A pidgin (pronounced /ˈpɪdʒɪn/) 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 Trade is the voluntary exchange of goods, services, or both. Trade is also called commerce or transaction. A mechanism that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services. Later one side of the barter were the metals, precious metals , bill, paper money. Modern traders instead, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the groups). Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as is constructed impromptu, or 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.^[1][2] A pidgin may be built from words, sounds, or body language from multiple other languages and cultures. Pidgins usually have low prestige In sociolinguistics, prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society. Generally, there is positive prestige associated with the language or with respect to other languages.^[3]

Not all simplified or "broken" forms of a language (patois Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant. Class distinctions are embedded in the term, drawn between those who) are pidgins. Each pidgin has its own norms of usage which must be learned for proficiency in the pidgin.^[4]

Etymology

The origin of the word pidgin is uncertain. The first time pidgin appeared in print was in 1850 and there are many sources from which the word may be derived. For example:

• The Chinese Chinese or the Sinitic language (汉语／漢語 Hànyǔ; 华语／華語 Huáyǔ; 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language family consisting of languages which are mostly mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages pronunciation of the English word business.^[5]
• English pigeon Pigeons and doves constitute the bird family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerines. In general parlance the terms "dove" and "pigeon" are used somewhat interchangeably. In ornithological practice, there is a tendency for "dove" to be used for smaller species and &, a bird sometimes used for carrying brief written messages, especially in times prior to modern telecommunications.^[6]

Terminology

The word pidgin, formerly also spelled pigion,^[5] originally used to describe Chinese Pidgin English Chinese Pidgin English is a Pidgin language between English and Chinese. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, there was also Chinese Pidgin English spoken in Cantonese-speaking portions of China. Chinese Pidgin English is heavily influenced by various Chinese languages with variants arising among different provinces (for example in Shanghai and, was later generalized to refer to any pidgin.^[7] Pidgin may also be used as the specific name for local pidgins or creoles Creole language, a stable, full-fledged language that originated from a pidgin or combination of other languages. Creole languages subgroups may include:, in places where they are spoken. For example, the name of Tok Pisin Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro Province and Milne Bay Provinces the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history, and is less universal, especially among older people. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country derives from the English words talk pidgin. Its speakers usually refer to it simply as "pidgin" when speaking English.^{[citation needed]}

The term jargon Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, or group. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he continued, "It seems that one ought to has also been used to describe pidgins, and is found in the names of some pidgins, such as Chinook Jargon Chinook Jargon originated as a pidgin trade language of the Pacific Northwest, and spread during the 1800s from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then British Columbia and as far as Alaska, sometimes taking on characteristics of a creole language. It is related to, but not the same as, the aboriginal. In this context, linguists today use jargon to denote a particularly rudimentary type of pidgin;^[8] however, this usage is rather rare, and the term jargon most often refers to the words particular to a given profession.

Pidgins may start out as or become trade languages, such as Tok Pisin Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro Province and Milne Bay Provinces the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history, and is less universal, especially among older people. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country. Trade languages are often full blown languages in their own right such as Swahili Swahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language, Swahili is a national, or official language, of four nations, namely Tanzania,, Persian Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq, Bahrain, and Oman. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically, or English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of.^{[clarification needed]} Trade languages tend to be "vehicular languages", while pidgins can evolve into the vernacular A vernacular, mother tongue or mother language, and less frequently one sense of idiom and dialect, is the native language of a population located in a country or in a region defined on some other basis, such as a locality. For example, Navajo is a local language in the southwest of the United States, and English is the state language of a number.^{[clarification needed]}

Common traits among pidgin languages

Since a pidgin language is a fundamentally simpler form of communication, the grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. Linguists do not normally use the and phonology Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system. When describing the formal area of study, the term typically describes linguistic analysis either beneath the are usually as simple as possible, and usually consist of:

