-

After learning foreign sounds, he has to learn using those sounds in their proper places in speech.

Difficulty No. 4 :-

Proper usage in the matter of the “sound-attributes” or “catenating” should also be learned which can also be differentiate as stress, length and voice-pitch.

 Difficulty No. 5 :-

Learning to catenate sounds, joining of each sound in a sequence on to the next, pronouncing complete sequence frequently without stumbling. These all also comes in difficulties of learning spoken English.

             In addition, if a student  wants to learn written English, it is also another difficulty for him as learning of spoken English and learning of written English, both are diffferent from eachother. A student can become great speaker English Language without knowing qualities of written English. Similarly, a student can become a good reader and writer of English Language without knowing acoustic qualities of pronunciation.

                                         Solutions

Now, solutions for the above difficulties are defined. These solutions will be helpful for the students of Spoken English.

Solution of No. 1 :-

Difficulty no. 1 related to “Ear-training”. A student can not become a successful linguist if he doesn’t have good ears. If, by nature, his ears are sensitive , they will become more sensitive by training. On the other hand, if a student has good ears, they will become better by training. A linguist should have good ears because of  two reasons. One is, he can correctly hear the pronunciation of English sounds and the second is , his good ears will help him to understand the English language readily when spoken by native speakers. He may also differentiate different words easily.

Discrimination between sounds and remembering the acoustic qualities of English sounds are included in possession of good ears.  For making a good linguist, effective exercises of dictation of isolated sounds of Spoken English are required. The teacher who is teaching the student should also teach English words phonetically.

Solution of No. 2 :-

This difficulty is belonged to gymnastics of the vocal organs.  A student learning spoken English has to put his lips, tongue and other parts of the speech organs into certain definite positions for pronouncing English sounds similar to native speakers. The student should study phonetic theory for this and has to perform many exercises with respect to it.

Solution of No. 3 :-

This difficulty related to matter of memorising. The student has to learn the correct order of placing the sounds to make intelligible words and sentences. He must have to learn the particular sequence of sounds with the help of Phonetic Transcription which is recommended method of showing sound-order graphically. In addition, he has to learn allophones also for this.

Solution of No. 4 :-

If the student is provided smart exercises in matter of length, stress and pitch of English sounds, he may easily solute this difficulty.

Solution of No. 5 :-

This difficulty is far different from others. Ability of catenating and pronouncing sounds without stumbling can help the student to overcome on this difficulty. The student should also not stop between words and should not take wrong pauses during speech. An average speaker of English language can speak sentences at an average rate of some 300 syllables to the minute or five syllables per second which is ideal rate for learners of spoken English.

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Liabilities Of English Language

Troublesome Idioms:-

•         I’m not going to stand for that
•         Be here in nothing flat
•         Sitting in the dark
•         By and large
•         Piece of cake
•         Bark up the wrong tree
•         Beating around the bush

Verb Particles:-

•         Make out
•         Make up
•         Live up
•         Live down
•         Sleeping in
•         Sleeping out
•         Sleeping it off

English Spelling words in World:-

•       English spelling is only 60% phonemic
•       It is 40% non phonemic

  Example:-

             Ghoti =Fish (Gh from rough, O from women, T from nation )

Different Spellings of One Phoneme:-

             /i/ can be represented by following spellings:

•     Grieve 
•     Deceive 
•     Mean
•     Machine
•     He

Same spelling represented by different phonemes:-

• /i/  =  break
•  /e/ = break

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Assets Of The English Language

Worldwide Importance :-

• Mandarin Chinese with nearly billion speakers is numerically the first of the world’s tongues. While Chinese is concentrated in central Asia, English is spoken around the globe.
• Over a Billion people use English either as a first or second language.
• 70% of the world’s mail addressed in English.
• 100% of communication of world’s airports carried on in English.
• After 1962 when China expelled Soviet engineers. China’s second language became English.

Immense Cosmopolitan Vocabulary :-

• Anglo Saxon did not have over  100,000 words. While, most comprehensive dictionaries of Moern English place Vocabulary 1,000,000 words.
• Today some estimates place the total vocabulary at 5,000,000 words.

       Source of Vocabulary:-

•        Victorian Expansion-Australia-boomerang South Africa- Khaki.
•         Sceince and technology-download, interface.
•        War stockpile, escalate.
•        Invasion of Danes-sky, Invasion of Normans plaintiff.
•        Missionary activites of Pope Gregory-vespars

Three layers of Synonyms:-

• Nixon quits. (Anglo Saxon)
• Nixon resigns. (Norman French)
• Nixon abdicates. (Latin)

quit, resign, abdicate are synonyms.

• The Senate asks Haldemann. (Anglo-Saxon)
• The senate questions Haldemann.( French)
• The senate interrogates Haldemann. ( Latin)

ask, question, interrogates are synonyms.

Inflectional Simplicity:-

• Affixes or endings added to a stem word which changesthe meaning or form of that words. In latin, Puella Agricolam Amat. In English, Girl farmer love.

The ambiguilty can be cleared by adjusting the words order : Girl love farmer.

Natural Gender:-

• All Indo-European languages other than English arbitrarily divde words into Masculine, feminine and neuter.
• German-Der Bleistift (the pencil) (masculine) , Die Feder-(the pen) (feminine)
• Spanish- El Camino (the road) (masculine) , la mesa (the table) (feminine)

      Old English had Grammatical Gender:-

Old English  Se Mann (Masculine)	Modern English The man
Seo Hlaedige (Feminine)	The woman (or lady)
Saet Maegden (Neuter)	The girl (or maiden)

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