|
West African Pidgin English, also called Guinea Coast Creole English, was the lingua franca, or language of commerce, spoken along the West African coast during the period of the Atlantic slave trade. British slave merchants and local African traders developed this language in the coastal areas in order to facilitate their commercial exchanges, but it quickly spread up the river systems into the West African interior because of its value as a trade language among Africans of different tribes. Later in its history, this useful trading language was adopted as a native language by new communities of Africans and mixed-race people living in coastal slave trading bases such as James Island, Bunce Island, Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle and Anomabu. At that point, it became a creole language. Some scholars call this language "West African Pidgin English" to emphasize its role as a lingua franca pidgin used for trading. Others call it "Guinea Coast Creole English" to emphasize its role as a creole native language spoken in and around the coastal slave castles and slave trading centers by people permanently based there. West African Pidgin English arose during the period when the British dominated the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately exporting more slaves to the Americas than all the other European nations combined. During this period, English-speaking sailors and slave traders were in constant contact with African villagers and long-distance traders along thousands of miles of West African coastline. Africans who picked up elements of pidgin English for purposes of trade with Europeans along the coast probably took the language up the river systems along the trade routes into the interior where other Africans who may never have seen a white man adopted it as a useful device for trade along the rivers. The existence of this influential language during the slave trade era is attested by the many descriptions of it recorded by early European travelers and slave traders. They called it the "Coast English" or the "Coast Jargon." A British slave trader in Sierra Leone, named John Matthews, mentioned pidgin English in a letter he later published in a book titled ''A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone on the Coast of Africa''. Matthews refers to West African Pidgin English as a "jargon," and he warns Europeans coming to Africa that they will fail to understand the Africans unless they recognize that there are significant differences between English and the coastal pidgin: :“Those who visit Africa in a cursory manner...are very liable to be mistaken in the meaning of the natives from want of knowledge in their language, or in the jargon of such of them as reside upon the sea-coast and speak a little English; the European affixing the same ideas to the words spoken by the African, as if they were pronounced by one of his own nation. () is a specimen of the conversation which generally passes...: :''Well, my friend, you got trade today; you got plenty of slaves?'' :''No, we no got trade yet; by and by trade come. You can’t go.'' :''What you go for catch people, you go for make war?'' :''Yes, my brother… gone for catch people; or they gone for make war.''" ==Structure== Like other pidgin and creole languages, West African Pidgin English took the majority of its vocabulary from its target language (English), and much of its sound system, grammar, and syntax from the local substrate languages (West African Niger–Congo languages). The English dialect that served as the target language (or lexifier) for West African Pidgin English was not the speech of Britain's educated classes, though, but the Nautical English spoken by the British sailors who manned the slave ships that sailed to Africa. Nautical speech contained words from British regional dialects as well as specialized ship vocabulary. Evidence of this early nautical speech can still be found in the modern pidgin and creole languages derived from West African Pidgin English. In Sierra Leone Krio, for instance, words derived from English regional dialects include ''padi'' ("friend"), ''krabit'' ("stingy"), and ''berin'' ("funeral"). Words from specialized ship vocabulary include ''kohtlas'' ("machete"), ''flog'' ("beat," "punish"), ''eys'' ("hoist" ) ("to lift"), and ''dek'' ("floor"). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「West African Pidgin English」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|