pidgin

Derek Bickerton (1926-2018), the insular linguist, and his work

by
erard 190.jpg 1

Derek Bickerton was a world-famous linguist and author. He died in 2018, at the age of 91 years. He has written scholarly books about creole languages, human evolution, the brain, but also poetry and novels. Ten years before he died, he had written a kind of intellectual biography focusing on his research on creole languages and pidgins which he had called Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages. These (according to the public, not according to him or me) lowliest languages are pidgins and creoles.

When this book came out in 2008, published when he was 81 years old, I did not get to read it. For one thing, there … ↪

Mbessa: The Cameroonian language that refused to be swallowed by Kom

by
Africa Map Cameroon
Mbessa (Mbesa) is a kingdom of over 25,000 people in the Anglophone Northwest Region of Cameroon. Mbessa, like the hundreds of other kingdoms in the grassfields of the Northwest Region, is actually called a Fondom and it is headed by a powerful traditional authority called the Fon, and specifically called Foyn in the Mbessa language. It should therefore be understood that Fondom equals kingdom while Fon or Foyn equals king.

The kingdom of Mbessa was founded in the 18th century (circa 1772) by an exiled Nkar man called Tfukenu and a self-exiled Oku prince called Nsuung Nyiete (Mala 2013). Geographically, Mbessa is located between Akeh, Din, Kom and Oku, all of which are neighbouring Fondoms.

Mbessa is found in a

… ↪

How does Lingua Franca induce loneliness? Thoughts upon reading Nolan’s 2020 “The Elusive Case of Lingua Franca”

by
340px Linguafranca

How would it be if people of all nations spoke but one language? If the world had a universal tongue so that all people, regardless of their mother tongues, their cultures, and their religions, could easily and readily communicate? And what if it took very little effort to learn this language? A code where all language borders dissolve, and the world is without misunderstanding: a true lingua franca, no less.

This dream is not a new one. As Umberto Eco for instance has eloquently shown in his book “The Search for the Perfect Language”, the romantic notion of a universal language has been around for millennia, and it was highly popular in Europe throughout Renaissance and then Enlightenment. In the … ↪

COVIDictionary. Your go-to dictionary in times of Coronavirus and COVID-19

by
corona tegning til signe

Lingoblog.dk goes viral! Ideas worth spreading! Please send this link: https://www.lingoblog.dk/en/covidictionary-your-go-to-dictionary-in-times-of-coronavirus-and-covid-19/ to all your isolated friends, relatives and colleagues who can be uplifted by some COVID-19 humor.

by Peter Bakker and Joshua Nash

COVIDictionary 20: your go-to dictionary in times of Coronavirus and COVID-19

© Peter Bakker and Joshua Nash

COVIDeology:The idea to shut down the world in order to prevent that hospitals shut down.
COVIDiotic:

 

(1)   The process of closing down the world for no real and apparent reason.

(2)   The process of opening up the world for no real and apparent reason after a lockdown.

(3)   The process of taking no measures for no real and apparent reason.

COVIDe:The feeling of emptiness during lockdown.
COVIDiosity:
… ↪