| Italian Pidgin in Eritrea | |
| Also Known As: | Pidgin italiano in Eritrea Simplified Italian of Eritrea (Italian Eritrean) |
| Region: | Eritrea |
| Era: | 19th to late-20th centuries |
| Familycolor: | pidgin |
| Family: | Italian-based pidgin |
| Iso3: | none |
| Ietf: | crp-ER |
Italian Pidgin in Eritrea (or Italian Eritrean, as is often called) was a pidgin language used in Italian Eritrea when Eritrea was a colony of Italy (and until the 1970s in the Asmara region).[1]
This pidgin (sometimes also called "Simplified Pidgin Italian of Eritrea") started to be created at the end of the 19th century and was fully developed in the 1930s. It had similarities with the Mediterranean Lingua Franca.
In 1940 nearly all the local population of Asmara (the capital of Eritrea) spoke the Eritrean Pidgin Italian when communicating with the Italian colonists.
Until the late 1970s this pidgin was still in use by some native Eritreans, but currently it is considered extinguished (even if a few old Eritreans still understand it in Asmara).
About the Italian Eritrean Habte-Mariam wrote that: “[…] at the initial stage of their contact […] It seems likely that the Italians simplified the grammar of the language they used with underlings at this stage, but they did not borrow vocabulary and grammatical forms from Amharic and Tigrinya, since it does not show up in the 'simplified Italian' used today”. [2] Habte wrote that it was used not only between native Eritreans and Italians, but also between different tribes in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The linguists G. Gilbert & Lionel Bender called this pidgin a "Simplified Italian of Eritrea" and wrote that:
"Simplified Italian of Eritrea" is definitely a pidgin; it is described by Habte as a “relatively variable form of Italian” (1976:179). Habte’s account of its sociolinguistic setting (1976: 170-4) and what we know of recent Eritrean history make it quite clear that it is not likely to become a creole, and in fact seems likely to die out within the next generation or two.[3]
For them the Simplified Italian of Eritrea "has basic SVO order; unmarked form is used for nonspecific; stare and ce (from Italian) as locatives".[4]
The lexicon and syntaxes of the Italian Eritrean Pidgin was described by Saul Hoffmann in [5]
Examples:
Italian is still widely spoken and understood and remains a principal language in commerce and education in Eritrea; the capital city Asmara still has an Italian-language school since the colonial decades.[6] People born in Italy and who have children born in Italian Eritrea (who speak Italian and have formed communities in Eritrea) maintain associations of Italo-Eritreans in Italy.[7]
Nearly 10% of the population of the capital Asmara is still able in 2018 to understand Italian and some old Eritreans still speak some words and phrases in Italian, according to the Italian ambassador. He pinpointed that some Italian words are commonly used in the Eritrean language, like "pizza".
While phonology and intonation are affected by native Eritrean languages, including Tigrinya and Arabic, Eritrean Pidgin Italian is based on standard European form. The Italian lexicon in Eritrea has some loanwords of Tigrinya and Arabic origin (the latter especially includes Islamic terms). On the other hand, the Italian languages has given to the Tigrinya language many hundreds of loanwords.[8]
The following are a few of these loanwords:[9] Eritrean - Italian (English)