Pickaninny (also picaninny, piccaninny or pickininnie) is a pidgin word for a small child, possibly derived from the Portuguese pequenino ('boy, child, very small, tiny'). [1] It has been used as a racial slur for African American children and a pejorative term for Aboriginal children of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. It can also refer to a derogatory caricature of a dark-skinned child of African descent. [2]
The origins of the word pickaninny (and its alternative spellings picaninny and piccaninny) are disputed; it may derive from the Portuguese term for a small child, pequenino. [3] It was apparently used in the seventeenth century by slaves in the West Indies to affectionately refer to a child of any race. [4] Pickaninny acquired a pejorative connotation by the nineteenth century as a term for black children in the United States and Britain, as well as aboriginal children of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. [3]
The term piccanin, derived from the Portuguese pequenino, has along with several variants become widely used in pidgin languages, meaning 'small'. [5] This term is common in the creole languages of the Caribbean, especially those which are English-based. [6] In Jamaican Patois, the word has been shortened to the form pickney, which is used to describe a child regardless of racial origin. [7] The same word is used in Antiguan and Barbudan Creole to mean "children",[ citation needed ] while in the English-based national creole language of Suriname, Sranang Tongo, pequeno has been borrowed as pikin for 'small' and 'child'. [8]
The term pikinini is found in Melanesian pidgin and creole languages such as Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea or Bislama of Vanuatu, as the usual word for 'child' (of a person or animal); [9] it may refer to children of any race.[ citation needed ] For example, Charles III used the term in a speech he gave in Tok Pisin during a formal event: he described himself as nambawan pikinini bilong Misis Kwin (i.e. the first child of the Queen). [10]
In Nigerian as well as Cameroonian Pidgin English, the word pikin is used to mean a child. [11] It can be heard in songs by African popular musicians such as Fela Kuti's Afrobeat song "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense" and Prince Nico Mbarga's highlife song "Sweet Mother"; [12] [ non-primary source needed ] both are from Nigeria. In Sierra Leone Krio [13] the term pikin refers to 'child' or 'children', while in Liberian English the term pekin does likewise. In Chilapalapa, a pidgin language used in Southern Africa, the term used is pikanin. In Sranan Tongo and Ndyuka of Suriname the term pikin may refer to 'children' as well as to 'small' or 'little'. Some of these words may be more directly related to the Portuguese pequeno than to pequenino.[ citation needed ]
In the Southern United States, pickaninny was long used to refer to the children of African slaves or (later) of any dark-skinned African American. [14] The term is now generally considered offensive in the U.S. [5] [4]
The character of Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin became the basis for the popular caricature of the pickaninny, described by scholar Debbie Olson as "a coon character [...] untamed, genderless, with wide eyes, hair sticking up all around the child's head, and often 'stuffing their wide mouths with watermelon or chicken '". [15] These characters were a popular feature of minstrel shows into the twentieth century. [4] According to historian Robin Bernstein:
The pickaninny was an imagined, subhuman black juvenile who was typically depicted outdoors, merrily accepting (or even inviting) violence [...] Characteristics of the pickaninny include dark or sometimes jet-black skin, exaggerated eyes and mouth, the action of gorging (especially on watermelon), and the state of being threatened or attacked by animals (especially alligators, geese, dogs, pigs, or tigers). Pickaninnies often wear ragged clothes (which suggest parental neglect) and are sometimes partially or fully naked [...] the figure is always juvenile, always of color, and always resistant if not immune to pain. [3]
Journalist H. L. Mencken (born 1880) wrote that "in the Baltimore of my youth, pickaninny was not used invidiously, but rather affectionately." [16]
Piccaninny is considered an offensive term for an Aboriginal Australian child. [17] It was used in colonial Australia and is still in use in some Indigenous Kriol languages. [18] [19] Piccaninny (sometimes spelled picanninnie) is found in numerous Australian place names, such as Piccaninnie Ponds and Piccaninny Lake [20] in South Australia, Piccaninny crater and Picaninny Creek in Western Australia and Picaninny Point in Tasmania. [21] [ original research? ]
The term was used in 1831 in an anti-slavery tract "The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, related by herself" published in Edinburgh, Scotland.[ citation needed ] In 1826 an Englishman named Thomas Young was tried at the Old Bailey in London on a charge of enslaving and selling four Gabonese women known as "Nura, Piccaninni, Jumbo Jack and Prince Quarben". [22] [ non-primary source needed ]The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English says that in the United Kingdom today, piccaninny is considered highly offensive and derogatory, or negative and judgemental when used by other black people. [17] It was controversially used ("wide-grinning picaninnies") by the British Conservative politician Enoch Powell in his 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech.[ citation needed ] In a 2002 column for The Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote, "It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies." [23] [24] [25]
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A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside. Linguists do not typically consider pidgins full or complete languages.
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form, and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fledged language with native speakers, all within a fairly brief period of time. While the concept is similar to that of a mixed or hybrid language, creoles are often characterized by a tendency to systematize their inherited grammar. Like any language, creoles are characterized by a consistent system of grammar, possess large stable vocabularies, and are acquired by children as their native language. These three features distinguish a creole language from a pidgin. Creolistics, or creology, is the study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist.
A lingua franca, also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages.
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Patois is speech or language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. As such, patois can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects or vernaculars, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant.
This glossary of names for the British include nicknames and terms, including affectionate ones, neutral ones, and derogatory ones to describe British people, Irish People and more specifically English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish people. Many of these terms may vary between offensive, derogatory, neutral and affectionate depending on a complex combination of tone, facial expression, context, usage, speaker and shared past history.
Sranan Tongo is an English-based creole language that is spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 519,600 people in Suriname.
Liberian English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Liberia. There are four such varieties:
Hawaiian Pidgin is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaiʻi speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a second language. Although English and Hawaiian are the two official languages of the state of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by many Hawaiian residents in everyday conversation and is often used in advertising targeted toward locals in Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaiian language, it is called ʻōlelo paʻi ʻai – "hard taro language". Hawaiian Pidgin was first recognized as a language by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015. However, Hawaiian Pidgin is still thought of as lower status than the Hawaiian and English languages.
Portuguese creoles are creole languages which have Portuguese as their substantial lexifier. The most widely-spoken creoles influenced by Portuguese are Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamento.
Pickaninny, also spelled picaninny, piccaninnie, piccaninny, and pickaninnie, is a derogatory term for a black child. It may also refer to:
Jamaican Patois is an English-based creole language with West African, Taíno, Irish, Spanish, Hindustani, Portuguese, Chinese, and German influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. Words or slang from Jamaican Patois can be heard in other Caribbean countries, the United Kingdom and Toronto, Canada. The majority of non-English words in Patois derive from the West African Akan language. It is spoken by the majority of Jamaicans as a native language.
Nigerian Pidgin, also known as Naija or Naijá in scholarship, is an English-based creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria. The language is sometimes referred to as Pijin, Brokun 'Ullu' or "Vernacular". It can be spoken as a pidgin, a creole, dialect or a decreolised acrolect by different speakers, who may switch between these forms depending on the social setting. In the 2010s, a common orthography was developed for Pidgin which has been gaining significant popularity in giving the language a harmonized writing system.
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The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.
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Probably < a form in an [ sic ] Portuguese-based pidgin < Portuguese pequenino boy, child, use as noun of pequenino very small, tiny (14th cent.; earlier as pequeninno (13th cent.))...
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The dictionary definition of pickaninny at Wiktionary
Media related to Pickaninny at Wikimedia Commons