What are pidgin languages?

Pidgin languages are an example of how languages can adapt to complicated situations.

Throughout history, people have moved from their birthplaces to other places. As they travel, they take with them their religion, their customs and, of course, their language. It is possible that the mother tongue is one of the elements of identity, if not the main one, that is most important for any person and that links him or her to his or her culture.

However, it often happens that when one arrives in a new place, the people who have ended up there do not speak the same language. This is a problem, because if they don't speak a common language, how can they understand each other?

Fortunately, people's cognitive flexibility helps them to survive, even in unfavorable situations, and they try their best to communicate with others.

Pidgin languages are the result of these contacts between people who speak different languages but, for various reasons, need to communicate, even in a very basic and simple way. but, for various reasons, need to communicate, even in a very basic and simple way. In this article we are going to approach the fascinating world of these languages and how they arise, as well as talk about some examples.

What are pidgin languages?

The word pidgin refers to a language that is the product of contact between two or more ethnic groups with different languages, who have established contact by living together.who have established contact living together in the same place but do not share the same language. By not sharing the same language, nor learning each other's language, these groups of people end up managing to understand each other, mixing words and grammatical structures from various languages.

Throughout history, pidgin has arisen in various contexts, the most common of which is in trade exchangeswhere two traders, coming from culturally very different regions, need to somehow agree while doing business and, to facilitate this, they both learn a few words of the other language that will be useful in such a situation.

Usually, pidgins are very simple communication systems, with a very limited vocabulary and phonology.. Moreover, they do not usually evolve in the same way as natural languages, such as Spanish, Catalan, English or Russian.

As these languages are the product of learning a few words and expressions from another language and adapting them to one's own language, they are not usually socially well regarded and are subject to a very strong digestion. are subject to a very strong diglossia, acting as dominated languages.acting as dominated languages.

Where does the word come from?

The origin of the term is obscure, but most linguists agree that the word pidgin is a Chinese deformation of the English word business, and its origins date back to the 19th century. Chinese and English speakers established contact in Canton, China during the 17th century, forming a mixed language of both languages that was baptized with the name 'pidgin', given that its function was to enable business between English and Asians.

Over time, the word pidgin, which originally referred to this half-Chinese, half-English language, came to mean any mixture of two or more simplified languages with little complexity.

How are these languages formed?

Normally, for a pidgin to be formed, certain conditions must be met. The main one is that people belonging to different language groups maintain contact over a long period of time..

The second condition is that the two or more language groups have the need to communicate, either for business or for some kind of power relationship.

Finally, the third condition necessary for a pidgin to be formed is that that the linguistic groups do not have a language that serves as a link to communicate between them, or that the languages of the two linguistic groups do not have a language that serves as a link to communicate with each other.or that the languages of the two communities have a relatively low level of mutual understanding.

Although most of the philological community agrees that these three conditions must be met, there are those who say, as in the case of Keith Whinnom, that for a pidgin to form, at least three languages are necessary, two being the languages spoken by the two ethnic groups plus a third dominant language that would serve as a superstratum.

What speakers do in these cases is to learn, in very broad strokes, the dominant language. Since it is not their mother tongue, nor do they have the means to learn it under good conditions, people memorize only those words and expressions that will be useful in a given context, people memorize only those words and expressions that will be useful in a given context, such as business or business-related terms.For this reason, pidgins do not memorize only those words and expressions that will be useful in a given context, such as terms related to business or to the situation in which the dominant language is useful.

For this reason, pidgins are not seen as complete languages, because they are really very simplified versions of a natural language. The phonetics are simplified, especially since there is no intention to speak like a native speaker of the dominant language. The grammar is not too complex and the vocabulary is usually only useful for a narrow range of situations.

In the case that pidgin has emerged from three languages (the two mother tongues of the language groups together with the dominant language), vocabulary is usually taken from the dominant language, while phonetics and grammar are specific to the mother tongues..

What differentiates them from creole languages?

One of the most striking features of pidgin languages is that they are not they are no one's mother tongue, but they are the second language of those who have been developing them.. It is the result of two or more linguistic groups having established contact with each other and needing to communicate in order to carry out some kind of interaction.

But sometimes, especially when these ethnic groups are rooted in the same territory after many decades of coexistence, the new generations that have been born and raised there begin to speak these pidgins naturally and as their mother tongue.

Thus, pidgin begins to have its first native speakers.The language will not be used only for business interactions or for those situations for which it was originally invented. Like any natural language, speakers of this language will use it for various situations: at home, at school, among friends, at work... with people who will be of the same generation and will also speak the same pidgin.

This is when pidgin has acquired a higher degree of complexity, because its speakers themselves have sought ways to fill in the vocabulary and grammatical gaps that the pidgin language showed at the beginning.

Thus, the main difference between pidgin and cri the main difference between pidgin and creole is that the latter has a higher level of complexity, can be used in a Wide range of contexts, and can be used in a wide range of languages.It can be used in a wide range of situations, as well as being the mother tongue of a linguistic community, the result of contact between two or more languages.

Some examples

The movements of human groups have given rise to many pidgins. Although this word comes from the 19th century, there is evidence of this type of language from very ancient times.

One of the oldest pidgins was the well-known lingua franca, used at the time of the Crusades.. Crusaders and traders destined to places to fight Islam came from many parts of Europe, with the Franks being predominant among them. That is why many words of the Frankish language were learned by these people and so they managed to understand each other.

It must be said that this famous pidgin acquired such importance that today the expression lingua franca refers to the language used by two people whose mother tongues are not the same but who know how to speak one that allows them to communicate with each other. For example, English between a German and a Japanese or Spanish between a Catalan and a Basque.

And, since we have mentioned Basque, let's talk about a very curious medieval pidgin, a mixture of the Basque language and the distant Icelandic language. Basque-Icelandic pidgin emerged during the 17th century, a mixture of Basque, Icelandic and, to a lesser extent, Romance words.. This pidgin arose as a result of Basque whalers going whaling off the coast of Iceland and needing to speak in a very basic way with the inhabitants of the island. Today, only a few words of this pidgin are known.

Spanglish, half English and half Spanish, is a special case.is a particular case, since it is not a specific pidgin, but a set of dialects, pidgins and creole languages whose origin goes back to the contact between English and Spanish speakers. Given the number of speakers of these two natural languages and the ease of finding resources to learn them, today this Spanglish has been progressively disappearing to be replaced by real bilingualism between the two languages.

Pidgins have existed in practically every country, and if we were to talk about the most interesting cases we would not reach the end of this article, since every imaginable language has had at some point in its history its pidgin version: Russian-Norwegian, Basque-Algonquian, Broken Slavey, Black German from Namibia...

As can be seen, the world of pidgin is fascinating and, due to its characteristics, there are very many conlangers or artificial language creators who have ventured into creating their own languages of this type.

Bibliographical references:

• Bakker, P. (1994), "Pidgins", in Arends, Jacques; Muijsken, Pieter; Smith, Norval (eds.), Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction, John Benjamins, 26–39
• Hymes, D. (1971), Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, Cambridge University Press,
• Sebba, M. (1997), Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles, MacMillan,
• Thomason, S. G.; Kaufman, T. (1988), Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics, Berkeley: University of California Press,
• Todd, Loreto (1990), Pidgins and Creoles, Routledge,