Talk:Languages of Australia

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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)][reply]