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Tây Bồi. Katherine Thornton April 25, 2006 LING 455. Tây bồi is a pidgin based on Vietnamese and French also known as Vietnamese Pidgin French . tây- Vietnamese for “western” bồi is boy – French for “young male servant, or houseboy” Colonial period: 1887-1954.
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Tây Bồi Katherine Thornton April 25, 2006 LING 455
Tây bồi is a pidgin based on Vietnamese and French also known as Vietnamese Pidgin French. • tây- Vietnamese for “western” • bồi is boy – French for “young male servant, or houseboy” • Colonial period: 1887-1954
Work force pidgin or mixed language? • Arguments for pidgin: • Reduced morphology • Reduced number of grammatical markers • French phonology adjusted to Vietnamese phonology. • Lexicon has one source: French. ( but: dominant group) • Tense marking through time words. • No Viet. grammatical morphemes (ex. Comparative) • Arguments for mixed language: • Tones • Morpho-syntax of Vietnamese + vocabulary of French • In-group language (but also used to bridge communication gap) different situations • Textbook says it is uncommon that a Pidgin lexicon come from the dominant language (p.36)
Settings • Plantations: rubber, sugar, etc. • Military • Domestic : employer employee male partner female partner • Commerce
basic word order • Essentially Vietnamese word order but nearly all French words. 1. Mông xừ cúp bêku tô. Monsieur couper couteau. He uses the knife to cut (meat). 2. Ma đàm là bà Vĩnh Long. Madame làbas Vinh-Long. She lives in Vĩnh Long.
word order: time adverbials • In Vietnamese future time expressions begin sentences and past time expressions end them. • In Tây bồi they can go either at the begining or the end. • Moi faire après. I will do it after.
morphology • Verbs are always used in the infinitive and are invariable. • Adjectives are almost always masculine. • Person and number are indicated through the pronouns used. This is similar to the Vietnamese pronomial system. • Nouns are used without articles.
phonological features • Tây bồi phonology is essentially Vietnamese phonology applied to the French lexicon. • French [g] stop is replaced by Viet [g] fricative. • [R] uvular trill is replaced by Viet [r] trill. • French voiced consonants that do not exist in Vietnamese are replaced by their voiceless counterparts. • The high back unrounded Vietnamese vowel ư is the only Vietnamese monophthong not found inTây bồi.
syntactic features • Tây Bồi preserves the Vietnamese use of classifiers (auxiliary nouns) • con is the Vietnamese classifier for animals: Một con gà. One chicken. Hai con gà. Two chickens. • In Tây Bồi: Un con poulet. One chicken. • Time and aspect indicated by adverbs of time. Demain moi bouver thé avec ami. I will have tea with a friend tomorrow.
syntactic features • Lack of conjunctions. • No que • Tây Bồi:Moi beaucoup vieux avec toi. Vietnamese: Tôi nhiều tuổi hơn em. English: I am older than you are. • Note: here the Vietnamese grammatical word hơn is not used to express the comparative, nor is the standard French comparative used.
The Industry of Marrying Europeans • satirical novel by Vũ Trọng Phụng written in 1934. • Vũ Trọng Phụng (1912-1939) of humble background. Died of Tb just before his 27th birthday, but an extremely prolific, much-loved author. • me Tây • used Tây Bồi in his novel.
Excerpt from The Industry of Marrying Europeans A madame speaking to a potential client: “One day, a Monsieur Giăng(Jean) stopped by: “Ki e xen là?” [Who is she/ Qui est celle là?] “Ma ni-ét. Bay-dan, dơn, bô-cu tốt! Toa vù-lòa ê-pu-dê?” [My niece, peasant, young, very good. Want to marry her?/Ma nièce, paysanne jeune, beaucoup good. Toi vouloir épouser?/ Ma nièce, une jeune paysanne très gentille. Tu veux l’épouser?
