Australian Kriol

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Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-03-13, 22:36

This is another English-based creole spoken in Australia, specifically in the Northern Territory. (It seems to be pretty stigmatized within Australia, from what little I can tell). I'm interested in this creole because it was instrumental in the development of Gurindji Kriol and (to a lesser extent, I think) Light Warlpiri, both of which are mixed languages, and so I intend to use it as a means to slowly make my way into at least starting to learn one or two Australian languages.

There's a pretty (short but) useful-looking resource here. I think everything I learn about it will be limited to that for now, until I find other resources that are useful for learning this particular creole. :P

księżycowy

Re: Australian Kriol

Postby księżycowy » 2014-03-14, 21:09

One of the Creole languages I'm interested in learning! :D

There was a textbook laying around the internet. I'll see if I can find it again.

EDIT: Here it is: http://www.ausil.org.au/node/3718
Plenty of Kriol resources. (As well as stuff for other Aussie languages.)

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-03-15, 21:53

That's great, księżyc! Thanks! :D And if you're interested in it, then maybe we can even learn Kriol together. :P

księżycowy

Re: Australian Kriol

Postby księżycowy » 2014-03-16, 9:51

No, no, no. :nope: :nope: :nope:
I just added Japanese when I shouldn't have, I can't handle anymore at the moment! :lol:

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby Lauren » 2014-03-16, 21:03

This is a very interesting creole. I'd love to hear some if anyone knows of any recordings anywhere online.
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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-03-17, 3:32

księżycowy wrote:No, no, no. :nope: :nope: :nope:
I just added Japanese when I shouldn't have, I can't handle anymore at the moment! :lol:

Aw, man! OK then, I guess I'll just have to learn it on my own until you're ready. :lol:

Lowena wrote:This is a very interesting creole. I'd love to hear some if anyone knows of any recordings anywhere online.

There seem to be lots of videos on YouTube of people supposedly speaking Australian Kriol, and I say "supposedly" only because (since I'm no expert on creoles) I'm not sure how "deep" (basilectal) the language is in those videos. All I can say is that in many of these videos, it really doesn't sound like the person is speaking English (but who knows? Maybe that's just a more authentic version of Australian Aboriginal English).

Anyway, I did a quick search and found a few example videos. Of those that I found, this one, where Brian Daniels explains in Kriol how to make and use spears, sounds the least like English to me (with the exception of the first minute and a half or so, of course, which is clearly just an introduction in English):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UlYCRfwhPQ

italklibrary's YouTube channel also has a few videos in both Kriol and English along with a few of the indigenous languages.

I also found this video entitled "Renting in Community," also available in English (if you're interested in attempting/making any comparisons):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydpuHigS47w

Finally, this is actually the first such video I have ever seen (I had seen a bit of it before, too). Most of this appears to be a mixture of English and Kriol, so I'm very tentatively proposing this as an illustration of how the distinction between English and Kriol may not be very clear-cut:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9QcSc47Rw

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby Lauren » 2014-03-17, 4:29

Sounds cool. IN the first two videos, there's a warning at the start saying some people in the video may be/are deceased. Is it taboo to see deceased people in videos or something like that?

If I learned an English-based creole it'd probably be Jamaican Patois or Tok Pisin, but I do find Australian Aboriginal languages in general quite interesting, so it's cool to read about the features of Australian Kriol that come from different aboriginal languages.
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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-03-17, 5:02

Well, I'm glad you liked it then! :D

Lowena wrote:IN the first two videos, there's a warning at the start saying some people in the video may be/are deceased. Is it taboo to see deceased people in videos or something like that?

I honestly didn't know, so I (again, quickly) looked it up, and I'm pretty sure the answer is "yes." From here:

In Australia, government, broadcasters and filmmakers have all taken steps to sensitize reporters and producers on cultural protocols relating to coverage of deaths of Aboriginal people. Amongst Aboriginal societies, grieving traditions strictly prohibit the use of the name of a deceased person (customs vary from region to region, but amongst some groups, this may last for as long as 15 years). Ignoring protocols can cause can cause immense grief and sorrow for the bereaved family.