• Uncomplicated clausal In grammar, a clause is a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase. It may instead be marked on the verb . The most basic kind of sentence consists of a single clause. More complicated sentences may contain multiple structure (e.g., no embedded A dependent clause cannot stand alone as a sentence. A dependent clause is usually attached to an independent clause. Although a dependent clause contains a subject and a predicate, it sounds incomplete when standing alone. Some grammarians use the term subordinate clause as a synonym for dependent clause, but in the majority of grammars, clauses, etc)
• Reduction or elimination of syllable codas In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. A coda is not required in syllables. Some languages' phonotactics, like that of Japanese, limit syllable codas to a small group of single consonants, whereas others
• Reduction of consonant clusters or breaking them with epenthesis In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence (if the sound added is a consonant) and anaptyxis (if the sound added is a vowel)
• Basic vowels, such as /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/
• No tones Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish, such as those found in West African and Asian languages
• Use of separate words to indicate tense Tense is one of at least four qualities, along with mood, voice, and aspect, which utterances may express, usually preceding the verb In syntax, a verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that conveys action (bring, read, walk, run, murder), or a state of being (exist, stand). In most languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments, such as
• Use of reduplication Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process by which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated to represent plurals In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker (morpheme) is used distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one. Plurality is a linguistic universal, represented variously among the languages as a, superlatives In grammar the superlative of an adjective or adverb is the greatest form of adjective or adverb which indicates that something has some feature to a greater degree than anything it is being compared to in a given context. For example, if AJ is 45, Deniz is 35, and Jeff is 25, AJ is the oldest of the three, because his age transcends those of, and other parts of speech that represent the concept being increased
• A lack of morphophonemic variation English, having lost its inflection, does not have much morphophonology. Inflected and agglutinating languages may have extremely complicated systems, e.g., consonant gradation

Pidgin development

The creation of a pidgin usually requires:

• Prolonged, regular contact between the different language communities
• A need to communicate between them
• An absence of (or absence of widespread proficiency in) a widespread, accessible interlanguage

Also, Keith Whinnom (in Hymes (1971)) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others.

It is often posited that pidgins become creole languages A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that has originated from a pidgin language that has been nativized . The vocabulary of a creole language consists of cognates from the parent languages, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features but may differ when a generation whose parents speak pidgin to each other teach it to their children as their first language. Creoles can then replace the existing mix of languages to become the native language of a community (such as Krio in Sierra Leone The country has a tropical climate, with a diverse environment ranging from savannah to rainforests. Freetown is the capital, largest city and economic center. The other major cities are Bo, Kenema, Koidu Town and Makeni. English is the official language, spoken at schools, government administration and by the media. However, the Krio language is and Tok Pisin Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea; in parts of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro Province and Milne Bay Provinces the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history, and is less universal, especially among older people. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country in Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (pronounced /ˈpæpuːə njuː ˈɡɪni/ PAP-oo-ə new-GIN-ee, also /ˈpɑːpuːə/ PAH-poo-ə or /ˈpæpjuːə/ PAP-yew-ə; Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) (PNG), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands (the). However, not all pidgins become creole languages; a pidgin may die out before this phase would occur (e.g. the Mediterranean Lingua Franca The Lingua franca of the Mediterranean or Sabir was a pidgin language used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century and is the original basis for the word lingua franca. The name "lingua franca" in Italian means "free" or "open language" (in the sense of "without boundaries&).

Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene, argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged among trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions". Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants An indentured servant was a laborer under contract to an employer for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for their transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities. Unlike slaves, an indentured servant was required to work only for a limited term specified in a signed contract whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European slaves Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages. In some societies it was legal for an owner to kill a slave; in others it was a crime to kill a slave, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized The Post-creole continuum or simply creole continuum refers to a situation wherein a creole language consists of a spectrum of varieties between those most and least similar to the superstrate language . Due to social, political, and economic factors, a creole language can decreolize towards one of the languages from which it is descended, version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary.^[9]

See also

• Basque-Icelandic pidgin
• Béarlachas Béarlachas is an Irish word used to describe a variety of Irish language perceived by users of the term to be excessively influenced by English. This influence may vary between simple anglicisms to a process of pidginization. It is a result of language contact
• Creole language A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that has originated from a pidgin language that has been nativized . The vocabulary of a creole language consists of cognates from the parent languages, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features but may differ
• Decreolization Decreolization is a hypothetical phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with one of the standard languages from which it originally derived. First proposed by Keith Whinnom at the 1968 Mona conference, the concept has come under fire in recent years from such linguists as Bickerton and Rickford since at its inception it sought
• Delaware languages#Derived languages The Delaware languages, also known as the Lenape languages, are Munsee and Unami, two closely related languages of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family. Munsee and Unami were spoken aboriginally by the Lenape people in the vicinity of the modern New York City area in the United States, including western Long Island,
• Engrish Engrish refers to unusual English originating in Japan, and often by extension other East Asian countries. The term itself arises from the ethnic stereotype that Japanese people often confuse the English phonemes "r" and "l", since the Japanese language has one alveolar consonant in place of both. The word is not used in Japan, or Chinglish Chinglish is a portmanteau of the words Chinese and English and refers to spoken or written English which is influenced by Chinese.. There are an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English in the People's Republic of China The term "Chinglish" is mostly used in popular contexts and may have pejorative or derogatory
• Hawaiian Pidgin Hawaii Pidgin English, Hawaii Creole English, HCE, or simply Pidgin, is a creole language based in part on English used by many, if not most, "local" residents of Hawaiʻi. Although English and Hawaiian are the co-official languages of the State of Hawaiʻi, Pidgin is used by many Hawaiʻi residents in everyday conversation and is often
• International Sign
• Jamaican Creole Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-lexified creole language with West African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English. The language developed in the 17th century,
• Lingua franca A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues
• List of English-based pidgins
• Mediterranean Lingua Franca The Lingua franca of the Mediterranean or Sabir was a pidgin language used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century and is the original basis for the word lingua franca. The name "lingua franca" in Italian means "free" or "open language" (in the sense of "without boundaries& or Sabir
• Mixed language A mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source. Although the concept is frequently encountered in historical linguistics from the
• Nigerian Pidgin Nigerian Pidgin or Naija is an English-based pidgin and a creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria. The language is commonly referred to as "Pidgin" or "Brokin". It is often not considered a creole language since most speakers are not native speakers, although many children do learn it early. Nonetheless it can
• Trading zones

Notes

1. ^ See Todd (1990:3)
2. ^ See Thomason & Kaufman (1988:169)
3. ^ Bakker (1994:27)
4. ^ Bakker (1994:26)
5. ^ ^{a b} Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pidgin
6. ^ pidgin, Cambridge University Press, 1997
7. ^ Bakker (1994:25)
8. ^ Bakker & 1994 (pp25–26)
9. ^ "Salikoko Mufwene: "Pidgin and Creole Languages"". Humanities.uchicago.edu. http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pidginCreoleLanguage.html. Retrieved 2010-04-24.

References

• Bakker, Peter (1994), "Pidgins", in Jacques Arends; Pieter Muysken; Norval Smithh, Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction, John Benjamins, pp. 26–39
• Hymes, Dell (1971), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, Cambridge University Press, ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-521-07833-4
• McWhorter, John (2002), The Power of Babel: The Natural History of Language, Random House Group, ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-06-052085-X
• Sebba, Mark (1997), Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles, MacMillan, ISBN 0-333-63024-6
• Thomason, Sarah G.; Kaufman, Terrence (1988), Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-07893-4
• Todd, Loreto (1990), Pidgins and Creoles, Routledge, ISBN 0415053110

External links

• Language Varieties Web Site
• Pidgin-English-Only Discussion Forum

Categories: Interlinguistics | Pidgins and creoles

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