Investigating the history of
Pidgin English
Early Highlife recordings from Ghana
Sebastian Schmidt & Magnus Huber
SPCL Accra, 3-6 August 2011
Department of English
University of Giessen
Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10B
D-35394 Giessen, Germany
[email protected], [email protected]
Structure
1. Introduction
- Motivation of study
- Pidgin in Ghana
- Previous studies
2. Highlife in Ghana
- Brief history
- Archives
3. Pidgin in early Ghanaian Highlife
4. Conclusion
- Problems with data
- Outlook
2
1. Introduction
• history of Pidgins/Creoles: mostly sociohistorical
outlines from a macro-sociolinguistic perspective
• fewer detailled investigations of structural evolution
– language specific, e.g. Bruyn (1995)
– cross-linguistic, e.g. Baker (1987)
• based on written texts. Problems:
– most texts only 2nd hand via non-native speakers
– often written down in retrospect
• very few studies based on actual language
recordings: AAE ex-slave, hoodoo recordings
• early recordings of PCs rare. Pilot study: opening
up a new source of historical spoken data
3
Pidgin in Ghana: quick facts
• Pidgin dey!
• GhPE part of West African PC dialect cluster
– used by smaller section of society
– functional domain more restricted
– more stigmatized than in Nigeria, Cameroon
• popular belief:
Pidgin in Ghana not
homegrown but
imported from
Nigeria (cf. e.g.
Amoako 1992: 48)
Previous studies using song lyrics
comparatively few studies, including
• Trudgill (1983)
British pop-song pronunciation
• Kreyer & Mukherjee (2007)
style, corpus-linguistic approach
• Brato & Jansen (2008)
accents in British (indie) rock
• Miethaner (2005)
blues lyrics as historical corpus data
Existing transcripts + author’s additions
• Coester (1998)
Nigerian PE in Fela Kuti’s songs
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2. Highlife in Ghana
• Popular dance music from West Africa
• Term: late 19th century, coined in 1920s
• English speaking West African countries Ghana,
Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone
• African – Western fusion style (cf. Collins 1989:
221)
• Early days: palm-wine / guitar band highlife
• Palm-wine Highlife associated with (Pidgin)
English
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• Dance-band
Highlife
• 1920s:
professional
bands
• Context/
audience:
British and
American
soldiers
• Golden age of Highlife 1950s
• Recordings: London – Accra, Ghana
• Languages: Twi, Ga, Ewe, Hausa, Pidgin, English
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etc.
E.T. Mensah, the King of Highlife
• Emmanuel Tetteh
Mensah (1919-96)
• 1947: Mensah joins
Tempos Band
• 1940s and 50s:
Popularization of
Highlife
• Extensive tours: e.g.
Nigeria, Sierra Leone
• West African Audience
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Highlife Archives
• Archiv für die Musik Afrikas / African Music
Archive. Mainz, Germany (Hauke Dorsch)
• Centre for World Music. Hildesheim, Germany
(Wolfgang Bender)
• GBC Gramophone Library
• Bokoor African Popular
Music Archives Foundation.
