A look at Pidgin and Creole

1. English – A Global Language
What happens when English meets
other languages?

2. Learning Intention:
Explore the acculturation of English.
Success Criteria: I am able to:
a) Explain the terms Standard English, Pidgin
and Creole
b) Explain the origins of pidgins and creoles
c) Understand the difference between pidgin
and creole
d) Explain the process of change from pidgin to
creole

3. Getting Knowledge Ready
• Complete the Language Quiz on page 199
• Solutions to quiz on website

4. Vocabulary
1.Look up the words ‘pidgin’ and ‘creole’.
What is the difference?
2.Look up the word ‘patois’.
3.Write all three meanings in your glossary.

5. Vocabulary cont’d
• Standard English - the simplest and clearest is
definition is that of the Oxford Dictionary:
‘The form of the English language widely
accepted as the usual correct form.’
• It will be different between countries and will
function differently for different communities.
• Variety – read sidebar on p201

6. Origins of Pidgins and Creoles
• Money and trade drove the
expansion of the British
Empire.
• British participated in the
slave trade capturing Africans
from all over Africa.

7. Origins of Pidgins and Creoles
• The language of initial contact
was lingua franca (historically,
a mixture of Italian with French,
Greek, Arabic, and Spanish).

8. Origins of Pidgins and Creoles
• Slave trading brought
the British into
contact between
Africa, Asia, America
and the Pacific and a
language was needed
for exchange and
trade.

9. Origins of Pidgins and Creoles
• By combining elements of the two (sometimes
more) languages a simplified language was
created - Pidgin.
• Pidgin developed because of the need to
communicate for exchange and trade.

10. About Pidgin
• Pidgin languages have:
– A limited vocabulary
– Reduced grammatical structure
– A narrow range of functions.
• Grammar of pidgin:
– The people being colonised :
• Take vocabulary from coloniser’s language
• Retain grammatical structure of own language

11. About Pidgin
• Common to all pidgin languages:
– Some words:
• maski – doesn’t matter
• savvy / save – know
– Repetitions:
• good-good;
• talk-talk;
• lik-lik (little)

12. About Pidgin
• Most pidgin does not evolve into creole
• Pidgin dies out when the specific function
leading to its creation no longer exists

13. Creolisation (add to glossary)
• The process where pidgin evolves into creole
• It can occur:
– when a group start using
pidgin as their main form
of communication;
– as a result of drastic events
(slave trade, invasion);
– where heavy borrowing
from another language occurs

14. Creolisation
• Results in:
– Increase in the size and complexity of the
language
• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Situations where used
• Children hear the language growing up and
adopt it as their mother tongue.

15. About Creole
• Creole language has:
– words of local origin,
– borrowed words,
– words from colonising language
– regional differences in pronunciation, spelling and
written form.

16. About Creole
• Extensive use results in:
– support and status for the language
– use in bilingual education and literature
– recognition as a separate language from English
• Sociolinguists assign names to creoles by
referring to the location and the language
from which most of the vocabulary is derived.

17. Decreolisation (add to glossary)
• Is the process where creole
– gradually converges (meets at a point) with the
language from which it derives most of its
vocabulary; and
– moves toward Standard English

18. Activities
• 10.2.2
• 10.2.4
• 10.2.5
• Read Tok Pisin case study
• 10.2.8