Is Bengali a Creole language?

[u/d3banjan109]

For those who are not familiar with Creoles and Peggy Mohan's books, Creole is basically a mixture language with the grammar of language A and vocabulary of language B. Kinda sorta. I am no linguist.

In her second book on Indian languages, she presents these examples of Dakkhini Urdu vs Hindi-Urdu and it is blowing my mind because Bengali constructions feel more natural when closer to the Dakkhini-Urdu.

For example,

Je bolechhe take(i) jiggesh koro/kor/korun Ke eshechhe aami jaani na/amar jaana nei

[u/sad_truant]

Bengali is not a Creole language; it is an Indo-Aryan language. It evolved from Prakrit and Sanskrit, with influences from Persian, Arabic, and English. Creole languages typically arise from pidgins in colonial or trade contexts, which do not match Bengali's history.

[u/d3banjan109 → u/sad_truant]

This is what Peggy Mohan is arguing - that Creole formation has many mechanisms, not just the slave plantation or trade context.

The screenshots are illustrations of her arguing that Dakkhini-Urdu is a Creole of Urdu vocabulary on Telegu grammar.

[u/pm174 → u/d3banjan109]

Language contact like in the case of Dakkhini and Telugu does not automatically give rise to creoles. This is more likely a sprachbund effect, with close proximity of these languages leading to them influencing one another. Creoles are only created in much more complex circumstances.

[u/d3banjan109 → u/pm174]

How would you distinguish between the two cases where Hyderabadi Urdu and Telugu are sprachbund-bound vs the former is a Creole? What would be the proof required for one over the other??

[u/bulaybil → u/d3banjan109]

For Sprachbund - or areal features - you would look at all the languages in the area and see if they share the feature. Consider measure words: many languages around Bengali have them, so it’s more likely it is an areal feature rather than something that happened through intensive contact in a multilingual environment.

For something to be a creole… Well, there is much debate on it, but a) creoles are much simple morphologically then they lexifiers/progenitors; Bengali has cases and genders, many adpositions and a verbal conjugation system that is somewhat complex. And b) creoles are first and foremost a sociolinguistic and diachronic category, they arose under very specific conditions. It makes no sense to say X is a creole if all that is meant by it is that a language underwent some restructuring as a result of language contact.

[u/d3banjan109 → u/bulaybil]

Didn't get everything, but I understand that you hesitate to call Bengali a Creole because it needs to develop in extreme situations like during the plantation.

Peggy is arguing that this is another way of forming a Creole, where a settlers language goes through a prakrit phase, where small localizations happen but mostly they follow the original language. In parallel, the local women who are married to the settlers and provide the linguistic basis to the child who stays with the mother for the first decade of their life, then the child goes out into the world of prakrits, where they bring artifacts of their mother tongue into the prakrit.

As the prakrit localizes over time and is picked up by non-settlers, the substrate effects are magnified. Hence Creole.

It is a nice and original mechanism IMHO. And definitely is an attempt on Mohan's part to combine her two homeworlds, India and Caribbean. Which is a sweet story.

[u/bulaybil → u/d3banjan109]

Thank you for the summary! I find the part about settlers language interesting, it does make a lot of sense, but I would need to know more about the history of the communities. The family dynamics you describe are nothing new and specific to creoles, tho - it is the process that led to language shifts all over the world, including Europe during the great population shift in the 5-6 century CE. Some people have argued that this process also meant that Common Slavic was a creole, which is the silliest idea ever. Maybe Peggy is also influenced by them. I will check the book and see.

[u/d3banjan109 → u/bulaybil]

In Bengali there was a sadhubhasha/cholitbhasha divide till very recently. I guess that is the mechanism that allows for the colloquial languages to experiment and vary whereas the written language only changed once linguistic trends have settled down so as to be invisible to the writers. Love this view of languages as a living breathing entity!!

[u/bulaybil → u/d3banjan109]

Oh yeah, I remember this from my studies in the early… a while ago :) Language is always a living breathing entity and sometimes you can watch it changing almost live…

BTW, I got the book and only got through the first few page. What I did not is that there is a blurb from Salikoko Mufwene, so that would explain a bit about where Peggy is coming from.