PIDGIN AND CREOLES

1. Lingua Franca
People who speak different languages who are forced into contact with each other
must find some way of communicating, a lingua franca. In a publication concerned with use
of vernacular languages in education published in Paris in 1953, UNESCO defined a lingua
franca as a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are
different in order to facilitate communication between them. Still another kind of lingua
franca is mixed language. Bakker (1997) describes one such language, Michif, a mixture of
Cree and French spoken mainly in Canada by well under a thousand people of métis
(aboriginal and French) ancestry.
A lingua franca can be spoken in a variety of ways. Not only were they spoken
differently in different places, but individual speakers varied widely in their ability to use the
languages. English serves today as a lingua franca in many parts of the world: for some
speakers it is a native language, for others a second language, and for still others a foreign
language. However, in the last two categories abilities in the language may vary widely from
native-like to knowledge of only some bare rudiments. In this repect, those who used that
variety were not unlike many today who use English as a lingua franca: they use local
pidginized versions of English, not Standard English.

2. Definition of Pidgin
A pidgin is a language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but is a
contact language. That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish
to communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will enable them to do
so. A pidgin is therefore sometimes regarded as a ‘reduced’ variety of a ‘normal’ language,
i.e., one of the aforementioned dominant languages, with simplification of the grammar and
vocabulary of that language, considerable phonological variation, and a mixture of local
vocabulary to meet the special needs of the contact group.
The process of pidginization probably requires a situation that involves at least three
languages (Whinnom, 1971), one of which is clearly dominant over the others. When three or
more languages are involved and one is dominant, the speakers of the two or more that are
inferior appear to play a critical role in the development of a pidgin.
A common view of a pidginized variety of a language, for example, Nigerian Pidgin
English, is that it is some kind of ‘bad’ English, that is, English imperfectly learned and
therefore of no possible interest.

3. Definition of Creole
In contrast to a pidgin, a creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first
language of a new generation of speakers. A creole, therefore, is a ‘normal’ language in almost
every sense. Holmes (1992, p. 95) says that A creole is a pidgin which has expanded in
structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the rage of
functions required of a first language.
Just like a pidgin, a crole has no simple relationship to the usually standardized
language with which it is associated. However, speakers of creoles, like speakers of pidgins,
may well feel that they speak something less than normal languages because of the way they
and others view those languages when they compare them with languages such as French and
English. The process of creolization involves expansion of the morpphology and syntax,
regularization of the phonology, deliberate increase in the number of functions in which the
language is used, and development of a rational and stable system for increasing vocabulary.
4. Distribution
Pidgin and creole languages are distributed mainly, though not exclusively, in the
equatorial belt around the world, usually in places with direct or easy access to the oceans.
The caribbean area is particular interest for creolists because of there are many varieties of
language found there. There are countries or areas that are almost exclusively Spanish-
speaking and have no surviving pidgins or creoles as a result of their settlement histories, e.g.,
Antigua, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The language distribution of this whole Caribbean area
reflects its social and political history.

5. Characteristic
A pidgin has no native speakers yet. It is spoken by millions as means of commnication
and is not used as a means of group identification. A pidgin is a product of multilingual
languages-one is dominant, where the dominant group has more vocabulary while the less
dominant has more grammar. Its main function is for trading. Pidgins are linguistically
simplified, and the speakers develop their own rules and norms of usage.
A creole will run into nativization when pidgin passed into new generations and
became a mother tongue which is acquired by children. A creole is often classified as
English/French/Spanish. It is an expansion of morphology, syntax, phonology, and the
lexicon. A creole’s speech become faster, and unlike pidgin that has main function for trading,
a creole is used for a wde range of functions.

6. Origins
Linguists who have studied pidgins and creoles have long been intrigued by the
similarities. Furthermore, there are some theories about the origin of pidgins and creoles. The
first theory is ‘foreigner-talk’ or ‘baby-talk’ theory. According to this theory, the
simplification forms then serve to provide pidgins with the basic structures and vocabularies
of language. However, there is no evidence for this theory.
The second theory, the theory of polygenesis, is that pidgins and creoles have a variety
of origins; any similarities among them arise from the shared circumstances of their origins.
For example, speakers of English have had to make themselves understood for the purposes
of trade and those trading with them have had to be understood. Consequently, certain
simplified forms of English have developed independently in a number of places, giving rise
to varieties of pidgin English.
The third is monogenetic theory, is that the similarities among the pidgins and creoles
might be attributable to a common origin in the language of sailors in some kind of nautical
jargon. For example, Nelson’s flagship Victory is said to have been crewed by sailors of
fourteen different nationalities. A common shipboard lingua franca, or nautical jargon,
developed among the members of the sailing community. However, the evidence for this
theory is weak, consisting of a few sea-based terms in different pidgins.
Then, the theory of reflexification is an attempt to offer such an explanation. According
to this theory, all the present European-language-based pidgins and creoles derive from a
single source, a lingua franca called Sabir used in the Mediteranean in the Middle Ages. There
is a good evidence that reflexification has occured. If we look at Saramaccan, it seems to be
a pidgin in the process of reflexification from Portuguese to English. There is also evidence
that in parts of West Africa such kinds of replacement do occur, that people know the
vocabularies of different languages but use a kind of grammar in speaking them so that when
they come across a new language they employ the ‘new’ vocabulary in the ‘old’ grammatical
framework and manage to make themselves understood.