Some argue that neurologically, there are always a ton of commonalities in the way humans learn native tongues, which means first-generation speakers of creole languages will inevitably “fill in the blanks” of any language aspects missing from the pidgin version. There’s some disagreement among linguists over whether pidgins immediately become creoles, or whether this process can require more than one generation. There’s also Chavacano, a Spanish-based creole spoken in the Philippines. Gullah is an English-based creole spoken in the southern United States, and then there’s the French-based Louisiana Creole. Malay also has at least 14 recognized creole offshoots thanks to Dutch and Portuguese colonial impact. Beyond the well-known French/West African creole spoken in Haiti, there’s also Hawaiian Creole English, which is a mix of Hawaiian, English, Chinese, Spanish and other languages. It’s a bare-bones language designed to enable minimum-viable communication.īy the time a pidgin becomes a creole, the language has developed enough of its own characteristics to have a distinct grammar of its own. Pidgins often borrow words from their source languages and feature a simplified grammar. Historically, this has often happened in areas where multiple groups were trading with each other, or when groups of slaves from various nations were assimilated into a single population and developed a language. Generally speaking, pidgins form in the context of a multicultural population. A creole is a pidgin with native speakers, or one that’s been passed down to a second generation of speakers who will formalize it and fortify the bridge into a robust structure with a fully developed grammar and syntax. Put simply, a pidgin is the first-generation version of a language that forms between native speakers of different languages - a makeshift communication bridge, if you will. Pidgins and creoles are both the result of what happens when you blend two or more languages, but they’re not the same.

There’s no punchline, unless you’re amused by this very crude attempt to illustrate pidginization with a bad bar joke. The first says, “ Comment ça va?” The second one pauses to think, and then says, “ Muy bien.

Pidgin language definition