- See Phonemes of Caribbean Creole, in WORD 3:3:173–179. An additional fact, which I was then unaware of, should be added. The language has, in one word at least, initial CC, in /ywit/ 'eight', which is heard as [yü̯it]. This is also the only example of the sound [ü̯],
- Three apparent exceptions to this statement are constituted by the pairs: kuze, kuzin 'cousin;' brę, brin 'brown, dark, sun-tanned;' fu, fol 'mad;' of which the first members are applied to males, the second to females. However, the first pair are nouns, while the others may function as such ('dark person,' 'madman,' 'madwoman'); and it would appear that their employment as adjectives is to be regarded as secondary—derived, that is, by zero modification from the nouns; so that these seeming inflexions are in reality of no more grammatical import to Creole than is the change of initial consonant in père, mère to French. Where the masculine and feminine forms of the French adjective differ, Creole has usually adopted one or the other; and in the few cases where both forms are found in Creole, they have different meanings. Compare: gro 'big,' gros 'pregnant (of women);' plę 'full,' plen'pregnant (of animals or women), full (of moon);' sek 'brittle, dried out,' šes 'dry;' ver 'green,' (rarely used), vet 'not yet dried or withered (of wood),'fe 'fine (delicate),' fin 'thin.'
- Cf. also: lažq 'money,' daža 'silver,' dio(~glo) 'water,' dukwe 'sufficient means, wherewithal,' zqfq 'child, children,' nom. 'man, men.' Historically, these words obviously come from the French phrases: l'argent, d'argent, de l'eau, de quoi, des (or les) enfants, un homme; but in Creole they are morpheme-words, such incorporation of the French article being extremely common. No better illustration of this fact can be given than the Creole phrases: yo monok 'an uncle,' monok-mwo 'my uncle,' monok-u 'your uncle,' yo matąJt 'an aunt,' matąt-mwę 'my aunt,' matqt-u 'your aunt,' etc.
- The shift from k to c, exemplified by the pair: pikq 'prickle, thorn,' pice 'pricked, to prick, (a) prick,' may be described as a sound-change which has not yet been completed. It occurs normally where the original French k-sound was followed by a front vowel: French phoneme-sequences: /ki/, /ky/, /ke/, /kø/, /ke/, /kœ/, usually becoming Creole /ci/, /cu/, or /ce/, (the consonantal change also taking place before nasalized vowels). Examples are: ciy 'keel,' from French quille; cim 'foam,' from French écume, cu 'arse,' from French cu; sice 'chew, chewed (tobacco),' from French chiquer; lacet 'collection (of money),' from French la quête; lace 'tail,' from French la queue-, cęz 'fifteen,' from French quinze; kocę scoundrel,' from French coquina; cer 'heart,' from French coeur; ocen 'no, none' (a. & pn. indef.), from the sandhi-form of French aucun (rather than from aucune). Where the /k/ is immediately preceded by /s/, the change does not take place; so: eskize 'excuse' (v.), pisket (~ pishet) 'pisquette,' (kind of small fish or fry). The retention of /k/ in kešoy 'something,' (compare cek 'some'), is probably due to dissimilation with /š/. Among the more common words which so far have escaped the change are: ki 'what? which? which, who, that' (a. interr., and pn. rel.); kite 'let, leave, left;' ke, tense-aspect particle of future tense; koke 'copulate, copulated;' ęvoke 'invoke, invoked.' The temporary currency of the word: cilo 'kilo,' introduced from the French islands (where it is pronounced kilo) during the late war by Dominica smugglers, and the present variant pronunciations of words like puki ~ puci 'why?' beke ~ bece 'White' (an Ibo word) are indications that the change is still under way.
- Under the same conditions, French /g/ has usually become Creole /j/; so jer 'scarcely, etc.'from French guère; lajer 'war,' from French la guerre; jel ~ jol 'mouth, jaws, gob,' from French gueule; etc.
- Similarly, kudpye ~ kulpye 'kick' (n.), kudros ~ kulroš 'stroke/hit/knock with a stone,' etc., must be considered as compound words containing the free forms pye 'foot, feet,' roš'stone, rock,' together with kud-, kut-, kul-, as bound variants of ku 'stroke.' The word: kudmę 'co-operative work-group or its operation' is, on the other hand, a derived word at best, with but little resemblance to ku lamę 'a stroke or slap with the hand.'
- This is no longer true for the younger generation of Creole speakers, who employ o as a free form in, for example: o toclayt-la? 'where (is) the torchlight?' In the more conservative speech that I am attempting to describe, this would be phrased: oti toclayt-la? or: ola toclayt-la ye?
- By verb-particle is here meant a word which, while functioning in some way or ways as a verb, cannot be conjugated by means of the tense-aspect markers, themselves verb- particles. In a minor sentence, se may occur in a two-word utterance such as: se mwę '(it) is I,' in answer to a question like: kiles ki la 'who (is) there?'
- The personal pronoun i ~ -li may, according to context and (or) position in the construction, stand for: 'he,' 'she,' 'it,' 'him,' 'her,' 'his,' or 'its;' but in future only one arbitrary or semantically reasonable translation will be given. Likewise, a verb without preceding tense-aspect marker in an actor-action construction will be translated by only one of its two possible meanings, present perfective or past definite.
- In Creole, the substantive može 'food' and its English translation do not include vyan 'meat,' pweso 'fish,' ze 'eggs,' pę 'bread,' lejim 'European vegetables,' etc., but denote cassava, sweet-potatoes, yams (Dioscorea spp), tania (Xanthosoma spp), breadfruit, and green plantains and bananas (used for boiling).
- On the perhaps unjustified assumption that it is a compound of ka with ale 'go,' I have omitted the particle of proximate future, kay; so: mwę kay las 'I'm going to be tired,' mwę te kay las 'I was going to be tired,' yo kay lasi-mwę 'they are going to tire me,' yo te kay lasi-mwę 'they were going to tire me.' Note that ka cannot be regarded as proclitic, since it may be followed by such an adverb as žamę 'never'.
- The meanings of mal and move (employed as an adverb) are quite different; the first meaning 'defectively, inefficiently, faultily,' and the second 'very much, seriously, grievously.' The word malmo, which may be employed either as an adverb or as a predicative adjective, means 'clumsy, clumsily, in a bad way or condition.'
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