How can we tell it’s a creole?

A. Most languages either have gender and conjugation markers, such as European languages, or tones, such as Chinese. As we have seen, these features develop over long periods of time by grammaticalization (gender, conjugation) or sound change (tones).

B. Because they start as pidgins and grow from there, creoles are too young to have drifted into conjugation markers, Chinese-style tone, and so on. Thus, many creoles have none of these features, and none has more than a small amount.

C. But this alone cannot tell us whether a language is a creole. We can point to a small number of old languages that, by chance, have neither gender or conjugation markers nor tone, in Polynesia, Southeast Asia, and West Africa.

D. But we can still tell a creole from these languages. In old languages, there are always prefixes and suffixes whose meaning is not always predictable. For example, under- in underlie, undershoot, and underestimate has the same meaning. But what does under- mean in understand? This kind of irregularity results from semantic change over long periods of time.

E. Because they are old, even languages without gender and conjugation markers or tone have their “understands.” Chrau, of Vietnam, is one of these. Try to figure out what the prefix pa- means from the meanings of the words it is used in.

Chrau (Vietnam):

găn “go across”               pagăn “crosswise”

le “dodge”                      pale “roll over”

lôm “lure”                       palôm “mislead”

lăm “set, point”               palăm “roll”

jŏq “long”                       pajŏq “how long?”

F. The only languages where there are very few or no “understands” are creoles. For example, -pasin (from “fashion,” as in “way”) has the same meaning with all of the roots it combines with:

Tok Pisin:

gut “good”               gutpasin “virtue”

isi “slow”                  isipasin “slowness”

prout “proud”           proutpasin “pride”

pait “fight”                paitpasin “warfare”