Comments for Pidgins and Creoles

Pidgins and Creoles

2007-04-23T00:18:05Z

Though I've been familiar with the terms for years, I wasn't sure of the exact differences between a pidgin and a creole. So:

A creole is the combination of one or more languages into a new, stable language. A mashup of languages, if you will.

A pidgin is a simplified language used to help two groups with distinct languages communicate with each other.

"Creole", of course, is also a term used to refer to various ethnic and social groups. Now I feel better that I know the difference between these terms.

Comment from Norman Gerre on 2007-04-22

2007-04-23T01:16:15Z

The way I'd heard it put is that a creole is what the pidgin speakers' children speak. They've never known anything else; they've never had to struggle with the language. You mentioned mashups: right now, I think, they're a pidgin. Mashup apps are still new and frequently fragile, and many people are uneasy about exposing their data. We're getting there, but we won't have a creole until open APIs are as natural (and expected) as breathing.

Comment from Sam Ruby on 2007-04-22

2007-04-23T01:44:34Z

Somewhat related: :-)

http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2006/02/28/Tasty-Creole-on-a-Fat-Tuesday-Morning

Comment from Zhasper on 2007-04-22

2007-04-23T02:46:31Z

What Norman said.

My flatmate's BF is a linguist, and we were discussing this a few weeks ago.

His explanation was that Pidgins don't have native speakers; they have people who learnt the Pidgin as a second language in order to communicate with some other group/groups.

Once people start to be born from whom the (previously) Pidgin language is their native tongue, it's a Creole.

I like Norman's analogy; we're all Web1.0 native-speakers at this point, learning the new Pidgin that is web2.0[1]. It won't be till a new generation come through for whom web2.0 ahs always been the default mode of interaction that web2.0 will become a creole.

[1] Uck, I just said web2.0. I think I need to shower.

Comment from Kyle on 2007-04-22

2007-04-23T03:50:09Z

"Pidgin" is also the new name for gaim:

http://pidgin.im

Comment from Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah on 2007-04-23

2007-04-23T04:50:04Z

The most interesting recent example of an emerging creole is in Cameroon, a country that, outside of the numerous African languages, features French and English speakers. France being the colonizer, french is the official language but there is also a significan English component (lots of ties, trade and otherwise to Nigeria). In any case, the children are now speaking frananglais, "a mixture of French, English and Creole".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6376389.stm

What is most fascinating for me is the "creole" part of it (strictly speaking the pidgin part of it. Because there are 2 pidgins, the English pidgin and the French pidgin that are mixing into the creole.

The English pidgin is easily understood across West Africa, it is pretty much the same in Ghana and Nigeria. The French pidgin on the other hand has elements from the French Caribbean islands in addition to the west African flavour. A real gumbo in other words.

If I were a linguist, I'd be in Cameroon right now trolling secondary schools.

Comment from JR on 2007-04-23

2007-04-23T14:22:13Z

It just so happens that I'm reading Stephen Pinker's "Language Instinct" right now, which explores (in part) this very topic. To add to what has already been said, Pidgins have practically no grammatical structure -- they are simply an arbitrary "mashup" of grammars and vocabularies that allow for communication that otherwise would not be possible. Creoles are created once the children of Pidgin speakers come along, adding a grammatical structure to the Pidgin and making a language out of it. The fascinating thing is that the Creole that is created from the Pidgin is universal across all the children learning it; even children in isolation can create their own working Creole from a Pidgin. These observations go a long way to proving that a "universal grammar" exists across languages, and that children possess a language instinct that allows them to take whatever vocabularies / grammars they are exposed to and combine it with this pre-programmed universal grammar.

Comment from James Tauber on 2007-04-23

2007-04-23T21:07:27Z

A pidgin is a mashup of two languages A and B used when a speaker of A and a speaker of B want/need to communicate. A pidgin has no native speakers.

A creole is when the next generation actually learns that mashup as a native language. From the creole-speaker's point of view, it's no longer a mashup. It's just their native language.

Comment from Jay Allen on 2007-04-29

2007-04-30T03:28:21Z

Awesome. Now in your next post, can you highlight the difference between "Creole" and "Cajun"? Too many people have no concept that there even is a difference.

Thank you, o' bringer of light.