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Tây Bôi

• Katherine Thornton
• April 25, 2006
• LING 455

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• 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

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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)

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Settings

• Plantations rubber, sugar, etc.
• Military
• Domestic employer employee
• male partner female partner
• Commerce

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Making rubber
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French Foreign Legion in Indochine
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milling sugar cane
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basic word order

• Essentially Vietnamese word order but nearly all
  French words.
• 1. Mông xu cup bê ku tô.
• Monsieur couper couteau.
• He uses the knife to cut (meat).
• 2. Ma dam la ba Vinh Long.
• Madame labas Vinh-Long.
• She lives in Vinh Long.

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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.

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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.

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guar hunt
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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 u is the
  only Vietnamese monophthong not found inTây bôi.

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clarifying sugar cane juice
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syntactic features

• Tây Bôi preserves the Vietnamese use of
  classifiers (auxiliary nouns)
• con is the Vietnamese classifier for animals
• Mô?t 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.

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syntactic features

• Lack of conjunctions.
• No que
• Tây Bôi Moi beaucoup vieux avec toi.
• Vietnamese Tôi nhiêu tuô?i hon em.
• English I am older than you are.
• Note here the Vietnamese grammatical word hon is
  not used to express the comparative, nor is the
  standard French comparative used.

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Rue Sadec in Sai Gon
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The Industry of Marrying Europeans

• satirical novel by Vu Tro?ng Phu?ng written in
  1934.
• Vu Tro?ng Phu?ng (1912-1939) of humble
  background. Died of Tb just before his 27th
  birthday, but an extremely prolific, much-loved
  author.
• me Tây
• used Tây Bôi in his novel.

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Excerpt from The Industry of Marrying Europeans

• A madame speaking to a potential client
• One day, a Monsieur Giang (Jean) stopped by
  Ki e xen la? Who is she/ Qui est celle la?
• Ma ni-et. Bay-dan, don, 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 lepouser?

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