In 2008, the Australian government encouraged the media to respect local grieving protocols when reporting Aboriginal deaths, issuing the following advice:

    When a well-known individual passes away, the local community or media group may issue instructions on how the name, voice or images of this person can be used.
    If names or images are to be used, written permission should be obtained from the person’s family and/or community. When contacting the community, care should be taken to avoid using the person’s name. The context in which the request is made should make it clear who is being referred to.
    If permission is granted, it is usually restricted to the particular media outlet that applied for it — it does not mean that other media agencies can publish the name or image without seeking permission.

Australia’s public broadcaster, ABC, went a step further, developing comprehensive guidelines instructing its journalists and documentary makers. The policy advises journalists that using images and voices of long-dead people – such as archival footage and photographs – may cause distress. Now, at the beginning of ABC programs, and on its website, this caution appears:

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that the following program may contain images and voices of deceased persons.

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-04-09, 21:42

OK, now I'm going to try to actually start learning this language using the link in my first post. :P The phonological system looks pretty straightforward to me and is very similar to many indigenous Australian languages. The palatal stop [c] (represented in the orthography as <j>, which I find a bit misleading, since it's never voiced) is in free variation with the sibilants ([s] and [ʃ]), and that's pretty much just like Tamil.

So I guess we'll move on to the personal pronouns. Some varieties of Kriol distinguish between subject and object pronouns (I believe Australian languages generally are nominative-accusative as far as the pronominal system is concerned, if that makes any sense) whereas others don't. For example, in Roper River Kriol, the word for both 'I' and 'me' is mi, but other varieties have ai for the subject pronoun (nominative case) in addition to mi for object/accusative case and possibly also the possessive form. In fact, this is even subject to intra-speaker variation, which suggests that the same speaker may sometimes distinguish and sometimes not distinguish between subjects and objects in the pronominal system.

Apparently, the term for 'you and me' (and 'your(s) and my/mine') is yunmi, but it means 'you and I' (i.e. is a subject pronoun) only ("only" :P) in the Roper River, Westside, and Barunga varieties. In the Kimberley variety, it's minyu instead. :twisted: And then the acrolectal form is wi, just for 1PL in general. :P Leaving the acrolect aside (insomuch as it makes sense to do so), 'some other person (i.e. not you) and I/me' (and the possessive form of that) is min(du)bala (from "me and two fella" or something, ultimately?).

Ohh, but note that in Kimberley, apart from yunmi for 'you and me' (object form), the object pronoun is as.

Then the first plural inclusive pronoun is minolabat (so, that means 'me, you, and at least one other person'). I'm guessing that comes from something like "me and all about" (compare the use of ol as a plural marker/pluralizer/whatever in Tok Pisin). Apparently, it's only used as a subject pronoun in the Barunga variety, though. In Kimberley, it's wilat. But then what about the other varieties? :? As is also used as an independent pronoun and adnominal(?) possessive as an alternative to minolabat, I guess (and not just in Kimberley, either).

First person exclusive ('at least two other people and me, but not you') is mibala (does Tok Pisin also have a form mipela?) and melabat. I can't really tell where that last form might have come from; like, I can't even venture much of a guess, except that perhaps it's some modified form of the inclusive minolabat.

And now we move on to second person pronouns ('you'). There are no special acrolectal forms for the second person pronouns. The singular form is just yu, except that in the Kimberley variety (maybe I should say varieties instead of variety, because I'm not sure each of these corresponds to only one variety), there's also a possessive form yus (so, basically, you + 's, I think). "(Belonging to) both of you" is yundubala. The plural form is the one that's the most interesting to me, because Barunga and Kimberley just have yubala, but Roper River and Westside have yumob! :lol: (OK, so that's probably not all that weird for a creole, but still, it just sounds kinda funny to me. :P).

