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Pidgin/Creole

Pidgins and creoles are languages. When speakers of different language bases encounter one another, and multilingualism does not predominate, a language woven of intersecting systems develops to accommodate communication. A pidgin has no native speakersfor all users, the pidgin is a second language. When pidgin is no longer spoken as a second language, but as a first language, it becomes a creole language. For example, a pidgin becomes creolized or nativized when the children of a society begin learning the pidgin as a first language. The different needs of native users, versus those of second language users, catalyze nativization. During this process, grammar and vocabulary expand to fill what gaps may exist in the pidgin.

Pidgins and creoles range continuums with one or more basilects, first languages, and an acrolect, or target language, at the poles. The features of the basilect are frequently less evident and often dismissed as errors. The mesolect, or mid-range of the creole or pidgin, sound much different when approaching the acrolect and basilect poles. Thus, a creole may be mistaken for a dialect of the contributing languages. The creole may grow to resemble one of its input languages so much that it is decreolized and relabeled a dialect. Without careful linguistic analysis, creoles and pidgins can be difficult to identify.

The word creole also refers to people. The demographic makeup of creole people differs dramatically across the globe. The word has, historically, referred to Europeans born in the Caribbean, mixed-race people of various ethnic makeups across the African and Latin diaspora, indigenous natives, and imported African slaves.

Little ubiquity exists among creoles, pidgins, and extant or honorary creole societies. Nonetheless, the identities of pidgins and creoles and the culture of their language communities and other creole societies deepen two or more coexisting cultures by uniting them.

Examples

Increasingly, creoles and pidgins are recorded and studied. e-mail, text languages, and blogs have opened access to written representations of informal discourse, allowing greater exposure to creoles and pidgins. Features such as spelling, pronunciation, meaning, implication, mood, level, pitch, tone, and frequency of use are considered. Studying a creole or pidgin can uncover clues about geographic expansion.

Hindi and Urdu provide a family of deeply interrelated creoles. At the formal registers, these languages look different, but the creoles merge to form mutually intelligible mesolect mid-ranges. A speaker of one may be functional in many without learning the other creoles. Documented Australian Aboriginal creoles also share mutually intelligible mid-ranges.

The creoles and pidgins of the slave trade have been deeply researched. Including Kiswahili, other existing African trade pidgins, Caribbean creoles, creoles of the American South and South Sea Islands, these creoles and pidgins have long provided a microcosm for viewing language change in pidgins and creoles. African American English, once a distinct creole, decreolized. In form and function, it is now a dialect of Standard American English.

Hawai'i Creole provides significant studies. This language formed the basis for what seminal creolist Derek Bickerton catalogued as the features of creoles. Recent theorists prove, using Hawai'i Creole English, that creoles are far more complicated than Bickerton hypothesized. Cantonese, Portuguese, Japanese, and Filipino pidgin basilects intersected over many generations to form Hawai'i Creole English. The result is an expressive and colorful language. Bickerton offers some examples: “So da guy bin laik daunpeimen bikas i dono mi,” or, “so the guy ant want down payment because he don't know me.” In Standard American English: “So, the guy wanted a down payment because he didn't know me.” In another example from Bickerton: “Dis gai hia sed daet hi gon get mai vainil” or “This guy here said that he was going to get my vinyl.”

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