In the past few hundred years European colonialism has affected many language communities. Disruption of the lives of whole societies has drastically affected normal language transmission from one generation to the next. In extreme cases, indigenous languages have disappeared and new languages arisen. Troy (chapter 3) talks of the origins of a pidgin in early colonial New South Wales. Pidgins have often been viewed with suspicion by those who did not speak them, particularly if they were an elite or politically dominant class while the speakers of the new languages were the colonised, dispossessed or lower classes. Although such prejudice has often been due to elitism or even racism, it has also sometimes been due to ignorance. Many otherwise well-meaning people have simply failed to understand the difference between a restricted pidgin language and a full creole language, nor have they understood why they arise in the first place.
A pidgin is a contact language, used only for limited purposes between groups of people having no common language. Generations of films, novels and comics have produced a derogatory stereotype of pidgins in the minds of many people. This ‘me Tarzan, you Jane’ kind of language is widely thought to be the result of primitive thought processes, or mental deficiency, or baby talk. This stereotype is wrong. Pidgins are the creation of skilled people faced with a sudden need to communicate with other people who do not speak the same language.
There have been pidgins as long as people from different language communities have been thrust into sudden contact. The period of European colonial expansion, however, brought people into contact much more frequently and much more widely than had happened before.
In the earliest contacts, communication is often restricted to such interactions as trading, where a detailed exchange of ideas is not required. A small vocabulary is sufficient, drawn almost exclusively from the language of the dominant group. The grammar of pidgin is ‘simplified’ in the sense that it is less complex and less flexible than the structures of any of the languages involved in the contact. It is not, however, merely a jargon: that is, a pidgin has and obeys its own rules.
It is important to realise that simplification of language is not necessarily a backward step. Consider these three sentences: ‘I go to Sydney today’; ‘I went to Sydney yesterday’; ‘I will go to Sydney tomorrow’. In an imaginary pidgin, these sentences could become: I go Sydney today; I go Sydney yesterday; I go Sydney tomorrow. These sentences are perfectly comprehensible. The meaning is still clear, although there is what some people call a ‘loss of grammar’.
A pidgin is nobody’s primary language. Both parties privately speak their own full languages. Chinese Pidgin English, for example, which arose in the eighteenth century, was used initially between British traders and Chinese merchants. It was a restricted language, able to cope with simple trade negotiations. Chinese Pidgin English was not the primary language of the Chinese or the British. The Chinese went home and spoke Cantonese while the British went home and spoke English.
Some pidgins remain in use as pidgins for hundreds of years. Others may be only short-lived and then disappear completely. On the other hand, some pidgins expand to fulfil new communicative demands.
Many pidgins have undergone immense, rapid expansion to become the primary languages of new communities. These new languages are no longer pidgins but are termed ‘creoles’, a word which originally referred to almost anything which developed in colonial situations. The term is now used by linguists to refer only to new languages which have arisen by the rapid expansion of a pidgin (‘creolisation’).
Many colonial contexts in which pidgins developed were situations of extreme social disruption in which communities arose consisting of people who did not share a common language. Plantation slavery was a typical context. Slave traders normally supplied slaves from different language backgrounds to prevent them from grouping in large numbers. Their only common language was the plantation pidgin. The slave communities, and particularly their children, had an urgent need to communicate with each other on a wide range of subjects but no language in which to do it. Their response was to create languages of their own, using the local pidgin as the basic raw material, but expanding it to cope with all communicative needs. The resulting languages were creoles.
A creole is a full language, while a pidgin is a restricted special-purpose language. It can be argued that there is no real difference, linguistically, between creoles and other normal languages. The view that a creole is in some way inferior is a delusion, made possible only because, unlike older languages, creoles may still be able to be compared with the languages of which they are believed to be corruptions. Many of the grammatical simplifications for which creole languages are denigrated, such as loss of inflection, are in fact true of modern English when it is compared to its ancestor languages. Changes in English, however, either took a long time or are perceived as having happened long ago, whereas the simplifications of language which occur in pidginisation, and the subsequent preservation of those simplifications in a creole, may all take place within one or two generations.
Kriol is a unique Australian creole. Its history well illustrates the relationship between a creole and its pidgin ancestor, and demonstrates that creolisation occurs as a result of rapid social change and the demand for a primary language in a newly emerged community (Harris 1986).
