Філологічні науки/ 7

Язык, речь, речевая коммуникация

Ann A. Kotok

Donbas State Technical University

Modifying English

Nowadays global influence of English is growing day by day. English influences different languages but at the same time English is being modified by

local languages of those countries which it penetrates to. As a result many new languages may appear as makeshift languages that arise when people who have no common language come into contact with each other. We call them pidgin languages. But what tendencies of the language development should we expect in few years? There is an opinion that English will dissolve in sublanguages as Latin evolved into French, Spanish and Italian, while German, Holland and English arose from Germanic dialects. But there is a hope that films, mass media, magazines, discs, business contacts and tourism will rest as the vigorous linking elements and will not let English break up. And it is evident that vice versa new world language will appear from Danglish, Swenglish, Spanglish, Chinglish and other ill-assorted pidgins. In the meanwhile English sets the pace: Spaniards have a “flirt”, Austrians eat “Big Macs”, Japanese people set off on “pikunikku” and Ukrainian nation got used to “supermarkets”, “offices” and even to “killers”. Frequently some lexical borrowings fix new notions as “fax”, “Internet”, “mobile phone” and it is the essential way of language development. It is not a chance that when Peter I travelled in Europe while building Russian fleet nearly 80 % of naval vocabulary came from Holland. It should be specially stressed that such words as “president”, “parliament”, “electorate”, “impeachment’ have no Ukrainian equivalents.

The question of the use of one of the most well-known pidgins – Chinese Pidgin English – is raised in the article. Historically it was a modified form of English developed in the 17th century for use as a trade language or lingua franca between the British and the Chinese. Chinese Pidgin got its start in Guangzhou (Canton), China, after the British established their first trading post there in 1664. Because the British found Chinese an extremely difficult language to learn and because the Chinese held the English in low esteem and therefore disdained to learn their language, Pidgin English was developed by the English and adapted by the Chinese for business purposes. Originally used to describe Chinese Pidgin English, it was later generalized to refer to any pidgin. It continued in use until about the end of the 19th century, when Pidgin came to be looked upon by the Chinese as humiliating (because English speakers considered it ridiculous) and so preferred to learn standard English instead.

In reality Chinese Pidgin English is based on a vocabulary of about 700 English words, with a small number of words from other sources. Its grammar and syntax are simple and positional, that is, grammatical categories are indicated by the position of words in the sentence rather than by inflectional endings, prepositions. Typical sentences in Chinese Pidgin are:

‘Hab gat lening kum daun’ (‘Have got raining come down’) “There is rain coming down”;

‘Tumolo mai no kan kum’ (‘Tomorrow my no can come’) “Tomorrow I can't come”;

‘Mai no hab kachi basket’ (‘My no have catch basket’) “I didn't bring a basket.”

There is no doubt that the word ‘pidgin’ itself is believed to have been a Chinese pronunciation of the English word ‘business’. Pidgin may also be used as the specific name for a local pidgin in places where they are spoken. For example, the name of Tok Pisin derives from the English words ‘talk pidgin’, and its speakers usually refer to it simply as "Pidgin" when speaking English. It shouldn’t be debated that there have been many forms of Pidgin English, often with common elements because of the wide range of contacts made by commercial shipping.

It should be mentioned that because of their limited function, pidgin languages usually do not last very long, rarely more than several decades. All in all they disappear when the reason for communication diminishes, as communities either move apart, one community learns the language of the other or both communities learn a common language (usually the official language of the country). For instance, the pidgin Russian spoken in Manchuria disappeared when Russian settlers left China after World War II. The same is true of pidgin French which disappeared from Vietnam after the French left the country.

However, this is not always the case. Chinese Pidgin English (Chinglish), developed in the 17th century in Canton, China, survived for three centuries. Its use spread from master-servant relationships to those between English and Chinese traders. It continued in use until about the end of the 19th century, when the Chinese started to learn standard English.

It is necessary to point out that Chinese Pidgin English today is a common term for a variant of English spoken by Chinese immigrants or other persons whose mother language is Chinese but who learned English as a second language. What is more, it is often used as slang for Chinese people in the United States who speak with an accent.

Conducting the parallel between standard English and all its vernacular branches we should conceive the idea of preserving the purity of standards while speaking English. Everything that English absorbs is touching the culture of language and without doubt it is making British indigenous population worry about the increasing influence on English from the outside.

ВІДОМОСТІ ПРО АВТОРА

Коток Анна Олександрівна

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