Talk:Languages of Australia

Pidgins and creoles

I would be interested in others' opinions on whether the modified English spoken by post-WWII European migrants constitutes a creole.

My parents came from [then] Yugoslavia and lived in a market gardening community where most interactions were with other Serbo-Croatian speakers. That community's uptake of English was therefore quite slow, until radio and tv and kids who were effectively bilingual made an impact. Talking to folks from other backgrounds - mainly Italians but also Greeks and more recent Middle Eastern migrants - there seems to be a fairly similar mix of scrappy English, particular pronunciation and grammar, and lots of hand gestures. Although I think it was barely intelligible at times to Anglo-Australians [who seemed to have trouble with anything other than standard English] it was reasonably intelligible between migrants from different countries. Now my parents have been here for more than 50 years and can carry on a reasonable conversation but still have the same grammar, so its got more English words but is otherwise still not English.

I have hear this referred to as 'Woglish' and it has been affectionately parodied by the Wogs out of World folk, and [much less funny to me] Mark Mitchell as Con the Fruiterer. Although its disappearing [I think as the local more recent Middle Eastern, Asian and African migrants seem to be working a different sort of way] it is a strong part of my upbringing and many other people's memories.

I look forward to hearing what other folk think [[[Special:Contributions/60.242.50.195|60.242.50.195]] (talk) 09:26, 4 December 2008 (UTC)]

Comment moved from article

This edit was improperly made to the article. However, it may be worth referring to the link provided by the editor in case his or her challenge is valid. (I haven't checked it yet so I'm not sure)That link is here. --AussieLegend (talk) 18:19, 10 January 2009 (UTC)