After four unsuccessful attempts by Europeans to invade the Northern Territory between 1824 and 1866, permanent settlement was achieved in Darwin in 1870. Over the next thirty years, there was an influx of English-speaking people. Some came to establish the cattle industry and others came to the gold rushes, where they were outnumbered by the Chinese. There was considerable interaction between Chinese, European and Aboriginal people, particularly in the vicinity of European settlements, such as the emerging townships, the mining camps, and the cattle stations. None of these groups could understand each other’s language, so a direct consequence of their need to communicate was the emergence of pidginised forms of English. By the beginning of the twentieth century, these pidgins had converged into one widely understood lingua franca, Northern Territory Pidgin English. At this point, Northern Territory Pidgin English was still a pidgin. It was still a contact language, still used for restricted purposes only, still nobody’s primary language; that is, it had not yet creolised. All its speakers spoke other full languages at home.
The first place in the Northern Territory where the pidgin was expanded to become the primary language of a new community was the Roper River Mission (now Ngukurr), where creolisation began to occur shortly after 1908. The invasion of the Roper River region by Europeans had commenced with the construction of the overland telegraph in the early 1870s. Huge cattle drives were then undertaken as the pastoral frontier moved from Queensland into the Northern Territory. Cattle stations were established in the 1870s and 1880s and a small township emerged at Roper Bar, the shallow crossing used by European drovers, miners, settlers, cattle thieves and anyone else who had to cross the Roper River travelling north or south.
These were violent years and a great deal of aggression was directed at Aboriginal people in the region. As one of the early missionaries, R.D. Joynt, wrote in 1918, hundreds had been ‘shot down like game’. The massacre of Aboriginal people in a ‘war of extermination’ was widespread and continuous throughout the whole of the pastoral frontier. Initially, the battle was not entirely one-sided. The Aboriginal people of the Roper River region gained themselves a reputation for fierce and concerted resistance to the European invasion of their lands.
Any hypothetical chance, however, that Aboriginal people may have been able to maintain control over the future of themselves and their society was drastically ended at the turn of the century when a London-based cattle company (The Eastern and African Cold Storage Company) acquired massive tracts of unleased or abandoned land to carve out a pastoral empire from the Roper River north into Arnhem Land. Purchasing all the cattle stations along the western Roper River, they began moving cattle eastward. The company had no intention of allowing Aboriginal resistance to hinder this huge project. Determined to exterminate them, they employed gangs of up to fourteen men to hunt out all inhabitants of the region and shoot them on sight. With the police and other authorities turning a blind eye, the hunting gangs of the cattle company staged an unprecedented, systematic campaign of extermination against the Roper River people. They almost succeeded.
This near annihilation of the Aboriginal people of the region led to the first factor necessary for the genesis of a creole : sudden and drastic social change and the accompanying severe disruption of normal language transmission. The second requirement for the genesis of a creole is a new community. This was made possible by an Anglican mission station.
Challenged by the plight of Aboriginal people, the Anglican Church determined to establish a mission on the Roper River itself. Commenced in 1908, the mission was perceived as a haven of refuge by the scattered people of the region. By 1909 some 200 Aboriginal people gathered there. They were the remnants of the Mara, Wandarang, Alawa, Ngalakan and Ngandi people, together with the easternmost Mangarayi people and the southernmost members of the Rembarrnga and Nunggubuyu. As Barnabas Roberts, an Alawa man who came to the mission as a young boy, once said: ‘If the missionaries hadn’t come, my tribe would have been all shot down’.
The eight groups spoke separate and distinct languages. As is typical of Aboriginal people, the adults were multilingual. Although they had not lived permanently in such close proximity before, they had met regularly for ceremonial and other purposes. Over the course of a lifetime, these people had always become fluent speakers of each other’s languages. The children, however, were not yet multilingual. Approximately seventy children attended school at the mission, each one of them forced into contact with other children whose languages they had not yet had time to learn. They were the new community, they needed a primary language, and they needed it immediately.
Whereas their parents could communicate with other adults by speaking Alawa or Mara or whatever, the children could not. What they had in common was the English pidgin used between Aboriginal and European people, together with the English they were hearing in school. With this limited input, it was this younger generation who, in the course of their lifetime, created the creole, manipulating the linguistic resources available to them to create a language which catered for all their communicative needs. This language is now called Kriol. As one local person, Ralph Dingul, puts it:
La Ngukurr melabat garrim eitbala langgus. Wen naja traib wandim tok la dis traib, dei tok mijalb garrim Kriol. Jad impotan langgus im Kriol. Olabat gan sabi bla wanim olabat toktok.
