Darbaza tili

Darbaza tili (Iradi: "gate talk"; called "Gate Talk" by American servicemen) was a pidgin of mostly English words in Iradi word order, spoken from 1992 to 2006 at the gates of Talas Air Base, in the bazaar outside them and in the contractor yards that served the base. It died out after the US withdrawal of 2006, and the English loanwords it passed on to Talas speech are known as Base English.^[1]

History

The pidgin grew up in the first years after Operation Starlight, when thousands of Iradis came to the base looking for work as laborers, drivers, cleaners and traders and few of them or of the Americans spoke the other's language. It was used at the hiring gates, in the yards of KBR and Alatau Logistics Group, at the checkpoints and in the bazaar that grew up along the base road. Russian, which most urban Iradis then spoke, was of little use with the Americans, and the pidgin took almost nothing from it.^[1]

The base's Family Support Center gave newly arrived Americans a pocket phrasebook, the Talas Pocket Talker (1994), whose "Iradi" was largely gate talk. As more Iradis learned English at school and in contractor training in the 2000s, the pidgin lost ground, and it disappeared with the withdrawal of 2006.^[1]^[2]

Features

Darbaza tili used mostly English words in Iradi order, with the verb at the end and almost no endings, except for an occasional Iradi dative on an English word (ofiska, "to the office"). Possession and its lack were expressed with the Iradi bar ("there is") and jok ("there is not"). Numbers were English, okey-dok served for agreement, and reduplication made words vague.^[1] Examples recorded at the gates include:

You tomorrow me come, okey-dok. "Come back tomorrow, all right."
Money jok, problem jok. "No money, no problem" (a stock reply; also taym jok).
Mister, cigarette bar? "Mister, have you got a cigarette?"
Ofiska go, paper sayn. "Go to the office and sign the paper."
Tumoro-tumoro. "Some day," meaning never.

The American side

Americans on the base picked up a few Iradi words of their own: jakshi for "OK", aksakal ("elder") for a senior NCO or an old-timer, "going up the jayloo" (from the word for summer pasture) for going on leave, kumiss for any home brew, konok ("guest") for a local visitor signed on to the base, and "Talas tummy" for the local stomach bug. These are still heard among veterans of the base and in Iradi American families in Chicago and Houston.^[1]

Study

The pidgin was recorded by the linguist Kunduz Junus (born 1962; registered Zhunusova) of the Department of Iradi Language and Literature of Talas State University, who did fieldwork at the gates from 1999 to 2002 and described it in the TSU Philology Bulletin in 2003. Her paper and the Talas Pocket Talker are the main sources.^[1]

Legacy

The words that survived the pidgin, such as peydey, kesh, em-pi and problem jok, form Base English, used mainly by Iradis over 35 in Talas and Semiz. Younger Iradis mock it as "dad talk", the Talas Herald's language column has campaigned against it since 2016, and Russian speakers in Nurzhan hear it as the mark of an amerikan kuchugu ("American puppy").^[2]

References

^ Junus, Kunduz (2003). 'Darbaza tili: an Iradi–English contact jargon at Talas Air Base.' TSU Philology Bulletin, No. 2. Talas.
^ Talas Herald (2016). 'Say it in Iradi: why "peydey" has to go.' Talas.