A curious side note - hardly a language or even dialect, really - is the effect that having a large number of immigrants from one country can have on a region's language.<p>For example, in my own eastern Wisconsin, a large part of "Wisconsin-ese" is nothing more than German translated directly into English. So many people settled Eastern Wisconsin from Germany at the same time that their efforts to learn English all had the same mistakes, and became our local "pidgen".<p>For example -<p>- to soften an imperative in German, add "mal" - short for "einmal" (once)
- there is only one word for borrow or lend - "leihen".<p>And so "Leih mir ein dollar mal" is "Could you lend me a dollar?" in English, but,<p>"Borrow me a dollar once"<p>in Wisconsin "accent". Many other small examples of this.
In general, there are 2 ways to classify something as a language instead of a dialect:<p>1. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy [0]<p>2. Easier test is mutual intelligibility – dialects of one language are mutually intelligible – US English speakers chat and understand with the Brits (even when they can hear the extra ‘u’s in colour). Neither US English nor UK English speakers understand or can produce intelligible German.<p>0 - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...</a>
I found this video of a woman reciting the opening to Genesis in Tok Pisin, and it struck me as really interesting. The repetition in the verses is likely what's key to this, but if at first upon hearing it you're bewildered, about halfway through you realize that you can understand what she's saying.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg</a><p>The history behind the language is interesting, too. Interacting with English speakers created a language that unified a geographic area that was rich in individual languages with no common tongue.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin#Development_of_Tok_Pisin" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin#Development_of_Tok_P...</a>
These five languages didn't 'come' or evolve solely from English - rather they are all English-based creoles[0]. Many of them are grammatically quite different to English, but they've all had heavy influences from other languages as well.<p>On the other hand, French, Romanian and Portuguese aren't Latin-based creoles - they're separate languages which have evolved from Latin (although you could make the argument that Portuguese and French are two ends of a dialect continuum[1]).<p>Really, the relationship between Tok Pisin and English is very different to the relationship between French and Latin. English hasn't had the time and geographical spread to diverge into different languages that Latin has had.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_languages" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_languages</a>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Romance_languages" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Romance_lang...</a>
Shelta, is a language spoke by the Irish travellers, came from Irish and English. It is pretty interesting : <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta</a>
How about all computer languages? They're largely subject to grammar constraints (e.g. LR, etc.), but they're quite subject to creolization and almost all the widely used ones are derived from english, nerd slang, slang tech terms, short tech terms, and shit that early programmers made up to express themselves. I've been wanting to do a study on the evolution, understanding, and psychology of programming languages (even wrote a blog post awhile back about it) but i haven't gotten around to it.
Having lived in Papua New Guinea twice while growing up, I have a certain fondness for the language Tok Pisin. I can’t really speak much of it, but I can understand a fair bit.<p>You’ve got to love a language where “gras” means “hair”, “bagarap” means pretty much the same thing if you say it out loud in English, and while expressing how full your tummy is after a good meal you accidentally say you’re pregnant[1].<p>It’s charmingly idiosyncratic to an English ear.<p>And there’s even an edition of Wikipedia in Tok Pisin: <a href="https://tpi.wikipedia.org/" rel="nofollow">https://tpi.wikipedia.org/</a><p>[1] True story. My dad did this and all the locals fell on the ground laughing.<p>[2] Brief blog post I wrote in 2009 which is the source for this comment: <a href="http://www.michevan.id.au/content/wikipedia-really-does-have-page-just-about-everything/" rel="nofollow">http://www.michevan.id.au/content/wikipedia-really-does-have...</a><p>[3] Another blog post about the Vanuatuian cousin, Bislama: <a href="http://www.michevan.id.au/content/by-any-other-name/" rel="nofollow">http://www.michevan.id.au/content/by-any-other-name/</a>
Really neat. Especially the idea that:<p>"English may come to have a global standard that is not exactly what is spoken in any local culture"
As others have mentioned, many of the examples in this article are creoles. A non-creole example of language descended from English (or rather Middle English) is Scots, which has its own dialectical variations that vary in intelligibility with Modern English.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language</a>
Gullah is a neat language. I came across a website that had a Gullah translation of the bible -- at first glance it looks unintelligible, but when you read it out loud it makes complete sense (as a native english speaker):<p><a href="http://www.gullahbible.com/e-GullahNT/index.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.gullahbible.com/e-GullahNT/index.htm</a>
Creoles are fascinating. If we can assume that modern language came about with modern humans some 50,000 years ago, I wonder how many modern languages are creoles of extinct languages?
Take this article with a grain of salt. Their description of Singlish is enough to disqualify the accuracy of the rest of the piece. Singlish is not a unique or separate langauage, or even an actual language. Comparing Singlish to English is no different than comparing Cockney to English. I don't think the different dialects of English within the U.K. are all considered separate languages, and therefore Singlish should not be either. An American English speaker will likely have much better chance of understanding a Singaporean than understanding some of the U.K. dialects.