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Creole language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates from a mixture of various languages. The lexicon of a creole usually consists of words clearly borrowed from the parent languages, except for phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features and may differ substantially from those of the parent languages.

A creole is believed to arise when a pidgin, which was developed by adults for use as a second language, becomes the native and primary language of their children — a process known as nativization. The pidgin-creole life cycle was studied by Hall in the 1960s.

Some linguists have claimed that creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages they phylogenetically derive from. However, there is no widely accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities. Moreover, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles.
Many of the creoles known today arose in the last 500 years, as a result of the worldwide expansion in European maritime power and trade in the Age of discovery which led to extensive European colonial empires and an intense slave trade. Like most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally been regarded as degenerate variants or dialects of their parent languages. Because of that prejudice, many of the creoles that arose in the European colonies have become extinct. However, political and intellectual changes in recent decades have improved the status of creoles, both as living languages and as object of linguistic study. Some creoles have even been granted the status of official or semi-official languages.

Linguists now recognize that creole formation is a universal phenomenon, not limited to the European colonial period, and an important aspect of language evolution.