WHAT EXACTLY DEFINES A LANGUAGE? That’s a question Karen McCrindle considers very carefully. A French language and linguistics professor at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, McCrindle is studying verbal structures of the languages called Creoles, and has come to the conclusion that there isn’t just one French Creole language – there are many.

This may come as news to those who didn’t realize that Creoles were languages at all – they’re frequently referred to as dialects. "Until recently, Creoles were looked at as corrupt versions of French," McCrindle says. It’s not hard to understand why: the vocabularies are 90 per cent French, with words sometimes shortened or altered, and spoken in an order that is unlike French. But they were never dialects. "A dialect is based on regional variation of the same language – English spoken in Scotland is the same language as English spoken in Toronto, with a different accent and different expressions. But when you see major grammatical differences – in tense, mood and aspect, for example – you can identify a separate language."

McCrindle’s interest in the area is the result of a happy accident. She became a radio programmer and producer in 1992, specializing in world music. When she came to U of T to work on her master’s degree in French, she took a course in philology, or the history of language. She researched Haitian Creole and was fascinated by it. "Language tells us about who we are as people, how we’ve evolved," she says. In the case of the Caribbean Creoles, the creation of the languages was dramatic: their origins date back to the African slave trade.

"They were ‘forced’ languages, created by slavery," says McCrindle. Individuals kidnapped into slavery were often deliberately put together with others who did not speak the same language. "There were many African languages, so the slaves developed pidgin languages to communicate." In the Caribbean, "the slaves learned the words from their French masters and they adopted them, but they kept the African grammatical base." They also kept many of the short African verbal particles that they were already using.

McCrindle has identified several distinct French Caribbean Creole languages: Guadeloupean, Martiniquan and St. Lucian Creoles (which share many traits), Haitian Creole and Guyanese Creole. The different histories of these places contributed to the separate evolution of the languages. Guyanese Creole is McCrindle’s current area of study.

While she has travelled several times to the Caribbean – especially to Guadeloupe – to further her research, McCrindle has developed a network of Creole-speakers in Toronto, too – something that her world music contacts helped with. By talking with these people she has made many of her discoveries – and it’s part of what keeps her fascinated by the subject. "I always keep in mind that languages are spoken by people," she says. "It’s the human element that draws me. I want to learn more about people."

– Hilary Davidson