Esav Benyamin
MidniteSuperMod
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2000
- Messages
- 90,915
I would define them differently. A true pidgin is a first-generation language made from the vocabulary of a dominant language as used by a subservient population, often of speakers of different languages who couldn't communicate in their own languages among each other.
A creole is a next generation development of a pidgin, where the children of the original pidgin speakers elaborate the grammar and vocabulary needed for more than basic workday communication.
In fact, most languages known as pidgins today are actually creoles, like Neo-Melanesian pidgins: Tok Pisin ("talk pidgin").
We can also think of languages like Japanese as creoles, accounting for its isolation from other language families. But in that sense, most languages or language families are the product of creolization.
While English looks like a creole with its extensive Romance vocabulary, its structural simplification may have begun with earlier wide contact between its Low German dialects and North Germanic invaders.
A creole is a next generation development of a pidgin, where the children of the original pidgin speakers elaborate the grammar and vocabulary needed for more than basic workday communication.
In fact, most languages known as pidgins today are actually creoles, like Neo-Melanesian pidgins: Tok Pisin ("talk pidgin").
We can also think of languages like Japanese as creoles, accounting for its isolation from other language families. But in that sense, most languages or language families are the product of creolization.
While English looks like a creole with its extensive Romance vocabulary, its structural simplification may have begun with earlier wide contact between its Low German dialects and North Germanic invaders.