(At Ngukurr, we have eight languages. When another tribe wants to talk to this tribe, they talk to each other in Kriol. The important language is Kriol. They all can understand whatever they want to discuss.)
The relationship of the missionaries to the emergence of Kriol is complex. The Aboriginal people accepted the missionaries. They chose the mission site for them and they recognised that the missionaries came as friends, not enemies. They gathered at the mission and there formed the new community for which a new primary language became necessary. Certainly, the mission provided a location for this new community, the location where the demand for a creole would arise; but the mission did not create the creole. The movement of pidgin English towards a creole at other locations — in the Kimberleys, around the cattle stations and at Barunga during World War II, for example — indicates that the process of creolisation would have eventually taken place, provided that Aboriginal people had survived in the region without the mission to protect them. Thus, although the effect of the mission was to expedite the rise of Kriol, it was not the primary cause. Indeed, the truth is that Kriol arose despite the efforts of the missionaries to prevent it.
It is not easy to judge accurately the impact of the missionaries’ attitudes to language. Initially, they intended to learn a local language but discovered to their dismay that there were at least eight. They could have chosen one of these — perhaps the language of the actual mission site — but it is still unlikely that this would have prevented the emergence of Kriol.
What the missionaries did was conclude that Standard English was the only choice for the official language of the mission. They therefore tried to discourage what was starting to be called ‘Roper Pidgin’, and were surprised at their inability to do so. Young people became bilingual, speaking Kriol among themselves and English to the missionaries. Informally, many missionaries also attempted to speak Kriol as a communicative necessity.
The missionaries could not, of course, have known what was happening. Even the scholarly linguistic world did not recognise Kriol until the 1970s. Prior to that, Kriol and its antecedent pidgins were considered ‘ridiculous gibberish’ (Strehlow 1947, xix), ‘broken jargon’ (Wurm 1963, 4) and ‘lingual bastardisation’ (Baker 1966, 316). In this context, the missionaries could not have deduced that a new and viable language was coming into existence. We could hardly expect that the missionaries would have had more linguistic understanding than contemporary linguists. The missionaries discouraged the use of Kriol, banning it in school and especially avoiding it in religious contexts.
Despite the efforts of the missionaries, Kriol was born, and it continued to develop and mature. It is now the language of a new community. For many people it is now both mother tongue and primary language. Kriol is now formally described (Sandefur 1979, 1986) and is beginning to acquire its own distinctive literature.
Old prejudices die hard. There are still people today who do not consider Kriol to be a ‘proper’ language. Furthermore, Kriol-speaking Aboriginal people themselves have held a low view of their language. This is a worldwide phenomenon in creole-speaking communities. Creoles have not normally arisen as the languages of the rich or powerful. Those who speak creoles have endured generations of abuse of themselves and their languages. It is little wonder that they have grown ashamed of their speech.
There is, however, a worldwide trend for creole-speaking people to gain a new sense of self-esteem as they break away from the colonial oppression of the past. The languages which have become their own are invariably part of their emerging identity and gain new respect. In many parts of the world, the new pride that creole-speaking communities have in their languages has been initiated by the translation and publication of something significant and substantial.
This has almost always been the Bible. Whatever one’s religious views, the significance of the Bible as a substantial book with powerful symbolic value cannot be denied. Furthermore, the translation of a book with so much deep philosophical and abstract material lays to rest the criticism that creoles are inadequate languages which can only express simple ideas.
The Kriol Bible translation program illustrates this particularly well. Against opposition from some linguists, some missionaries, some educational administrators and even from some older Aboriginal people who believed that Kriol was inferior, a translation program has been in progress since 1973. This Bible translation has played a crucial role in raising the status of Kriol in the eyes of its speakers. When the first small book of selections, Hoti Baibul, was published in 1985, people at Ngukurr, Barunga, Darwin and in the Kimberleys wore T-shirts depicting the region where Kriol is spoken (Kriol Kantri) and a Bible. The slogan read: Dubala brom God (Both from God).
Certainly, as is often the case in translation, narrative passages were the easiest to deal with. Yet, even there, the differences between English and Kriol are evident. Here is Luke 2:8, the verse which opens the story of the shepherds visiting the infant Jesus.
