One of the channels I’m offered on my cable system is a Filipino network. A few of the shows are in English, but most are in Tagalog, the official national language of the Philipines.
Thing is … it sounds as if Tagalog is a combination of English and … well, something that might be Tagalog. Most of what you’ll hear include English sentence fragments, along with occasionl Spanish words, interspersed among what must be Tagalog. Something like …
“Bing badabing popang ting seven days a week, every week bang pingtong bambam casa thirteen hundred bang gabong casa grande bigbong ding just outside of Metro Manila.”
Meanwhile, is anything scrolls down across the bottom of the screen, it’s almost always in English; when it’s not, it’s this strange combination of Tagalog with English sentence fragments. It’s not just English words here and there … they’re strings of English words mixed in with the Tagalog. One show had a pidgin English name - “You Zo Sexy.”
Is Tagalog normally supposed to be spoken with about a third of it being English sentence fragments? Any rules in Tagalog that describe just when and where English is used, and how much of it is to be used?
Tagalog to me sounds like part English, part Portuguese or Spanish and part Japanese. As for your question, I’m thinking certain words are of each type.
It’s either a pidgin or a creole, yes? These are stripped-down languages that were originally used for trade and immediate communication. They combine vocabulary from one with a stripped-down grammar from the other. When you add more words and get more complex, it becomes a creole. English as we know it evolved from a creole we call Middle English–Anglo-Saxon/Teutonic root words (the loosers’ language) and French grammar/French word roots as high status.
Tagalog has a long history of assimilating the language of whatever visitors or traders or conquerors it encounters. Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, and Arabic have all contributed. These days, English is the language of choice. This is due to both the American colonization of the the Philippines in the recent past and the current American domination of the mass media and world affairs. Maybe in a couple hundred years, the languange will become more codified, but right now, if you want to sound cool or hip or edgy, you semi-randomly intersperse English words in your speech.
The comics, of course, are making fun of those who do.
Back in my Navy days, I was kidding a couple of my coworkers (military & civilian), some of whom were native speakers of Tagalog. I told them that I was getting more and more convinced that the English terms they were using mixed in with the Tagalog didn’t have anything to do with what they were really saying; it was just to trick us English speakers. They, at least, found it funny.
Seriously, though. All languages borrow words from other languages, some are just more inclined to do so.
Tagalog is not related to English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, or any of the other languages mentioned in this thread so far. It has borrowed words from a lot of those languages, but it didn’t originate from the same source as any of them. It’s an Austronesian language:
Go down in this chart to Malayo-Polynesian, then to Western Malayo-Polynesian under that, then to Meso Philippine under that, then to Central Philippine under that, then to Tagalog under that. So it’s distantly related to the Polynesian languages, to the languages spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan, and to other languages of the Philippines. Incidentally, Ethnologue is the best quick online source for information about languages.
Why did you use so many French/Latin words in your OP? English-- what’s the deal?
OK, you were talking about something slightly different, but not much. English is clearly a French/Anglo-Saxon creole with lots of words purposely borrowed from Latin, Greek, and many other languages.
The word “creole” is a technical term in linguistics. English is not a creole because it borrowed a lot of words from French, nor is Tagalog a creole because it borrowed a lot of words from English. I’m too tired tonight to explain the exact meaning of the word “creole,” but it requires more than just borrowing a lot of words.
Wendell: Yeah, you could be right about the technical definition of creole. But English didn’t “borrow” french words in the way it “borrowed” Latin words (except the few that got in during the Roman occupation of Britain). I’m using “creole” in the sense of a language that has a large number of words “inlaid” into it from one other language as the result of mixing people from the two language speaking communities. Not sure if that’s technically correct, but it’s more than “borrowing” words.
IIRC a true creole is a “second generation” pidgin. The adults learn pidgin-- a bare minimum of a foreign language with limitted grammer and lots of words mixed in with their native tongue, then the 2nd generation grows up with that pidgin, and turns it into a “creole” with self consistent rules of grammer, etc.
According to Cecil, “A pidgin is a linguistic makeshift that enables two cultures to communicate for purposes of trade, etc.; a creole is a pidgin that has become a culture’s primary language.”
No. Not “French grammar”. Not at all. English grammar is 100% Germanic in origin. Can you cite even one instance of “French grammar” being used in English? The loosers? What did they loose? The fateful lightning?
Sounds similar to what happens with the Welsh language; it sounds like:
“Dwr dwrm lthlth submarine, drwl clfwrth Echo And The Bunnymen” - every language imports words and phrases, it is just more noticeable when the languages are so very different to begin with.
It’s important to distinguish between a language being a pidgin or creole language and a language simply borrowing words from another.
As stated previously, a pidgin language is one which enables two cultures to communicate. Nobody would seriously contest that English is a pidgin or creole language because of words like “deja vu” or claim the same of French because of its use of “le weekend”.
Languages evolve over time and as new concepts arise, new words are formed to allow people to communicate these concepts. Often, when concepts are introduced from another culture the existing word from that culture is taken with the concept. The word allows communication of the concept and so no new word creation is needed.
English is a language with many synonyms which often come from its competing ancestors. For example, there is the Norse word “anger”, the Old English “wrath” and the French “ire”. That does lend some credence to the argument that English was a creole language. However, the differences between its grammar and vocabulary and those of its ancestors are probably enough to outweigh these claims.