For third person singular, it looks like all varieties have im in all contexts basically, but it can alternate with i in nominative case/subject position, where there's also the acrolectal form hi (can that mean 'she' or 'it' as well as 'he'? :o) and the Kimberley variety/ies also has/have the possessive form is. '(Belonging to) the two of them' is just dubala. 'Three or more of them' is olabat, but as an independent pronoun or in object position, there's also dem. Kimberley also has a possessive form deya and a subject OR object form ol, and finally, there's an acrolectal form for the subject pronoun: dei.

Finally, in Roper River, the reflexive pronoun is mijelp, and the reciprocal pronoun is gija (is that from a Pama-Nyungan language?). However, in Westside, mijelp is used for both functions, and in Kimberley, jelp is used the same way.

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-06-10, 2:51

OK, before my Internet connection goes out for the night (in a little over 15 minutes), I'm going to try to make a quick post about Australian Kriol. I guess the next set of words I'll need to learn is the demonstratives...but I think I'll talk about that in more detail some other time (presumably the next time I post in this thread!). For now, I'll just mention the second sentence in that link I posted: Wal dijan lilboi gemen imin gedim longwan stik en pukum la jad hol weya jad frog bin stak. (In the link, "dijan lilboi," "jad hol," and "jad frog" are all bolded to show that they're NPs consisting of a demonstrative and a noun. Actually, they don't list jad among the demonstratives (and it's just translated as 'the' both times), but whatever. I guess I'll have to figure that out later. I figure maybe some dialects have jad where others have jet, or something like that. "Gemen" (< gammon) apparently "marks
 the 
proposition
 as
 unreal, 
in
 this
 case
 as
 a
 reported 
dream." The "-in" in "imin" is a past tense marker (I guess from "been"?). Other than that, I don't think there's anything particularly surprising about this sentence, and I think the meaning is pretty clear: "Well, this little boy got a long stick and pushed it down into the hole where the frog was stuck." (Or maybe "...put it into the hole..." That was what I wrote before looking at their translation. I doubt it makes that much of a difference).

I guess that's pretty much all I have to say about this for now. :)

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-07-20, 8:12

Apparently, wan is an indefinite article but not obligatory and may mean something more like 'a certain', and number-marking is optional. On demonstratives, it's marked with a suffix -lot ~ -lat; otherwise, it's marked before the noun with the determiner ola. Adjectives modifying plural nouns are reduplicated, as are some nouns. There's also a collective plural suffix -mob, which may be used with kinship terms, place names, group names, and demonstratives.

Adjectives usually precede the noun but don't have to and often end in -bala and even more often in -wan.

And finally, possessors precede the possessum as in English.

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-07-21, 2:45

There are a number of prepositions in Kriol. To express "location" (broadly defined), there's la, langa, na, nanga. 'From' is burrum in the Roper River variety, just from in Kimberley and for younger speakers in Westside, and brom I guess elsewhere (or in all varieties). There are also prepositions that seem to mean both 'of' and 'for'. Speakers in Kimberley and younger speakers in Westside may use blaganda or fo while the variety in the Katherine region has ba, but the other terms with this meaning are bla(nga) and bo. Finally, I think 'with' is expressed with the forms garram, gat, and garra. When expressing possession, these forms may be used as postpositions instead of prepositions; for example, one example sentence from the Kimberley region is Trisa fo dedi bin kam meaning 'Theresa's father came'.

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-08-26, 2:41

There is not much verb morphology in this creole. A verb may be reduplicated or followed by the following suffixes, in this order:

1. a suffix -im or -i, which goes on most transitive verbs;
2. "adverbial suffixes" that usually indicate direction or something like that (e.g. ap 'up'), and
3. the progressive aspectual suffix -bat.

The transitive suffix can be used in order to make transitive verbs out of intransitive verbs or nouns.

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-11-28, 19:27

However, there's another progressive suffix -in or (~) -ing that only appears on intransitive verbs, after the adverbial suffix (and I'd say this is pretty reminiscent of English, e.g. kaminap sounds like 'coming up', but you wouldn't say *kamapin in this language or *come upping in probably most varieties of English). Verbs can also be reduplicated, in which case they indicate that some action was repeated or took a long time (or kept being done, I guess).

