The United States’ forgotten creoles. The histories of Gullah and Chinook Jargon in the light of language change and creole classification (eBook)

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Theories of Language Change, language: English, abstract: This paper aims to explore the development of the creole languages Gullah and Chinook Jargon and the historical and cultural impact they had and continue to have on the communities in which they are spoken, as well as the overall linguistic diversity of the country which they are native to.

Creole languages are classified languages which develop out of a contact situation of two or more languages and are spoken natively by at least one generation. This sets them apart from pidgins, which develop similarly, but aren’t spoken natively. In the United States, there currently exist four language which are classified as creoles, however only two of them have enjoyed wide attention by linguists, as well as the public. Those are Louisiana Creole, which is based in French and spoken, as the name suggests, mainly in Louisiana, and Hawai’i Creole, which has its basis in English and is mainly spoken in Hawai’i. The other two have received much less attention, despite the fact that they are native to the country, classified as creoles and still spoken today. The first of the pair is Gullah, a creole which is based in English but carries strong influences from West and Central African languages and is spoken in North and South Carolina, Georgia, as well as Northeast Florida. The second language is Chinook Jargon, also known as Chinuk Wawa, a Native American based language, which is historically rooted in the times of the Westward expansion and is still spoken in Oregon today.