English Revised Standard Version:
And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
Kriol Holi Baibul:
Orait, sambata stakmen deya langa dat Kantri deibin maindimbat ola nenigout langa pedik naitaim.
‘Alright, some-fellow stockmen there belonging that country they-were minding all-the sheep belonging paddock nighttime’.
Orait replaces ‘and’ as the normal Kriol commencement of a narrative. The cattle industry, so important in Kriol Kantri, gives stakmen (stockmen) as the Kriol word for anyone who minds animals. The first sheep-like animals in the Roper region were goats — hence nenigout (nanny goat).
Here are two longer passages containing complex theological ideas from Ephesians 1: 5—10, where St Paul discusses God’s plan for humankind.
Revised Standard Version
He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us, for he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Holi Baibul
Longtaim God bin jinggabat blanga meigim wi san blanga im, dumaji imbin laigim wi, en bambai after imbin meigim wi im san wen imbin joinimap wi langa Jisas Krais, dumaji imbin gudbinji blanga dum lagijat, en imbin meigim im ron plen. Wal wi garra preisim God en gibit im teingks, dumaji imbin abum detkain filing blanga wi, en imbin shoum wi det filing blanga im wen imbin gibit wi ola enijing friwan thru Jisas det brabliwan san blanga im, dumaji wen Jisas bin weistim im blad, imbin meigim wi fri, en God bin larramgo wi fri brom ol detlot nogudbala ting weya wibin oldei dumbat. Trubala God im brabli kainbala, en brabliwei imbin shoum wi im kainbala. Wal God im brabli sabibala du, en imbin dum wanim imbin wandim, en imbin shoum wi det plen blanga im weya imbin jinggabat blanga dum garram Jisas Krais. Nobodi bin sabi det plen basdam, bat we sabi na. Wi sabi wen im rait taim, God garra joinimap ebrijing weya imbin meigim langa dis wel en langa hebin, en Jisas na garra sidan boswan blanga olabat.
It has been the translators’ experience that the task of expressing these concepts in Kriol has made the English more comprehensible to them. Here are a few examples of wording from the above passage:
(God) destined us... to be his sons
Longtaim God bin jinggabat blanga meigim wi san blanga
im
‘(For a) longtime God has thought about making us sons
of his’
In him we have redemption through his blood
Wen Jisas bin weistim im blad, imbin meigim we fri
‘When Jesus shed his blood, he made us free’
He has made known to us... the mystery of his will
Imbin shown wi det plen. blanga im... Nobodi bin sabi det
plan basdam, bat wi sabi na
‘He showed us that plan of his... Nobody understood that
plan before, but we understand now’.
Kriol is now a full language. Over 20,000 people can speak Kriol. For about half of these, Kriol is their mother tongue. Like all languages, Kriol is capable of expressing all that its speakers want to say. Certainly, Kriol speakers on the Bible translation team found themselves saying things that had never been said before in Kriol. But there was nothing, finally, that they could not say.
Living languages do change, and one of the major reasons for change is the need to express new concepts. Kriol has shown itself well able to do that. As time progresses, Kriol speakers will find the need to express and communicate yet newer ideas. That Kriol can do this is proof that it is a full language.
It is possible that some of the changes in Kriol will move it closer to English, because Kriol speakers also speak English as a second or third language. However, the more Kriol comes to symbolise their distinctiveness, the more Kriol speakers will value and preserve it.
What are the differences between the two sentences? Can one sentence be shown to be inferior to the other? Does one sentence convey more meaning than the other?
What do you think may have been the objections to English? What was the force of Mulcaster’s argument?
| Baker, S.J. | |
| 1966 | The Australian Language, Currawong Publishers, Sydney. |
| Harris, J.W. | |
| 1986 | Northern Territory Pidgins and the Origin of Kriol, Pacific Linguistics C-89, Canberra. |
| Joynt, R.D. | |
| 1918 | Ten Years among Aborigines, H. Hearne and Co, Melbourne. |
| Sandefur, J.R. | |
| 1979 | An Australia Kriol in the Northern Territory: A Description of Ngukurr-Bamyili Dialects, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Darwin. |
| 1986 | Kriol of North Australia: A Language Coming of Age, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Darwin. |
| Strehlow, T.G.H. | |
| 1947 | Aranda Traditions, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. |
| Wurm, S.A. | |
| 1963 | Some Remarks on the Role of Language in the Assimilation of Australian Aborigines, Pacific Linguistics A-1, Canberra. |