Article in Pidgin
Jan. 9th, 2018 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithA while back, BBC announced a new program to translate articles into a dialect of Pidgin for its African viewers. I heard about it a while ago and I'm pleased to see this example about education.
*laugh* But you can tell it's really translated, because they missed a word. There's a phoneme that British English uses but Pidgin doesn't, because some African languages don't either; Black English often makes the same substitution.
"Kaduna government bin don plan to sack more than 21,000 teachers for di state because dem no pass di competency test wey e set give dem."
Look at the rest of the article and you can see "di = the," "dem = them," etc. So that should say "dan" instead of "than."
Yes, I could read the whole article and grok most of it. I only missed a few words. I'm still trying to figure out the exact tense markers. "Don" is "done" and usually a past or completely finished action, as in Black English. The article also uses both "pickin" (cited as coming from "pequenho" in Portuguese, but closer to America, the root is given as pickaninny) and "children." However, "wey" is new to me. I'm really having fun comparing this to other pidgins I have encountered. Hawaiian Pidgin uses "wen" from "went" as a past-tense marker. You can hear "What we wen hit?" and "It stay jammed under the fender" ("stay" = "still," a continuing marker) in Lilo & Stitch. Jamaican Creole uses "pickney" for "children."
Apparently someone is making a style guide for a standardized BBC Pidgin. I would love to get my hands on that, or even just a good-sized glossary. With a very little help, I could write enough of this to use in dialog, like I have some of the other descendants of English.
*laugh* But you can tell it's really translated, because they missed a word. There's a phoneme that British English uses but Pidgin doesn't, because some African languages don't either; Black English often makes the same substitution.
"Kaduna government bin don plan to sack more than 21,000 teachers for di state because dem no pass di competency test wey e set give dem."
Look at the rest of the article and you can see "di = the," "dem = them," etc. So that should say "dan" instead of "than."
Yes, I could read the whole article and grok most of it. I only missed a few words. I'm still trying to figure out the exact tense markers. "Don" is "done" and usually a past or completely finished action, as in Black English. The article also uses both "pickin" (cited as coming from "pequenho" in Portuguese, but closer to America, the root is given as pickaninny) and "children." However, "wey" is new to me. I'm really having fun comparing this to other pidgins I have encountered. Hawaiian Pidgin uses "wen" from "went" as a past-tense marker. You can hear "What we wen hit?" and "It stay jammed under the fender" ("stay" = "still," a continuing marker) in Lilo & Stitch. Jamaican Creole uses "pickney" for "children."
Apparently someone is making a style guide for a standardized BBC Pidgin. I would love to get my hands on that, or even just a good-sized glossary. With a very little help, I could write enough of this to use in dialog, like I have some of the other descendants of English.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-09 08:41 pm (UTC)(And you bother to differentiate between Hatian creole and Easy City cajun... )
The only other time I've seen that done *right* was "Walk The Line", the Johnny Cash/June Carter story.... Johnny and June each *chose* Joaquin and Reese before they passed as their movie avatars. Johnny's native accent is Deep South, longer, deeper. June grew up in the extreme tip of southwest Virginia - the Carter Fold is still a Mecca of bluegrass and old-school country music - and her accent is Appalachian, not too dissimilar to mine, but higher, more nasal, more dipthongs. Johnny would say co-cola. June would say coke. They got it right.
(I noted to N the other day that Lin-Manuel Miranda had picked up a few Britishisms in his recent time in London; she responded that good actors are total chameleons, picking up whatever linguistic bits that surround them... What had me totally bemused was that he has the same cross-accent issue I do... He used the phrase "taking the piss out of the Americans" referring to his King George III character teasing us Yanks about having no idea what we were getting into... with his native Washington Heights, NYC quasi-'Rican accent... same as I'll often say, "well, bugger" with the "r" left on where most Englishmen would leave it off.... except the Cornish. I like to think a bunch of Cornish pirates stole all of England's ARRRRRs... ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-10 03:26 am (UTC)Also: do you have any black English resources. Because, um, I would love to play. xd
Not only would it help my system mates feel a bit more comfortable here (And so serousoly confuse other people who hear them talk, especially telepathically. Zay is from Tennessee and uses some of that, and well...you know Jay, so), It would be fun to parse into some other projects of mine, especially dmifiction...
-Fallon~
Thoughts
Date: 2018-01-10 03:53 am (UTC)Off the top of my head, salient features include:
* Replacing "th" with "d" or "t" at the beginning of words ("that" > "dat" and "thing" > "ting") and "f" or "t" at the end ("bath" > "baf" or "bat").
* Dropping or repurposing some forms of "be" ("He good.").
* R-colored vowels ("wash > "warsh").
* "Done" as a past or perfective marker ("found" > "done find" or "You done fucked up now.").
https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-ebonics-african-american-english
http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy598/Black%20English.pdf
https://chancellorfiles.wordpress.com/2005/11/08/the-origins-of-black-american-english-ebonics-and-history/
>> Not only would it help my system mates feel a bit more comfortable here (And so serousoly confuse other people who hear them talk, especially telepathically.<<
Yay!
>> Zay is from Tennessee and uses some of that, and well...you know Jay, so), <<
Ayup, that I do. :D
>> It would be fun to parse into some other projects of mine, especially dmifiction... <<
I'd enjoy seeing that.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-01-10 04:31 pm (UTC)(And then having his little lady friend rtranslate it for the others who don't speak it. xd) so yep, hyou mioght see that as soon as I get bored with classes. xd
(Along with another fractile!story I need to send to the writer who's letting me play with her people. xd)
-Fallon~
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-01-10 07:59 pm (UTC)Go for it! In this world, Suzette Haden Elgin wrote an academic paper in Ozark English to prove that you could discuss anything in any language. That's never going to stop being funny. I wish more people would write important things in their own dialect, and maybe it would discourage the idiotic idea that some are "better."