I'm going to skip ahead a bit in the source I'm using and note that all Kriol varieties have some variant of the following two habitual aspect markers: oldei, which can be combined with the past tense marker (bin), and yusda, which never can because it (in the words of the paper) "always has past time reference."

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-08-25, 3:41

Okay, first, to answer my own question:
there's also the acrolectal form hi (can that mean 'she' or 'it' as well as 'he'? :o)

Yes, it can also mean 'she' and possibly also 'it'.

Anyway, this time, I'm just trying to identify features I've pointed out for Australian Kriol in this thread (because I've already identified quite a few!) in some of the videos I posted links to earlier on. I tried listening to the "Literacy and Numeracy" video again, but that just doesn't give me enough material to work with IMO. Also, I'm coming to think maybe that one is actually Torres Strait Creole, not the Kriol spoken by most Australian Aborigines, but I could be totally wrong there. Anyway, I listened to the one about spears, and I noticed that Brian Daniels in that video used the word melabat a lot. I searched for that word in my earlier posts, and sure enough, there it was: it's a first person exclusive pronoun, so he's talking about what "we" would do at least back in the day. Also, in both that and a video on italklibrary called "Be Crocwise" (the Kriol version), I hear la a lot because that's a commonly used preposition.

Listening to these two clips side by side also helps me identify some of the common features of Kriol like the use of -bat as a progressive marker, emphatic na, /s/ being replaced by a palatal stop, and ebritaim or oltaim or whatever (OK, I guess I know less about that particular feature, but still). I also hear something like yowai that I guess means either 'yeah' or 'you know':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIkRHqWVEuw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW6nx5Men7U

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-08-07, 18:02

I think I'm finally ready to start making lists to help myself learn some actual words in this language. Here's some lists of pronouns organized separately for each variety of Kriol I have data for from that one link I provided at the very beginning of this thread! :P That would be the varieties of Roper River, Westside, Barunga, and Kimberley, along with a few acrolectal forms.

In Roper River Kriol, it seems as if there is no distinction between subject, object, independent, and adnominal possessive personal pronouns except in third person and 1SG:

I = mi
me = mi
my = main or mi
1DU.INCL = yunmi
1DU.EXCL = mi(ndu)bala
1PL.INCL = mibala
1PL.EXCL = mibala or mela(bat)
2SG = yu
2DU = yundubala
2PL = yumob
he/she/it = im, i
him/his/her/it(s) = im
3DU = dubala
they (more than two) = olabat
them, their (more than two) = olabat or dem
REFL = mijelp
each other = gija

This seems to be the case in Westside Kriol, too, though with one more distinction:

I = ai
me = mi
my = main or mi
1DU.INCL = yunmi
1DU.EXCL = mi(ndu)bala
1PL.INCL(?) = mibala
1PL.EXCL = mibala or mela(bat)
2SG = yu
2DU = yundubala
2PL = yumob
he/she/it = im, i
him/his/her/it(s) = im
3DU = dubala
they (more than two) = olabat
them, their (more than two) = olabat or dem
REFL = mijelp
each other = mijelp

In Barunga Kriol, there is also a clear inclusive/exclusive distinction not present in Roper River or Westside:

I = ai
me = mi
my = main or mi
1DU.INCL = yunmi
1DU.EXCL = mi(ndu)bala
1PL.INCL = minolabat
1PL.EXCL = mibala or mela(bat)
2SG = yu
2DU = yundubala
2PL = yubala
he/she/it = im, i
him/his/her/it(s) = im
3DU = dubala
they (more than two) = olabat
them, their (more than two) = olabat or dem
REFL = mijelp
each other = apparently either mijelp or gija (but they're not completely interchangeable. I haven't learned the rules for using one or the other yet)

