Talk:Cape Verdean Creole languages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Mistakes and incorrections

I would like to propose that changes should be made in this page, due to the fact that it has incorrections and/or statements that reveal serious errors.

First, concerning the language family, it could be expanded. Perhaps, a more complete genetic classification to be shown could be:

Creoles

Portuguese Creoles

Afro-Portuguese Creoles

Upper Guinea Creoles

Cape Verdean Creole

Second, the rest of the article contains a lot of statements that, by their nature, show that they were made with a lack of deep knowledge of Cape Verdean Creole, or that they were made based only on gossips, with no scientific base or documentation to prove it. Being Wikipedia a serious site, one should avoid making statements without specifying which are the sources and avoid making statements that are near to chauvinism, xenophobism or prejudgemental attitudes.

In detail:

1 - “...whose extremes lie at the islands of Santiago and Santo Antão.”. It’s needed to specify why and which is the source.

2 - The influence of West African languages is still in study, it was not proved yet.

3 - “Badiu” is the colloquial term to refer an inhabitant (male) of Santiago (only), and also the Creole variety spoken in that island. If one is not familiarized with the usage of the term “Badiu” it should be avoided because it could be offensive in certain contexts. The same goes for the term “Sampadjudu”. The linguistic scholars in Cape Verde call the two branches “Sotavento Creoles” and “Barlavento Creoles”.

4 - “A characteristic feature of the Barlavento Creoles is their use of the palato alveolar fricative sound.”. That’s imprecise. All the variants have palato alveolar fricatives. Check the words «côxa» [ˈkoʃɐ] e «lója» [ˈlɔʒɐ] which are pronounced practically the same way in all islands. What the author of that statement probably wanted to say is that in Santo Antão and São Vicente variants the implosive [s] and [z] sounds are palatalized. While in the rest of the islands words like «fésta» and «gósga» are pronounced [ˈfɛstɐ] e [ˈɡɔzɡɐ] respectively, in Santo Antão and São Vicente they are pronounced [ˈfɛʃtɐ] and [ˈɡɔʒɡɐ]. But only in Santo Antão and São Vicente, the other Barlavento islands pronounce the implosive [s] and [z] like the Sotavento islands.

5 - The rural and urban varieties are not present only in Santiago but in all other islands as well. It is not the case of different dialects but rather the case of basilects and acrolects.

6 - “...as great as the differences between Portuguese and Spanish...”. The scholars in Cape Verde consider the Cape Verdean Creoles varieties as the same language. To consider the varieties of Creole as different languages would be the same as considering the English from London and the English from New York as different languages...! The 9 varieties of Creole are justifiably different dialects, but the scholars in Cape Verde normally call them “variants” (“variantes” in Portuguese) rather than “dialects”.

7 - “French is (...) the most popular learning language...”. There is no document, no survey, no study that shows that French is the most “popular” learning language in school.

8 - The Santiago variant is “dominant” in terms of number of speakers (nearly 50% of the population, estimated), not because “it’s better” or “it has a social status”.

9 - The Santiago variant is not to become the country’s official language. A discussion is open about the standardization (not officialization) of the language around two varieties: the Santiago Creole and the São Vicente Creole. If this goes ahead, the Cape Verdean Creole will become a pluricentric language.

10 - The usage of Portuguese in the classroom is decreed by law.

11 - There is no official organism nor a recognized entity that stipulated that Mindelo is “Cape Verde’s cultural capital”.

12 - “...numerous parallels between the Cape Verdean Creoles and the West African languages...”. As it was said before, that wasn’t proved yet. Besides, some arguments presented are incorrect:

- in Cape Verdean Creole there is a distinction of voice: ês tâ fazê (they do) - active voice; tâ fazêdu (it’s done) - passive voice;

- there are verbal adjectives but they are rare;

- the intonation is used in interrogative sentences in almost every language;

- there is repetition of words, but is rare;

- the presence of African language morphological structures needs to be proved;

13 – “The language of Santiago is very close to the Guinea Bissau Creole...”. That’s a myth. I am presently preparing a text where I explain the origins of that myth.

14 - The ALUPEC is a writing convention only, based on a phonetic writing system. It only stipulates which letter are to be used to represent the sounds, it does not stipulate the orthographic rules for each words. Since the language is not standardized yet, even the persons writing in ALUPEC have not a uniform orthography. The ALUPEC has received a massive rejection among the Cape Verdeans because it shocks against the orthographic traditions of the Portuguese language.

Third, there is no need to repeat the designation of the language. The correct name in English is “Cape Verdean Creole”. The name “Cape Verdean” (“Cabo-verdiano” in Portuguese; “Kabuverdianu / Kab’verdian” in Creole) has been proposed for whenever the language will be standardized. However, in Cape Verde the language is simply known as “Creole”. The word “Crioulo” is in Portuguese. “Criolu / Kriolu” and “Criol / Kriol” are the same word in Cape Verdean Creole. The difference in writing only reflects the difference between the Southern variants and the Northern variants that lose the unstressed “u” at the end. The difference between “Criolu / Criol” and “Kriolu / Kriol” reflects only different writing conventions: the traditional writing with “c” and the ALUPEC convention with “k”.

C. A. Duarte 213.63.94.42 13:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all of those changes except #13. I haven't seen your text (I would love to though, when its published) and I don't have any etymology to back me up, but I've found conversations in Guinea-Bissau Krioulu to be perfectly manageable with a bit of concentration. The two creoles aren't identical, but they are very, very close. - Aether8m