Pidgins and creoles

A pidgin [pɪdʒɪn] language is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country. Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed by convention, between groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language. A pidgin may be built from words, sounds, or body language from multiple other languages and cultures. Pidgins usually have low prestige with respect to other languages. Not all simplified or "broken" forms of a language are pidgins. Each pidgin has its own norms of usage which must be learned for proficiency.

If contact is maintained between the groups speaking pidgin for long periods of time, the pidgins may become more complex over many generations. If the children of one generation adopt the pidgin as their native language it develops into a creole language.

A creole language is a stable, natural language that originates from a pidgin that has become nativized (that is, acquired by children as their primary language). The vocabulary of a creole language consists of cognates from the parent languages, through clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, grammar often has original features but may differ substantially from that of the parent language. Most often, vocabulary comes from the dominant group and the grammar from the subordinate group, where such stratification exists. For example, Jamaican Creole features largely English words superimposed on West African grammar.

A creole is believed to arise when a pidgin, developed by adults for use as a second language, becomes the native and primary language of their children — a process known as nativization. The pidgin-creole life cycle was studied by Hall in the 1960s.

Creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages from which they are phylogenetically derived. However, there is no widely accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities. Moreover, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles.

The syntax and morphology of such languages may often have local innovations not obviously derived from any of the parent languages.

Studies of creole languages around the world have suggested that they display remarkable similarities in grammar and are developed uniformly from pidgins in a single generation. These similarities are apparent even when creoles do not share any common language origins. In addition, creoles share similarities despite being developed in isolation from each other. Syntactic similarities include Subject – Verb - Object word order. Even when creoles are derived from languages with a different word order they very often develop the SVO word order.