Early forms of Aboriginal
English in South Australia, 1840s - 1920s
Foster, Robert, Paul Monaghan
and Peter Muhlhausler
Pl 538
In recent years pidgin languages
have begun to lose the tag that has dogged them in the past
of being bastard or corrupt languages. Arising mainly as reduced
languages for intercultural communication in contexts ranging
from trade to outright colonisation, they have often been
viewed by their users as inferior to the 'full' or 'pure'
languages of their respective cultures. As one writer put
it in 1939: 'In whatever country we find Pidgin English it
is still an inferior growth, or development from originally
pure words or sentences of some language or other'. These
days pidgins are increasingly recognised for the insights
they provide into the dynamic processes of intercultural communication
and the nature of human communication in general. They are
particularly useful for tracing the ways languages change
and develop in response to changing sociohistorical circumstances.
By compiling a dictionary of one such language, South Australian
Pidgin English, spoken primarily between Aborigines and Europeans
in South Australia in the 19th and 20th centuries, we hope
to continue this trend, as well as to provide an invaluable
resource for those engaging with historical and literary texts
that in the past have often proved difficult to those not
trained in pidgin linguistics. The dictionary is also intended
for contemporary speakers of Nunga English - a variety of
Aboriginal English spoken in the Adelaide metropolitan and
neighbouring country regions - who are interested in the historical
origins of some of the forms they currently use in their day-to-day
communication.
2003
ISBN 0 85883 463 4
xxxii + 102 pp
Prices: Australia A$39.60 (inc. GST), Overseas
A$36.00
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