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So I saw that someone thought that English is pretty much just an glorified creole. What do you guys think about this?

Ty185 wrote:So I saw that someone thought that English is pretty much just an glorified creole. What do you guys think about this?

Bunk. See: http://zompist.com/lang18.html#20.

Ah. That makes sense, thank you

John McWhorter revived this idea in "Or Magnificent Bastard Tongue", which I've been meaning to read, but there's a taste at the this review or this one or this one.

Although even proposing the idea of Semitic influence on Proto-Germanic kind of discredits the whole project

Zomp sums it up rather succinctly with "[the proposal] rests on an incomplete understanding of creolization and a shaky grasp on the history of English". Creolisation is a very specific process that happens in very specific circumstances, and I agree that it's unlikely that any of them happened in Anglo-Saxon Britain.

I read a rather interesting theory put forward by Milroy and Milroy that weak social networks* led to accelerated dialectalisation and variation of Englishes, coupled with lots of contact with "the outside world" (again, weakening in-country social networks, accelerating change). As dialects collided and rubbed up against each other, the linguistic variables that differed were worn down; a contact language formed and gradually influenced dialects. The language in areas with less contact with other languages/dialects/migrants was markedly more conservative.** This was later reinforced by migration (from the midlands to London in the Middle English period, for instance) and movement within the country.

I can see why people confuse this with creolisation - languages mixing and something new appearing - but creolisation happens much faster (as in, over a generation) and under very specific linguistic circumstances (many differing languages with a "model" language with higher status).



* means something similar to what you think it means but is again more specific
** changed less quickly. A conservative language changes slowly, an innovative language changes quickly.