The Creole Debate

A compelling argument for why creoles are their own unique entity, which have developed independently of other processes of language development and change.

Creole specialists have long argued that it is wrong to think of creoles as anything but language blends, in the same way that Yiddish is a blend of German, Hebrew and Slavic. This book debunks this idea, and presents the compelling argument that creoles are in fact among the world's only genuinely new languages.Creoles have long been the subject of debate in linguistics, with many conflicting views, both on how they are formed, and what their political and linguistic status should be. Indeed, over the past twenty years, some creole specialists have argued that it has been wrong to think of creoles as anything but language blends in the same way that Yiddish is a blend of German and Hebrew and Slavic. Here, John H. McWhorter debunks the most widely accepted idea that creoles are created in the same way as 'children', taking characteristics from both 'parent' languages, and its underlying assumption that all historical and biological processes are the same. Instead, the facts support the original, and more interesting, argument that creoles are their own unique entity and are among the world's only genuinely new languages.