Quotes & Sayings About Creoles

Creoles tend to express variations in time by having a string of helping verbs rather than by having complicated word formation rules. In other words, they are more like English in this respect than like a language such as Italian:
English: I thought she might have been sleeping.
Italian: Pensavo che dormisse.
The idea of potential (in the English "might"), completed or whole action (in the English "have"), and stretched-out activity (in the English "been") that go with "sleeping" are all expressed in the ending on the Italian verb dormisse. (Dorm is the root for "sleep"; isse is the ending that carries all the meaning about the time frame.) — Donna Jo Napoli

Going from Army base to base as a kid taught me to be a man of all nations. I'd go to the Jewish people and say, 'Shalom, brother.' I go to the Muslim people and say, 'Salaam aleikum.'I go to the Chinese people and say, 'Nee hao mah,' which means, 'How you doin'?' I go to the Japanese people and say, 'Konnichiwa.' I go to San Antonio, Texas, and I get along with Mexicans. Then I go to Louisiana and hang with the Creoles. Moving around a lot made me a man of all people. — Shaquille O'Neal

Centers of trade and colonialism - which tend to develop near large bodies of water for reasons both obvious and occulted - tend toward the polylingual and toward the development of pidgins (generally "simple" languages that develop when adults lack a common language with which to communicate) and, later, creoles (stable languages that evolve from intergenerational transmission of pidgins). — Greg Stolze