Kimberley Kriol is pretty different from all of these:
I = ai
me = mi
my = mai
you and I = minyu
you and me/your(s) and mi(ne) = yunmi
somebody else and I = mi(ndu)bala
somebody else and me (object) = as
somebody else and me (independent pronoun)/somebody else's and my = mi(ndu)bala
you, somebody else, and I = wilat
you(r(s)), somebody else('s), and me/my/mine = as
two people besides you + I = mibala or mela(bat)
two people besides you + me (object) = as
two people besides you + me (independent)/two people besides you's and mine = mibala or mela(bat)
you (SG) = yu
your(s) (SG) = yus
2DU = yundubala
he/she/it = im, i
him/her/it = im
his/her/its = is
3DU = dubala
they (more than two) = ol
them (more than two, object) = ol
them (more than two, independent)? = olabat or dem
their (more than two) = deya
REFL = jelp
each other = jelp

There are also the following acrolectal forms:
1. wi
2. hi
3. dei, which is not dual but plural

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-03-25, 15:03

I just thought I'd add in a couple of new words this time that I found in that PDF file I've been working off of and that I just noticed. One is modiga 'car', which doesn't appear to be limited to a particular dialect, and another is singat for 'call'. It might also be worth the effort to try to memorize the sentence in Roper River Kriol wanbala frog bin singat-singat bla elb.

car = modiga
call = singat
[Roper River Kriol] A frog kept calling for help. = Wanbala frog bin singat-singat bla elb.

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby aaakknu » 2017-08-11, 20:54

vijayjohn wrote:This is another English-based creole spoken in Australia, specifically in the Northern Territory.

Is it the lingua franca of the region (at least among aborigenes)? How many people speak it? Are there Kriol speakers that do not know English?
Здайся на Господа у твоїх справах, і задуми твої здійсняться. (Приповідки 16, 3)
TAC 2019

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-10-17, 4:03

Irusia wrote:Is it the lingua franca of the region (at least among aborigenes)?

It certainly seems to be in some parts of northern Australia.
How many people speak it?

About 30,000
Are there Kriol speakers that do not know English?

I'm sure there must be plenty because a lot of people in the area don't realize that Kriol is not just another form of English and thus aren't taught English or are treated as if they speak a degenerate/bad form of English when in reality, they speak a completely different (and very significant) language.

Here's just a few more words from the very beginning of this PDF file I've been learning words from:

child = pikanini
to know = sabi
belly = binji
to swim = bogi

And the demonstratives:

this (pronoun) = dijan, diswan
this (adjective) = dij, dis
these = dislot, dislat
here = hiya
this way = dijei
that (pronoun) = tharran, jarran, jadan
that (adjective) = that, jat, det
those = thatlot, jatlot, jatlat
there = theya, jeya, deya
that way = tharrei

Plus just a few more words:

"unreal" marker (indicating proposition did not take place in real life) = gemen
preposition = la

I included the last one just because I mess it up all the time. :P

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Re: Australian Kriol

Postby cldeans » 2018-01-24, 3:46

This is an old thread, but just to add a little bit of context...

Irusia wrote:
Is it the lingua franca of the region (at least among aborigenes)?


Yes, among indigenous people from different nations, who do not speak the same language and wish to convers; and among those of the stolen generation who do not know their heritage language; and among those who have grown up not speaking and learning their heritage language.

Are there Kriol speakers that do not know English?


Historically, Kriol evolved by indigenous people speaking what broken English they had learned. Over time, as with all creoles, it has developed into a language in its own right, now recognised and used as the lingua franca in some schools. There has been the stigma of "this is just bad English" attitude, but work done by a number of organisations has done a lot to improve the acceptance of Kriol as a real language.

So.. are their Kriol speakers that do not know English?... well, most children learn English at school, but outside of the school environment I don't think it is used regularly. As you can see in this article, there are definitely groups that are fluent/first language in Kriol, not English or even their heritage language.
http://ourlanguages.org.au/we-talk-in-w ... e-mission/
(au) Native; (sgn-AU) C1 (Interpreter)
Building on: (nl) B2 spoken, A1 written
Focussing on: (fr) A1; (sgn-FR) A1
Familiarising myself with: (sgn-NL); (af) & (sgn); (es); (sgn-ES); (el) Koine

REALLY want to learn: (is) & (sgn); Walpiri & (sgn)
Probably should learn: (sgn-US); (ar) & (sgn); (zh) & (sgn-CN); (hi) & (sgn); (ru) & (sgn-RU)


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