A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as

trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exc ...

, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the groups). Linguists do not typically consider pidgins as full or complete languages. Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language. A pidgin may be built from words, sounds, or body language from a multitude of languages as well as

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

. As the

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word (), neuter of () meaning 'of or fo ...

of any pidgin will be limited to core vocabulary, words with only a specific meaning in the lexifier language may acquire a completely new (or additional) meaning in the pidgin. Pidgins have historically been considered a form of ''

patois ''Patois'' (, pl. same or ) is speech or language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. As such, ''patois'' can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects or vernaculars, but not commonly to jargon o ...

'', unsophisticated simplified versions of their lexifiers, and as such usually have low prestige with respect to other languages. However, not all simplified or "unsophisticated" forms of a language are pidgins. Each pidgin has its own norms of usage which must be learned for proficiency in the pidgin. A pidgin differs from a creole, which is the

first language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother to ...

of a speech community of native speakers that at one point arose from a pidgin. Unlike pidgins, creoles have fully developed vocabulary and patterned grammar. Most linguists believe that a creole develops through a process of nativization of a pidgin when children of acquired pidgin-speakers learn and use it as their native language.

Etymology

''Pidgin'' derives from a Chinese pronunciation of the English word ''business'', and all attestations from the first half of the nineteenth century given in the third edition of the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...

'' mean "business; an action, occupation, or affair" (the earliest being from 1807). The term ''pidgin English'' ("business English"), first attested in 1855, shows the term in transition to referring to language, and by the 1860s the term ''pidgin'' alone could refer to Pidgin English. The term was coming to be used in the more general linguistic sense represented by this article by the 1870s."pidgin, n." ''OED Online'', Oxford University Press, January 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/143533. Accessed 23 January 2018. A popular

false etymology A false etymology (fake etymology, popular etymology, etymythology, pseudo-etymology, or par(a)etymology) is a popular but false belief about the origin or derivation of a specific word. It is sometimes called a folk etymology, but this is also a ...

for ''pidgin'' is English '' pigeon'', a bird sometimes used for carrying brief written messages, especially in times prior to modern telecommunications.

Terminology

The word ''pidgin'', formerly also spelled ''pigion'', used to refer originally to

Chinese Pidgin English Chinese Pidgin English (also called Chinese Coastal English or Pigeon English; ) is a pidgin language lexically based on English, but influenced by a Chinese substratum. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, there was also Chinese Pidgin Engl ...

, but was later generalized to refer to any pidgin. ''Pidgin'' may also be used as the specific name for local pidgins or creoles, in places where they are spoken. For example, the name of the creole language

Tok Pisin Tok Pisin (,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh ; Tok Pisin ), often referred to by English speakers as "New Guinea Pidgin" or simply Pidgin, is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an ...

derives from the English words ''talk pidgin''. Its speakers usually refer to it simply as "pidgin" when speaking English. Likewise,

Hawaiian Creole English Hawaiian Pidgin (alternately, Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE, known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaii speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a se ...

is commonly referred to by its speakers as "Pidgin". The term ''jargon'' has also been used to refer to pidgins, and is found in the names of some pidgins, such as Chinook Jargon. In this context, linguists today use ''jargon'' to denote a particularly rudimentary type of pidgin; however, this usage is rather rare, and the term ''

jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...

'' most often refers to the words particular to a given profession. Pidgins may start out as or become trade languages, such as

. Trade languages can eventually evolve into fully developed languages in their own right such as Swahili, distinct from the languages they were originally influenced by. Trade languages and pidgins can also influence an established language's

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

, especially amongst people who are directly involved in a trade where that pidgin is commonly used, which can alternatively result in a regional dialect being developed.

Common traits

Pidgins are usually less morphologically complex but more syntactically rigid than other languages, and usually have fewer morphosyntactic irregularities than other languages. Characteristics shared by most pidgins: * Typologically most closely resemble isolating languages * Uncomplicated clausal structure (e.g., no embedded clauses, etc.) * Reduction or elimination of

syllable coda A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...

s * Reduction of consonant clusters or breaking them with epenthesis * Elimination of aspiration or sound changes * Monophthongization is common, employment of as few basic vowels as possible, such as * Lack of morphophonemic variation * Lack of tones, such as those found in Niger-Congo,

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

and

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

language families and in various families of the

indigenous languages of the Americas Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large nu ...

