American English a Creole language?

I have noticed that American English uses a lot of prepositional verb phrases, like helping somebody out, getting off, passing out, being into something etc. Is this because American English was shaped by a lot of immigrants whose mother tongue was not English and who therefore made the language a bit easier and thereby also Creole? Could it be the many German immigrants in particular, as verbal constructions like these are extremely common in German?

And what about typical American expressions like: "what is this shit?"
Are they relics of a simple English Creole language created by immigrants who had to learn the language of their new homeland as a foreign language? Think, how many native English speakers could there have been in a small Midwestern Prairie town newly settled by Germans, Scandinavians, Dutchmen, Poles etc...

Fredrik, I think most phrasal verbs (such as help out, get off, pass out) are used in American, British, Australian and all other versions of English. Probably the fact that this sort of construction is common in German points to the common ancestry of German and English.

OK, let's hope we can get a British opinion on the subject too!

Is American English a Creole language?

No.

US English is indeed a form of simplified English with many informal if not slang words compared with RP English.

Just one example: In US English = “downtown” is always used; Informal ( into the town) vs the Formal “city centre / town centre” used in every European country, Australia, South America etc.

There are other hundreds of similar popular informal words in US English compared with the Old World languages.

First of all, Fredrik, what you're describing would not be "creole," it would be "pidgin." A "creole" language DEVELOPS from "pidgin" and become something of an institutionalized native tongue, with complex grammar rules. The only true "creole" that ever emerged from the United States was the language of slaves in the American South (only spoken in its true form by a small amount of people today).

Pidgins, on the other hand, spring up almost any time an immigrant group comes in contact with another language. They're either discarded if the group assimilates, or become a creole if the group becomes an important or majority voice in society.

Pidgins = Spanglish, Russenorsk
Creole = Haitian French, Tagalog

<<US English is indeed a form of simplified English with many informal if not slang words compared with RP English.

Just one example: In US English = “downtown” is always used; Informal ( into the town) vs the Formal “city centre / town centre” used in every European country, Australia, South America etc.

There are other hundreds of similar popular informal words in US English compared with the Old World languages.>>

Lexical differences amongst different dialects do not tie in whatsoever to notions of "simplicity" in language, which is not an accurate concept to begin with in describing languages or dialects. I'm afraid your argument makes no sense. As JJM simply stated, (North) American English is not considered a Creole (or a pidgin) language. In studying linguistics I've formally studied some creoles and pidgins and North American English displays few, if any, features that are common to creoles and pidgins the world over. It simply cannot be accurately described that way. End of story.

Re: American English a Creole language?

Kirk pretty much said it all when he wrote: "I've formally studied some creoles and pidgins and North American English displays few, if any, features that are common to creoles and pidgins the world over.


However, let me emphasize that there is never any harm in asking these kinds of questions and perhaps they should be asked. The problem here, though, is that two features commonly associated with creoles (copula deletion and innovations in the tense / aspect system) are not characteristic of American English.

I think of Mexican Spanish too. No linguist or Hispanicist I've read considers it to be a creole. Yet, it is not as close to European Spanish as American English is to British English and has some significant native (Nahuatl) influence as in the use of 'nopal' and 'chango' for cactus and monkey and ...'maaske' in some dialects for "anyhow; nonetheless" (Farfán 1998) .

V. Youssef & W. James wrote a good article on Tobagonian Creole in one of the 1999 issues "Linguistics" . Two examples they give that are fairly typical of English Creoles in general, I think, are:

He hair well cut. It look good.
"His hair is well cut. It looks good.

She carry she lunch today.
"She is carrying her lunch today'

>>>Just one example: In US English = “downtown” is always used; Informal ( into the town) vs the Formal “city centre / town centre” used in every European country, Australia, South America etc. <<<

Curious thing ...why downtown ? it doesn't make any sense for a city !

<<However, let me emphasize that there is never any harm in asking these kinds of questions and perhaps they should be asked. The problem here, though, is that two features commonly associated with creoles (copula deletion and innovations in the tense / aspect system) are not characteristic of American English.

I think of Mexican Spanish too. No linguist or Hispanicist I've read considers it to be a creole. Yet, it is not as close to European Spanish as American English is to British English and has some significant native (Nahuatl) influence as in the use of 'nopal' and 'chango' for cactus and monkey and ...'maaske' in some dialects for "anyhow; nonetheless" (Farfán 1998) .>>

Yes, but to be considered a creole or pidgin, *much* more has to be happeneing on many deepr linguistic levels (syntax, phonology, morphology, etc., are majorly affected) than the superficial acquisition of lexical borrowings (even if it's a lot) from another language. Mexican Spanish is a variation within the worldwide bundle of Spanish varieties, of course, but it does not fit the description of a creole or pidgin in any significant way. Here's a good introductory article to Spanish creoles for anyone who's interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Creole

If you scroll down this article you can see some English creoles listed as well as creoles based off of other languages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language#English_Creoles

<<>>>Just one example: In US English = “downtown” is always used; Informal ( into the town) vs the Formal “city centre / town centre” used in every European country, Australia, South America etc. <<<

Curious thing ...why downtown ? it doesn't make any sense for a city !>>

That's pretty subjective. It makes perfect sense to the people who use it.

