What language is this: [tun"AfAs'Ese]
sanlo...@yahoo.co.uk
up to me and asked a question sounding like [tun"AfAs'Ese]. I vaguely
mumbled that I didn't understand. He said ['EsINgr"e] and turned away.
[A] = unrounded low front vocoid.
[E] = unrounded mid-low front vocoid.
[I] = unrounded mid-mid-high central-front vocoid.
[N] = voiced nasal velar stop.
["] = following symbol is fully accented vowel
['] = following symbol is lightly accented vowel
I took the second utterance to be "You're English", so presumably the
first utterance was to ask whether I spoke his langauge. The man was
very black, on the short side, and lean in a way that made me think of
the Nile valley. He had a full moustache but no beard.
The obvious guess is that he was a North African who had mistaken me
for an Arab (easy to do with my looks). But to my admittedly feeble
knowledge of Arabic, his utterances were unrecogniseable. I would have
expected _Anti Arabi:?_ or _Tukallam el-Arabiyya?_ in Arabic.
Does anyone have an idea what language he was speaking?
António Marques
Well, it does look somewhat like something derived (long ago) from
portuguese:
1. tu nã[o] fa[las] [...]ês?
you not speak [...]ese?
'Don't you speak [...]ese?'
2. és inglês
'You're english'
It might as well be something derived from spanish, but the spanish word
for 'speak' is not fal- but habl-. By your description he could have
come from Guinea.
Peter T. Daniels
I believe a specific Guinea-Bissau Creole English has been identified.
Could this be a sample?
John Atkinson
> On Nov 19, 7:54 am, Ant�nio Marques <m...@sapo.pt> wrote:
>> sanlosi...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>>> As I was walking through Paddington railway station today, a man came
>>> up to me and asked a question sounding like [tun"AfAs'Ese]. I vaguely
>>> mumbled that I didn't understand. He said ['EsINgr"e] and turned away.
>>> [A] = unrounded low front vocoid.
>>> [E] = unrounded mid-low front vocoid.
>>> [I] = unrounded mid-mid-high central-front vocoid.
>>> [N] = voiced nasal velar stop.
>>> ["] = following symbol is fully accented vowel
>>> ['] = following symbol is lightly accented vowel
>>> I took the second utterance to be "You're English", so presumably the
>>> first utterance was to ask whether I spoke his langauge. The man was
>>> very black, on the short side, and lean in a way that made me think of
>>> the Nile valley. He had a full moustache but no beard.
>>> The obvious guess is that he was a North African who had mistaken me
>>> for an Arab (easy to do with my looks). But to my admittedly feeble
>>> knowledge of Arabic, his utterances were unrecogniseable. I would have
>>> expected _Anti Arabi:?_ or _Tukallam el-Arabiyya?_ in Arabic.
>>> Does anyone have an idea what language he was speaking?
>> Well, it does look somewhat like something derived (long ago) from
>> portuguese:
>>
>> you not speak [...]ese?
>> 'Don't you speak [...]ese?'
>>
>> 'You're english'
>>
>> It might as well be something derived from spanish, but the spanish word
>> for 'speak' is not fal- but habl-. By your description he could have
>> come from Guinea.-
>
> I believe a specific Guinea-Bissau Creole English has been identified.
>
> Could this be a sample?
>
More likely, as others have said, the creole Portuguese of Guinea-Bissou
and southern Senegal, which is spoken by most of the G-B population,
some of whom (maybe 100 000) are monolinguals.
G-B creole doesn't allow words to end in [-s]. And, like many creoles,
it usually omits the copula. And, unlike other Portuguese creoles
further south, it doesn't merge /r/ and /l/. "You're English" would be
"ci INgle" I think. "He's English" or "it's English" would be "i iNgle".
John.