Similarities between South Pacific, West

African and Caribbean pidgins and creoles

Around the world, there can be found many English-based creole
languages which share several similarities, despite the considerable
geographical distances separating the countries where these languages are
found. These similarities can be seen at all levels of structures, especially in
grammar. This happens because of the way these languages have
developed out of the kind of languages that black slaves used in America
and the Caribbean. However, many distinctions can be drawn between the
various Caribbean creoles, and between these and the varieties of Black
English Vernacular and the English-based creoles of West Africa, although it
is considered that they belong to the same family of languages, which are
closely related in structure and idiom.

South Pacific
Two creole languages that can be found in this region are Tok Pisin
and Bislama. While the former is an official language of Papua New Guinea,
the latter is one of the official languages of Vanuatu, which is located some
1,750 kilometers east of northern Australia. Both languages share the same
origins. The Tok Pisin is a result of Pacific Islanders intermixing, when people
without a common language were sent to work on plantations in Queensland
(Australia) and various islands nearby. In the case of Bislama, in the 1870s
and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders were also sent to
Queensland and Fiji. With many languages in contact, those two pidgins
were formed, among several others. These pidgins have traditionally been
treated as varieties of a single Melanesian Pidgin English or "NeoMelanesian" language.
As it has been said, these languages share some linguistic features,
one of them being the combination of English vocabulary with local
grammatical structures:
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One of the most surprising grammatical features is the existence of

only two prepositions. The first one is long, and the second bilong
(in Tok Pisin) or blong (in Bislama). This one means for or of in
Standard English and the first means everything else.

With regard to verbs, the tense is indicated by separate words like

bin (for past tenses) and bai (in Tok Pisin) or Bambae/Bae (in
Bislama), for future tenses. In the case of Tok Pisin, the word stap is
used for progressive tenses. Besides, most verbs have a suffix (-im)
to indicate transitivity.

The noun does not indicate number. Because of this characteristic,

the word ol is used to indicate plural, which comes from the English
word all. Therefore, the words do not have a plural suffix.

Another shared feature refers to pronouns. In both languages, there

can be found singular, dual, trial and plural personal pronouns.

West Africa (Kamtok Cameroon)

Kamtok is the pidginised English of Cameroon. As well as Tok Pisin and
Bislama, this language works as a lingua franca in the country since at least
1880s. In the particular case of Kamtok, it is difficult to state whether it is a
widely-used pidgin or a creole, because multilingualism is the norm in the
country and the same language can be a mother tongue, a language of
wider communication and a first, second, third, fourth or foreign language.
The development of Kamtok has been influenced by political and
economic interests of different European countries, as in the case of Tok
Pisin and Bislama. This is the reason why different European languages had
an impact in the language, especially in the lexicon. Referring to its origin,
some similarities between Kamtok and South Pacific pidgins are found, as
the first one came into being in the Slave Trade Years (1440 to early 1880s).
Kamtok was necessary for those Baptist missionaries who arrived in
Cameroon in 1845. With the arrival of Germans, the language took flight in
German plantations and undertakings by forced laborers.
Considering vocabulary, there is a strong influence of vernaculars
(especially in the lexical fields of food), as well as the impact of French
(especially in the lexical fields of education, employment and fashion).
With regard to grammar, Kamtok has some similarities with languages
from the South Pacific, but also some differences.
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One of the latter is the inventory of personal pronouns. Kamtok has

an eight-term set of personal pronouns (less than Tok Pisin):

a, mi 'I'

mi 'me'

yu 'you (singular)''
i 'he, she. it'
wi 'we, us'

i, -am 'him, her, it'

una, wuna 'you (plural)'

dem 'they'

dem, -am 'them'

Concerning the plural, it is not usually marked. But, in order to

avoid ambiguity, plurality can be carried by a modifier or by using
the word dem (from the English word them) after the word.
However, recently many plurals have been taken into the language,
such as aidiaz (ideas), chips, machis (matches), pleaz (football
players), sohks (socks) or twinz (twins). Moreover, a few
uncountable nouns have been pluralised, like advaisis (pieces of
advice), johngks (items of junk) or slangz (slang terms).

There are two ways of expressing possession. One of them is

similar to Tok Pisin or Bislama, as it is formed by using a word.
While in Kamtok it is used the word ohv, in Tok Pisin it was the word
bilong. Another form of marking possession is by means of the
Saxon genitive (i. e. an added s or z), as in Standard English.

Another similarity is that the verb is normally not marked for tense
where the time is understood. Besides, auxiliaries are used to
indicate aspect and time. For instance, there can be found the word
bin (as in Tok Pisin) to express past actions.

Caribbean Jamaican Creole

Jamaican Creole is an English-lexified creole language with West
African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora.
The language developed in the 17th century, and it was because of the Slave
Trade (similarly to Tok Pisin, Bislama and Kamtok).
Jamaican pronunciation and vocabulary are significantly different from
English, despite heavy use of English words or derivatives. Moreover,
Jamaican Creole displays similarities to the pidgin and creole languages of
West Africa (like Kamtok), due to their common descent from the blending of
African substrate languages with European languages.
Here, there is a list with those similarities between Jamaican Creole
and West African languages:
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There are no morphological marked past tense forms corresponding

to English ed or t. There are two preverbial particles: en and a.

West African languages generally do not have two consonants

together but alternate them with vowels. This way, some

consonants are dropped (send sen, last laas, Spanish Panish)

and some vowels are added (small sumaal, snake siniek, spoon
supuun).
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For pluralization, the third person plural pronoun is added to the

noun (man + they > man dem, father + they > faada dem).

The existence of serial verbs: carry him + go > kyaa him go.

Although it is not an influence of West African languages, Jamaican

Creole uses the word f to express possession. Remember that in
Tok Pisin it was used the word bilong and in Kamtok ohv.