Paper Example. Dialect and Language Varieties

A creole is a language that adopts words of a particular language, but the grammar’s resemblance to the master language is minimal. The Haitian/French Louisiana is predominantly French but of Spanish origin. The Louisiana Creole people have their ancestry from the colonial days of the French in the area. Every language can be described in different domains, and one of them is phonology/phonetics. Phonology is primarily concerned with how speech sounds relate to constitute the critical components of language (Van Herk, 2017). Phonetics looks at the classification of speech sounds (Van Herk, 2017). Phonology and phonetics go hand in hand in any language.

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There are seven oral vowels of the Louisiana Creole and twenty-two distinct consonants (Valdman & Klingler, 1997). The language also incorporates two or three nasal vowels.

Consonants in Louisiana Creole are classified into different speech sounds as follows; plosives, nasal, trill, fricatives, affricates, lateral, and glide (Valdman & Klingler, 1997). This classification depends on how they are pronounced. In this pronunciation, they are sounds and can further be classified as bi-labial, labio-dental, alveolar, palatal, or velar. Depending on which parts of the mouth play a role in making the sound, the phonetic classification is done. For instance, a consonant pronounced by putting the two lips together and allowing air to pass through is a bilabial speech sound (Van Herk, 2017).

Most of the letters are in the alveolar, palatal speech sounds, and nasal phonetics. The alveolar speech sound is made by the tongue close to the ridge behind the teeth or touching the ridge. Alveolars are close to palatals but quite different. As such, much of the language of the Louisiana Creole works around the two speech sounds. It is also good to note that they have about three nasal vowels. This adds to the uniqueness of their nasal phonetics, with four nasal consonants added to the vowels. When any of the vowels appear before a nasal consonant, they are likely to take a nasalized context (Blainey, 2016). More generally, Louisiana Creole tends to come across as a progressively nasalized language (Blainey, 2016). It means that the people using the dialect speak with the free escape of air through the nose in most of their pronunciations.

From the phonetics of the language, it is clear that even though borrows heavily from the French language, it is totally different. The speech sounds of the French consonants and vowels are pretty different from those of Louisiana Creole. Therefore, the language can justifiably be referenced as independent of the French language. Within it are elements of African, Spanish, and Native American languages. It is a language born from the interaction of different groupings, and then morphing together to form a unique one.

References

Blainey, D. (2016). Language contact and contextual nasalization in Louisiana French. Language Variation And Change, 28(1), 63-81. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954394515000216

Valdman, A., & Klingler, T. (1997). The Structure of Louisiana Creole. French And Creole In Louisiana, 109-144. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-5278-6_5

Van Herk, G. (2017). What is sociolinguistics? (2nd ed.). Wiley Blackwell.