* Lack of grammatical tense; use of separate words to indicate tense, usually preceding the

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

* Lack of

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics *Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics *Complex conjugation, the change ...

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting ...

* Lack of

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual number ...

, commonly supplanted by reduplication to represent plurals and superlatives, and other parts of speech that represent the concept being increased and clear indication of the gender of animated objects. * Lack of clear

parts of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...

or word categorization; common use and derivation of new vocabulary through

conversion Conversion or convert may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * "Conversion" (''Doctor Who'' audio), an episode of the audio drama ''Cyberman'' * "Conversion" (''Stargate Atlantis''), an episode of the television series * "The Conversion" ...

, e.g. nominalization,

verbification In linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation or null derivation, is a kind of word formation involving the creation of a word (of a new word class) from an existing word (of a different word class) without any change in form, which ...

, adjectivization etc.

Development

The initial development of a pidgin usually requires: * prolonged, regular contact between the different language communities * a need to communicate between them * an absence of (or absence of widespread proficiency in) a widespread, accessible

interlanguage An interlanguage is an idiolect that has been developed by a learner of a second language (L2) which preserves some features of their first language (L1), and can also overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules. These two characteristic ...

Keith Whinnom (in ) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others. Linguists sometimes posit that pidgins can become

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

s when a generation of children learn a pidgin as their first language, a process that regularizes speaker-dependent variation in grammar. Creoles can then replace the existing mix of languages to become the native language of a community (such as the Chavacano language in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

, Krio in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

, and

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

). However, not all pidgins become creole languages; a pidgin may die out before this phase would occur (e.g. the Mediterranean Lingua Franca). Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene, argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged among trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions". Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European slaves, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary.

Examples

The following pidgins have Wikipedia articles or sections in articles. Many of these languages are commonly referred to by their speakers as "Pidgin". * List of English-based pidgins *

Algonquian–Basque pidgin Algonquian–Basque pidgin, also known as Souriquois, was a Basque-based pidgin spoken by Basque whalers and various Algonquian peoples. It was spoken around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. It was in use from at least 1580 until 1635, and was las ...

* Arafundi-Enga Pidgin * Bamboo English * Barikanchi Pidgin *

Basque–Icelandic pidgin The Basque–Icelandic pidgin ( eu, Euskoislandiera, Islandiera-euskara pidgina; is, Basknesk-íslenskt blendingsmál) was a Basque-based pidgin spoken in Iceland in the 17th century. It consisted of Basque, Germanic and Romance words. Ba ...

* Bimbashi Arabic *

Bislama Bislama (; ; also known by its earlier French name, ) is an English-based creole language and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" (citizens who live in Port Vila and Luganvil ...

(creolized) *

Borgarmålet ('townsfolk language') was an early 18th-century Swedish-based pidgin in the Swedish portion of Sápmi (specifically, the Lule River region), used seasonally between the rural Sámi and Swedish-speaking merchants and other inhabitants of the t ...

* Bozal Spanish * Broken Oghibbeway *

Broken Slavey Slavey Jargon (also ''Broken Slavey'', ''Broken Slavé, Broken Slave, Broken Slavee,'' and ''le Jargon esclave'') was a trade language used by Indigenous peoples and newcomers in the Yukon area (for example, in around Liard River and in the Macke ...

and Loucheux Jargon *

Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin is a pidgin that sprang up in Broome, Western Australia in the early 20th century to facilitate communication between the various groups working in the pearl hunting, pearling industry there—Japanese people, Jap ...

* Camtho * Cameroonian Pidgin English (creolized) * Cocoliche * Chinook Jargon * Duvle-Wano Pidgin *

Eskimo Trade Jargon Eskimo Trade Jargon was an Inuit pidgin used by the Mackenzie River Inuit as a trade language with the Athabaskan peoples to their south, such as the Gwich'in (Loucheux). It was reported by Stefánsson (1909), and was apparently distinct from t ...

Ewondo Populaire Ewondo Populaire, also known as Pidgin A70, is a Beti-based pidgin of Cameroon, spoken in the area of the capital Yaoundé Yaoundé (; , ) is the capital of Cameroon and, with a population of more than 2.8 million, the second-largest city i ...

Fanagalo Fanagalo, or Fanakalo, is a vernacular or pidgin based primarily on Zulu with input from English and a small amount of Afrikaans input. It is used as a lingua franca, mainly in the gold, diamond, coal and copper mining industries in South Afr ...

