Tây Bôi

Katherine ThorntonApril 25, 2006

LING 455

Tây bôi is a pidgin based on Vietnamese and French also known as Vietnamese Pidgin French.

tây- Vietnamese for “western” bôi 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

Making rubber

French Foreign Legion in Indochine

milling sugar cane

basic word order

Essentially Vietnamese word order but nearly all French words.

1. Mông xư cup bê ku tô.Monsieur couper couteau.He uses the knife to cut (meat).

2. Ma đam la ba Vinh Long.Madame labas Vinh-Long.She lives in Vinh Long.

word order: time adverbials

In Vietnamese future time expressions begin sentences and past time expressions end them.

In Tây bôi they can go either at the begining or the end.

Moi faire apres.

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.

guar hunt

phonological features

Tây bôi 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 bôi.

clarifying sugar cane juice

syntactic features

Tây Bôi preserves the Vietnamese use of classifiers (auxiliary nouns)

con is the Vietnamese classifier for animals: Môt con ga. One chicken.

Hai con ga. Two chickens.

In Tây Bôi : Un con poulet. One chicken.Time and aspect indicated by adverbs of

time.Demain moi bouver the avec ami. I will have tea with a friend tomorrow.

syntactic features

Lack of conjunctions.No que Tây Bôi :Moi beaucoup vieux avec toi.

Vietnamese: Tôi nhiêu tuôi 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.

Rue Sadec in Sai Gon

The Industry of Marrying Europeans

satirical novel by Vu Trong Phung written in 1934.

Vu Trong Phung (1912-1939) of humble background. Died of Tb just before his 27th birthday, but an extremely prolific, much-loved author.

me Tâyused Tây Bôi 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 la?” [Who is she/ Qui est celle la?]

“Ma ni-et. Bay-dan, dơn, bô-cu tôt! Toa vu-loa ê-pu-dê?” [My niece, peasant, young, very good. Want to marry her?/ Ma niece, paysanne jeune, beaucoup good. Toi vouloir epouser?/ Ma niece, une jeune paysanne tres gentille. Tu veux l’epouser?