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- All French Creoles are mutually intelligible, no matter where they are
found (Caribbean, AFrica, Indian Ocean)
- All early reports indicated the masters learned from the subalterns, not
vice versa.
- All Creoles are typologically similar, so could be based on lots of
different kinds of baby-talk.
- Similarities were originally explained as due to the African
origin of the first subalterns, such that the universally-seen features were
supposedly to be found in the African donor languages.
- But these similarities surface in areas even where no African influence
can be imputed: Pitcairnese, Chinook Jargon, Nagamese, Bazaar Hindi, etc.
Harold Schiffman
Tue Mar 25 08:54:40 EST 1997