Here is a call for papers for the 25th Biennial Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL): “Looking Back and Moving Forward: Innovations in Language Theory, Policy and Practice,” to take place in Guyana, from August 5 to 9, 2024. The deadline for submission of abstracts: March 30, 2024 (early bird), April 30, 2024…
Jeroen Dewulf is Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he developed a new course on the Dutch history of New York that in 2012 was awarded the American Cultures Innovation in Teaching Award.
Swearing like sailors: What the profanities of lascars can teach today’s divided world
The creole language they created shows how finding a way to share experiences can help transcend seemingly insurmountable chasms. Feb 07, 2021 · 11:30 am Lascar crew on the P&O liner Viceroy of India. | National Maritime Museum from Greenwich, United Kingdom, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
How do people from diverse lands share experiences and emotions as they work together in the tight confines of a ship vessel? Sometimes, they create new languages to bridge the divisions. That’s what the lascars did – with a salty, colourful vocabulary.
A group of sailors and militiamen who served on European ships from the 16th century to the 20th century, lascars were drawn from several colonised lands – Chinese, East Africans, Arabs, Malays, Bengalis, Goans, Tamils and Arakanese. The word by which they were known was derived from the Persian word “lashkar”