Pidgin Englishes

Question

0 Would you say that these are a type of English, or new languages altogether as they are often incomprehensible to non-speakers? It's also not uncommon for people to speak both 'English' and their local 'Pidgin English'. 0-

Lil&apos; Ruby Rose · Accepted Answer

0 Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct has an interesting section about the development of a dialect/variant, where he feels the sequence runs from pidgin (two codes running simulatneously) &gt; creole (code switching taking place) &gt; dialect (new code). 0-

Philip · Answer

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01cite10Nona The Brit12cite10Would you say that these are a type of English, or new languages altogether as they are often incomprehensible to non-speakers? It's also not uncommon for people to speak both 'English' and their local 'Pidgin English'.12blockquote

11b01font00Fifty years ago, the linguists referred to pidgin, dialect, etc. as "languages" after having established a literary heritage. Not sure what the distinction is these days. [One of my favorite examples was an African pidgin in which the word for "***" was "big-massa-white-man-boss".]02font02b02br
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01b01font00Good question!02font02b0-

Forbes · Answer

0A pidgin is a rudimentary language that comes into existence when two mutually unintelligible languages come into contact. It is never spoken as a mother tongue.02br
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00If the children of speakers of a pidgin adopt it as their primary means of communication it develops grammatical features and becomes a proper language capable of expressing everything the speaker needs to express. It then becomes a creole and is spoken as a mother tongue.02br
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00(Confusion can arise because some creoles are actually called pidgins.)02br
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00Code switching may occur in bilingual communities. Speakers change languages as the mood takes them, but the languages do not interfere with each other so that each language is spoken in the same way as speakers of each language speak it who do not code switch.02br
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00A mixed language differs from a creole in that it does not develop from a pidgin. It is likely to be understood by persons who understand the languages that are mixed, whereas a creole is likely to be unintelligible by speakers of the languages from which it arose.02br
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00Distinguishing between a language and a dialect is a vexed question, but suffice it to say that a dialect, thought it may have borrowings from an unrelated language, is not the same thing as a creole as it will never have been a pidgin. Dialect implies some degree of intelligibilty with other vareties of the same language, particularly those in close proximity, so that it is often possible to speak of a continuum of dialects - you will usually understand the man in the next village (unless of course he speaks a completely different language).02br
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00Quite apart from all the above, languages borrow from each other.02br
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00There is no hard and fast division between these categories. Some pidgins are more developed than others. There is obviously a transitional stage between a pidgin and a creole. Code switching may lead to the development of a mixed language. In countries where a creole is spoken as well as one of the languages which went to make it up there may be several registers between the two.02br
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00Gibraltar is an interesting case. Gibraltarians speak Llanito. Some regard it as a mixed language, some as a creole, some as a case of continuous code switching and some as a case of heavy borrowing. If you speak both Spanish and English you can understand most of it. 0-

Pidgin Englishes

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