American English isn't a creole language, there may be much influence from other languages. But to be a creole language , it would have to be much different from other English dialects to be non-understood...

British , Australian , South Africans can understand Americans because they speak the same language.

For example, Haitian Creole is a creole language.

French:
Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits. Ils sont doués de raison et de conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres dans un esprit de fraternité.

Haitian version of this text:

Tout moun fèt lib, egal ego pou diyite kou wè dwa. Nou gen la rezon ak la konsyans epi nou fèt pou nou aji youn ak lot ak yon lespri fwatènite.

from here:
http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/hat.htm

“That's pretty subjective. It makes perfect sense to the people who use it”

A language is not subjective or objective is either Formal or Informal …Slang or Literal.

“Downtown” City… makes more sense only to those accustomed with this slang. Word used only in American English…

I am not trying to say that slang/informal words don’t make sense, but highlight the informality/casualness/slang of American English…

Fredrik, on one hand American English most definitely is not a creole simply because it lacks the great amount of analyticity and grammatical simplicity that is generally characteristic of creole languages, and while some might call it "simplified", they're obviously missing very significant amounts of (often unnoticed) complexity underneath the surface which comes with things like cliticization (including things like stem changes in certain words when combined with certain clitics), grammaticalization and analogy, and so on.

However, though, the effect of various other Germanic languages on the *pronunciation* of English in various NAE dialects in the Upper Midwest are another story unto itself. This is most noticable in the case of the "Old Northwest" dialect of Minnesota and North Dakota, even though it does seem to have possibly also affected pronunciation here in southeastern Wisconsin as well, for a number of reasons. Also, there seems to be some loanwords and loan-usages here, such as "ja" (pronounce as in German) and the use of "by" to mean "at" (as in "He works over by that store", or "She's by their house at the moment").

This reminds me of an impression that someone, who I think was from Indiana, that I ran into in a coffee shop yesterday did of the dialect here, in which to me most vowels seemed dragged out, all monophthong phonemes were kept purely monophthongal, all back vowels were tightly rounded, most voiceless stops seemed very strongly marked, and also [D] and [T] seemed to be completely absent, in addition to the word "ja" notably being said very frequently. The individual seemed to almost being doing an impression of a non-native accent, such as that of someone whose native language was some Germanic language other than English. Of course, the main thing is that that was just an exaggeration of what the given individual's impression of the dialect here was, so it does indicate from their point of view, the dialect here uses relatively longer vowels, of which monophthong phonemes are more purely monophthongal, and rounded vowels are more rounded, unvoiced stops are more strongly enunciated, and in which to them interdentals seem to be avoided. Such could very well be chalked up to being due to some degree out of outside influence, even though I really cannot say anything for certain here.

<<A language is not subjective or objective is either Formal or Informal …Slang or Literal.>>

I said nothing about languages being subjective or objective. I was referring to your comment :)

<<“Downtown” City… makes more sense only to those accustomed with this slang. Word used only in American English…>>

The word is used thruout North American English (including Canada). Also, it doesn't matter if it's used by 400 people or by 400 million--it's still valid if it's used by native speakers. Webster defines "slang" as:

--an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed typically of coinages, arbitrarily changed words, and extravagant, forced, or facetious figures of speech--

The word "downtown" in North American English fits none of that. It is not a "slang" word.

<<I am not trying to say that slang/informal words don’t make sense, but highlight the informality/casualness/slang of American English…>>

But in so doing you're kind of using circular logic. Lexical differences amongst different dialects don't mean that one variety uses "slang" while another doesn't. All dialects and varieties of all human languages have various degrees of slang as well as more commonly accepted "standard" words. Dismissing a certain variety of any language as "informal" or "slang" (when clearly all language varieties have such features) logically doesn't make sense and isn't supported by linguistic fact.

Kirk, well, Enzo, from the posts by him which I've seen in the past, is an idiot who seems to view Received Pronunciation as "standard" for all of English, and North American English as simply a set of "nonstandard variants" which are "incorrect" (as to him only Received Pronunciation is "correct"). Hence, I really wouldn't take him seriously on this given subject whatsoever.