(Pidgin Zulu) * Français Tirailleur * Haflong Hindi * International Sign *

Inuktitut-English Pidgin Inuktitut-English Pidgin was an Inuit pidgin used as a contact language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary mean ...

* Kiautschou Pidgin German * KiKAR (Swahili pidgin) * Kwoma-Manambu Pidgin *

Kyakhta Russian–Chinese Pidgin Kyakhta Russian–Chinese Pidgin was a contact language (specifically a pidgin) used by Russian and Chinese traders to communicate during the 18th-early 20th century. The pidgin owes its name to the town of Kyakhta, a Russian town on the border ...

* Kyowa-go and

Xieheyu or Xieheyu () is either of two pidginized languages, one Japanese-based and one Mandarin-based, that were spoken in Manchukuo in the 1930s and 1940s. They are also known as , , and . Description The term Kyowa-go/Xieheyu is derived from t ...

Labrador Inuit Pidgin French Labrador Inuit Pidgin French, also called Belle Isle Pidgin, was a French-lexified pidgin spoken between Breton and Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basqu ...

Madras Bashai Madras Bashai (Tamil: , ) is the variety of the Tamil language spoken by native people in the city of Madras (currently known as Chennai) in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is sometimes considered a pidgin, as its vocabulary is heavily in ...

Maridi Arabic Maridi Arabic was a possible Arabic pidgin apparently spoken in the upper Nile valley around 1000 CE. If legitimate, it would be the oldest record of a pidgin. It is known from just fifty words in an 11th-century text. In 1068, the Andalusian ...

Maritime Polynesian Pidgin Maritime Polynesian Pidgin was a Polynesian-based pidgin that was the main contact language for European exploratory and whaling expeditions to the Pacific before the establishment of pidgin English, which dated to a century after the James Cook, ...

* Mediterranean Lingua Franca (Sabir) * Mekeo pidgins * Mobilian Jargon * Namibian Black German * Ndyuka-Tiriyó Pidgin * Nefamese * Nigerian Pidgin (creolized) * Nootka Jargon *

Pidgin Delaware Pidgin Delaware (also Delaware Jargon or Trader's Jargon)Goddard, Ives, 1997 was a pidgin language that developed between speakers of Unami Delaware and Dutch traders and settlers on the Delaware River in the 1620s. The fur trade in the Middle ...

Pidgin Hawaiian Pidgin Hawaiian (or Hawaii Plantation Pidgin) is a pidgin spoken in Hawaii, which draws most of its vocabulary from the Hawaiian language and could have been influenced by other pidgins of the Pacific region, such as Maritime Polynesian Pidgi ...

* Pidgin Iha * Pidgin Ngarluma * Pidgin Onin *

Pidgin Wolof Pidgin Wolof is a pidgin language based on Wolof, spoken in the Gambia The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHo ...

* Pijin (creolized) * Roquetas Pidgin Spanish * Russenorsk *

Settler Swahili Settla (), or Settler Swahili, is a Swahili pidgin mainly spoken in large European settlements in Kenya and Zambia. It was used mainly by native English speaking European colonists for communication with the native Swahili speakers. Origins ...

* Sranan Tongo *

Taimyr Pidgin Russian Taimyr Pidgin Russian is a Russian pidgin spoken on the Taimyr Peninsula by the Nganasan people The Nganasans (; Nganasan: ''ŋənəhsa(nəh)'', ''ńæh'') are a Uralic people of the Samoyedic branch native to the Taymyr Peninsula in north ...

* Tây Bồi Pidgin French *

Tinglish Tinglish (or Thaiglish, Thenglish, Thailish, Thainglish, etc.) refers to any form of English mixed with or heavily influenced by Thai. It is typically produced by native Thai speakers due to language interference from the first language. Diff ...

* Te Parau Tinito *

(creolized) * Turku language *

West Greenlandic Pidgin West Greenlandic Pidgin is an extinct Greenlandic-based contact language once used between the Inuit of Greenland and European traders. The vocabulary is mostly Greenlandic. Although words from Germanic languages were incorporated over the cours ...

Yokohama Pidgin Japanese Yokohama Pidgin Japanese, Yokohamese or Japanese Ports Lingo was a Japanese-based pre- pidgin spoken in the Yokohama region during the late 19th century for communication between Japanese and foreigners, mainly English speaking westerners and Chi ...

Notes

References

* * * * * *

External links

Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS)
{{Authority control Interlinguistics Pidgin Linguistics terminology