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From: lambert@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Boontling
Message-ID: <6697@boring.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 29-Nov-85 07:55:59 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6697
Posted: Fri Nov 29 07:55:59 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Nov-85 14:16:54 EST
References: <752@rtech.UUCP> <408@hounx.UUCP> <92@brl-tgr.ARPA> <1624@cae780.UUCP>
Reply-To: lambert@boring.UUCP (Lambert Meertens)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 39
Keywords: creole
Summary: Gullah is not like Boontling, but what about Cockney?
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL

> In article <92@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes:
>> Is "boontling" unique, or are there other regional languages like it? [...]
>
> Does "gullah (sp?)", the "language" around Charleston SC and the nearby
> islands count?

I guess what makes Boontling rather unique is the following:

(1) It did not evolve "naturally", but was made up by a conscious
collective effort;
(2) The purpose of the exercise was/is to create something unintelligible
to outsiders;
(3) The language is used in everyday life by a sizable community.

I put (2) in so that artificial languages like Esperanto will not qualify
(even though I doubt any of these would pass the everyday-life aspect of
(3)).  Note that (2) without (1) makes no sense.

Gullah is a creole language; it is comparable to many such languages spoken
all over the world (e.g., on many of the Caribbean islands, in the
Camerouns and Sierra Leone, on the Philippines).  All in all, some eighty
creole languages have been identified.  These languages evolved when by
some socially disruptive process people were put together who did not share
a common language.  The strong mutual likeness of all creoles makes it
clear that the process by which then a common language springs up is a
natural process; invented languages are much more diverse *and* usually
much more like some natural language that served as a model.

It seems to me that Cockney satisfies the criteria (1)-(3).

Literature:
    Pidginization and Creolization of Languages (D. Hymes, ed.), Cambridge
    University Press, 1971.
    D. Bickerton, Creole Languages, Scientific American, July 1983, 116-122.
-- 

     Lambert Meertens
     ...!{seismo,okstate,garfield,decvax,philabs}!lambert@mcvax.UUCP
     CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), Amsterdam