When does poor grammar become evolving language?
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It reminds me of when I lived in St. Vincent in the Caribbean. People just call the local pidgin “Dialect.” I’ve met people who can only speak Dialect and people who are essentially bilingual in Dialect and Standard English, inflected of course with a Vincentian accent. But Dialect is still not considered its own language and is treated like “improper English.” I lived there for over 2 years and still had difficulty understanding people. One specific example I can think of in English evolving into its own Caribbean language would be syntax of people saying, “Those people.”
In Dialect people there say, “De peoplo dem.”
I had a friend who told me of people learning “Proper English” saying, “The people them.”
I’m not a linguist, but I wish I had studied Linguistics because I find the evolution of languages like that fascinating.
*Please note* I am only speaking from my experiences living in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I know there are numerous English pidgins like those in Jamaica and Belize as well as Singlish in Singapore, all equally fascinating to me.
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