written by: Faizatul Mufidah
PIDGIN and CREOLES
PIDGIN
A
pidgin is a language with no
native speakers: it is no one’s first language but is a contact language.
Pidgin language is a simplified language that develops as a means of
communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common.
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 very often too, that situation is one in which there is an
imbalance of power among the languages as the speakers of one language dominate
the speakers of the other languages economically and socially. In another that,
pidgin may also be used as the specific name for local pidgins or creoles.
The
vocabulary of a pidgin or a creole has a great many similarities to that of the
standard language with which it is associated. However, it will be much more
limited, and phonological and morphological simplification often leads to words
assuming somewhat different shapes.
For
example, the terms Hawaiian Pidgin
English and Hawaiian Creole
English may be used by even the same creolist (Bickerton, 1977, 1983) to describe the same
variety.
Examples
of the Hawaiian Pidgin spoken by people who immigrated around the turn of the
century:
"Inside dirt and cover and blanket,
finish"
"They put the body in the ground and
covered it with a blanket and that's all."
"Me cape buy, me check make."
"He bought my coffee; he made me out a
check."
"I bought coffee, I made him out a
check."
"Building-high place-wall
pat-time-nowtime-an' den-a new tempecha eri time show you."
Here the speaker was seeing (for the first
time) an electric sign high up on a building in Los Angeles which displayed the
time and temperature
"Good, dis one. Kaukau any kin' dis one.
Pilipine islan' no good. No mo money."
"It's better here than in the Philippines;
here you can get all kinds of food, but over there there isn't any money to buy
food with."
CREOLES
A
creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language
of a new generation of speakers.
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language that has
developed from a pidgin. Creoles differ from pidgins because creoles have been nativized
by children as their primary language, with the result that they have features
of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins, which are not
anyone’s first language.
The
vocabulary of a creole language is largely supplied by the parent languages,
particularly that of the most dominant group in the social context of the
creole’s instruction, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic
shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features that may
differ substantially from those of the parent language.
Examples
of the Hawaiian Creole spoken by the children of the immigrants:
"Da firs japani came ran away from japan
come."
'The first Japanese who arrived ran away from
Japan to here.'
"Some filipino wok o-he-ah dey wen' couple
ye-ahs in filipin islan'."
'Some Filipinos who worked over here went back
to the Phillippines for a couple of years.'
"People no like t'come fo' go wok."
'People don't want to have him go to work [for
them]."
"One day had pleny dis mountain fish come
down."
'One day there were a lot of these fish from
the mountains that came down [the river].