Near Accra, Ghana (John
Collins)
• Gramophone Records
Museum and Research
http://www.gbcghana.com/
Centre of Ghana. Cape
gramophone/aboutus.html
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Coast, Ghana (K. Sarpong)
3. Pidgin in early Ghanaian Highlife
• focus on classic Highlife, 1950s/60s
• sociolinguistic distribution StE-PE
• StE in topics from public, political formal sphere:
– Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ghana
King Bruce & Black Beats “The Queen's Visit”
This is the day five million Ghanaians will go gay
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip will be here that
special day
We’ll drink and dance the whole day
And put on kente fine
On that Thursday twelfth November 1959
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• StE in topics in the public sphere (ctd.):
– the achievements of Kwame Nkrumah
E.T. Mensah “Ghana Freedom”
– Pan-Africanism
E.T. Mensah “Ghana, Guinea, Mali”
– inflation
E.T. Mensah “Inflation Calypso”
– socialism
Ramblers Dance Band “Work and Happiness”
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• PE in topics from private, informal sphere:
– love and marriage, marital problems
The Red Spots Band “Coffee and Tea”
I don't want any coffee tea
Coffee tea go hot me belly
I don't want any big mama
Big mama go beat me like that
I don't want any pretty girl
Pretty girl go around chop money
– troubles with children/alcoholism
E.T. Mensah “Day by Day”
• sociolinguistic distribution: PE only used
by male singers
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The structure of 1950s GhPE
• modern GhPE has a reduced TMA system
as compared to other WAPEs
– no past/anterior bin
– no completive/perfective dɔn
• 1950s/60s GhPE: bin, dɔn absent
That time I return back from business
My wife run away (E.T. Mensah “Don’t Mind your Wife”)
• WAPE/Krio na (focus particle, equ. cop)
– marginal to absent from contemporary GhPE
(Huber 1999:235)
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– na not found in 1970’s 3rd Generation Band
“Because of Money” - equative copula = be:
• money be something
• money be nothing
• money be human power
– but found in E.T. Mensah’s “Day by day”
• Na her friend go be na boy o
• If you born pikin na girl
• And the beer them both na take o
(na take them dey take the beer o)
4. Conclusion: Problems and potentials
• problem of teasing Pidgin apart from StE:
– StE-Pidgin continuum
– some structures are the same in StE and PE
– code-switching, borrowing make it difficult to
establish where StE ends and PE begins
I give my money to my wife
For make me chop (x3)
That time I return back from business
My wife run away
Don't mind your wife (x3)
You can get more chop from bar
• for phonological analyses
– quality of records, overlap music/chorus
biography of singers Æ which variety of Pidgin?
dates of composition, recording, publication
discography Æ recordings in Ghana or abroad?
influence of other varieties: SLKrio, NigPE, etc.
not spontaneous speech but written to be sung,
restricted by rhyme and metre
• lyrics = short texts, not large corpus
Potentials and outlook
• acoustic, phonological analyses also possible
• more songs?
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References
Amoako, Joe K.Y.N. 1992. "Ghanaian Pidgin English: in search of
synchronic, diachronic, and sociolinguistic evidence". Unpublished
PhD dissertation, University of Florida at Gainsville.
Baker, Philip. 1987. “Historical developments in Chinese Pidgin English
and the nature of the relationships between the various Pidgin
Englishes of the Pacific region”. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 2: 163-207.
Brato, Thorsten & Sandra Jansen. 2008. “‘You used to gerri’ in yer
fishnets, now you only gerri’ in yer nightdress’: Regional and
supraregional accents in English rock songs”. Presentation at The
Thirteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology.
Leeds, 04. August 2008.
Bruyn, Adrienne. 1995. Grammaticalization in creoles: the development
of determiners and relative clauses in Sranan. Amsterdam: Institute
for Functional Research into Language and Language Research.
Coester, Markus. 1998. “Language as a product of cultural contact”.
ntama. Journal of African Music and Popular Culture. www.uni17
hildesheim.de/ntama (2011-07-31).
References
Collins, John. 1986. E.T. Mensah: King of Highlife. London: Off the
Record Press.
Collins, John. 1989. “The early history of West African highlife music”.
Popular Music. Vol. 8, No. 3. 221-230.
Huber, Magnus. 1999. Ghanaian Pidgin English in its West African
context: a sociohistorical and structural analysis. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Kreyer, Rolf & Joybrato Mukherjee. 2007. “The style of pop song lyrics:
a corpus-linguistic pilot study”. Anglia. 125 (1). 31-58.
Miethaner, Ulrich. 2005. I can look through muddy water: Analyzing
Earlier African American English in Blues Lyrics (BLUR). Frankfurt
am Main: Lang.
Trudgill, Peter. 1983. “Acts of conflicting identity: The sociolinguistics of
British pop-song pronunciation”. In: Peter Trudgill (ed.). On dialect:
Social and geographical perspectives. Oxford: Blackwell. 141-160.
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