creole - Creoles and Patois

A pidgin language which has become the mother-tongue of a speech community, as has happened with Jamaican creole. A creole develops a wider range of words, grammatical structures, and styles than is found in a pidgin.

The word Creole, a word of Spanish origin which came into English from French between 1595 and 1605, (and its cognates in other languages, such as criollo, crioulo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc.) may refer to

a person of Spanish (or French or Portuguese) ancestry but born in one of the Spanish (or French) colonies, as opposed to a Spaniard (or Frenchman or Portuguese) born in Spain (or France or Portugal) any of the Creole peoples, a number of distinct ethnic groups in various countries a creole language, a type of language formed from a pidgin the Creole Pig, a breed of pig from Haiti a casual reference to mean "pertaining to New Orleans" or aspects of its culture a programming database abstraction layer for PHP5 named Creole La Compagnie Creole, a 1980s French pop band in converging technologies, technical vocabulary common to several disciplines which allows stakeholder to communicate effectively

The term Louisiana Creole usually refers to the Louisiana Creole people in the US, and concepts associated with them

Louisiana Creole French language Louisiana Creole folk music Louisiana Creole cuisine

Creoles and Patois

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On the islands under French influence like Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Martin, St. Barths, Marie-Galante, Les Saintes, Désirade, Mauritius, Seychelles and Reunion, as well as French Guiana, nearly all the population speaks a form of French-based Creole as their first language. Creole is one of the two officials language spoken in Haiti.

In countries under English influence, Creole has less standing, although there are Creolized forms of English in the Caribbean. Creole culture is not just black African culture, though part of the language's grammatical originality, for instance, is definitely African

Patois is a French word meaning a regional or very local language. With all its subtleties, Creole is no longer considered just bad or inferior language.

Creole and its many varieties evolved as a new form of patois as a result of interaction on the overseas plantations of Europe. It is a common language emanating from the culture of people who have evolved in a Creole environment, where French masters living far from France adopted this life-style during the time they had African slaves and later, indentured Indian and Chinese laborers.

Many Creole phrases can be recovered by Creole linguists from old parlers of various French regions. The Creole heritage of these two formerly French islands is just immeasurable.

Besides many varieties of French, the creativity of Creole also stems from words, grammar forms or inflexions taken or adapted from Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Tamil, English and many other languages.

Creole literature - essays, poetry or novels - both in French and Creole, is penned by people of all colors and bloods and it is outstanding. This abandonment of the language may be because for a long time the Creole patois was considered a handicap to proper education à la Française;

Fortunately, just when one thought it would have disappeared, Creole is making a come-back in force.

Nowadays in Guadeloupe and Martinique, Creole can be heard freely during any program on radio and television channels, official or not, along with perfect French, and not as a separate entity.

When Indian indentured laborers - the jahajis (people of the ship) as they are called in some places like Trinidad or Jamaica or coolies, as they were called, not without disdain, in the French West Indies and elsewhere - arrived in Guadeloupe from many parts of India, speaking a variety of languages and village vernaculars, they quickly resorted to using the language spoken by the masters and former slaves in order to communicate;

The impact of this flexibility on the harmony of the Creole populations today is an obvious fact. In the same vein, in the culinary domain, the Colombo dish itself, considered the "national" dish of Guadeloupe and Martinique by Indians and non-Indians alike, is a Creole production born of the encounter of peoples from diverse areas of India, each contributing their Kolbu (a tamil word), curries, medicinal plants, culinary secrets, and freely given to the whole;