What Is the Difference Between Pidgin & Creole?

Language is one of the defining characteristics of being human.

Language is one of the defining characteristics of humanity and has been a subject of study, examination, philosophy and criticism for thousands of years. Language differs by geography, social class, economic status, age, gender and religion, and a complex terminology has been built to discuss the nuances. "Pidgin" and "creole" are two terms that are sometimes used interchangeably by the general public, but have specific meanings and differences in the world of linguistics.

What is Pidgin?

"Pidgin" involves situations in which a population speaks several different languages and is required to communicate on a regular basis, but none of the languages of the population has primacy over the others. This situation is often found where multiple societies trade or where slave populations from multiple locations are brought into one area. The speakers create a mutual language using words from the speakers' mother tongues and an extremely flexible, simplified grammar. Most linguists do not consider a pidgin to be a full-fledged language, but something that is cobbled together due to circumstances and abandoned when it is no longer needed.

What is Creole?

A creole language differs from a pidgin language by the fact that it is a native language for the majority of its speakers. Vocabulary is extensively borrowed from other languages, but the grammar often shares few traits with the languages that contributed vocabulary. Grammar and syntax are as fully developed as any other long-established tongue.

How Are Pidgins and Creoles Related?

If the situation that creates a pidgin endures, the first generation of children will learn pidgin as its mother tongue. There is argument as to whether this immediately develops the pidgin into a creole, if it takes more than one generation to do so. Neurolinguists point out commonalities in how all humans learn language from birth and that the first generation of creole speakers create the aspects of language the pidgin was missing. Historians point out the frequent changes in vocabulary, syntax and pronunciation found in creole languages during their first 20 to 30 years, indicating that it takes more than one generation to stabilize.

Social Status

Because both pidgins and creoles tend to be spoken by those in the lower echelons of a society, they are often held in contempt as degenerate forms of the parent tongue. Creole languages survive where the population of speakers retain their cultural and social identities apart from those who speak the parent languages natively. Creoles often survive even when government and economic forces work against them.

Examples of Creole Languages

Native Hawaiians speak a creole language descended from Hawaiian, English, Chinese, Spanish and other languages brought by immigrants and sailors. The language is referred to as Pidgin or Hawaiian Creole English. Haitians speak a creole based primarily on French and the languages of West Africa. It is the most widely spoken creole in the world. Malay, a language spoke in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, has been widely pidginized and creolized as the area was settled by Dutch and Portuguese colonists. There are now at least 14 recognized creole languages based on Malay.

References

• "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language": David Crystal;1997.
• "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way"; Bill Bryson; 1991
• Une.edu.au: Definitions of Different Kinds of Language Varieties
• Mnsu.edu: Pidgins and Creoles

Resources

• Online Dictionary of Language Terminology