Pidgin (language)

A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of other languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues. Pidgins have simple grammars and few synonyms, serving as auxiliary contact languages. They are learned as second languages rather than natively.

Creation of pidgins

The creation 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

Also, Keith Whinnom (in Hymes 1971) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others.

Pidgins become creole languages when a generation whose parents speak pidgin to each other teach it to their children as their first language. Often creoles can then replace the existing mix of languages to become the native language of the current community (such as Krio in Sierra Leone and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea). However, pidgins do not always become creoles — they can die out or become obsolete.

Certain expressions survive from Chinglish, a pidgin formerly spoken in Southeast Asia. They have made their way into colloquial English. Many expressions are literal translations from Cantonese grammar. These include, in English (Chinese character and Cantonese pinyin) format:

long time no see (好耐冇見 hao3 noi6 mou5 gin3)
look-see (睇見 tai2 gin3): look and see
no can do (唔得做 m4 dak1 zou6): cannot do
no-go (唔去 m4 qu1): do not go.

Spanglish, commonly believed to be a pidgin of Spanish and English is actually not a pidgin. It is an example of code-switching because it occurs only among bilingual speakers and retains grammatical and phonological properties of both languages. So is Goleta English, a combined Spanish and English code-switch as it is spoken by Puerto Ricans, either occasionally when in the island, or daily as immigrants in the United States.

Funagalo is a Southern African pidgin used to communicate among speakers of many different languages, primarily while underground in the country's gold mines.

Caribbean pidgins

Caribbean pidgins are the result of colonialism. As tropical islands were colonised their society was restructured, with a ruling minority of some European nation and a large mass of non-European laborers. The laborers, natives, slaves or cheap immigrant workers, would often come from many different language groups and would need to communicate. This led to the development of pidgins. Three examples of pidgins in this region include Haitian Kreyol, Jamaican Patois, and Papiamento, which is widely spoken in Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles.

Pacific pidgins

The Melanesian pidgins may have originated off their home islands, in the 19th century when the islanders were abducted for indentured labour. Hence they were developed by Melanesians for use between each other, not by the colonists on whose language they are based. English provides the basis of most of the vocabulary, but the grammar has many Melanesian features, such as singular, dual and plural pronouns (Bislama also has treble pronouns), and inclusive and exclusive first-person cases. Tok Pisin has words from German, and Bislama from French. All also adopt words from local languages. When words are borrowed, not only the sound and the meaning, but also the emotional content can change. In the most famous example, "bagarap" (not working, out of action) is a polite word. "Wikit" (Solomons Pijin for pagan, from "wicked") has no connotations of evil.

Several expressions commonly used to exemplify Melanesian pidgins have no known basis in actual use. They include "bigfala bokis garem plande tit, iu hitim hemi kraeout" (E: a big box with many teeth, when you hit it, it cries) for a piano, and "miksmasta blong Jisas" (E: Jesus' food mixer) for a helicopter. The actual words in Solomons Pijin are piana and tiopa. One commentator pointed out that many Melanesians would be far more familiar with helicopters than electric food mixers, and would be more likely to call a mixer "helikopta blong misis".

The best-known pidgin used in America is the now creolized Hawaiian Pidgin where locals mixed the traditional dialect of Hawaiian with English, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages of immigrants of Hawaii and Pacific traders.

One of the most famous pidgins in the world is Pitcairnese, spoken mainly on Pitcairn Island, but also on Norfolk Island, an Australian territory.

Evolution

The concept originated in Europe among the merchants and traders in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages, who used mostly Sabir. Another well-known pidgin is Bislama of Vanuatu, based on English but incorporating Malay, Chinese, and Portuguese words. The monogenetic theory of pidgins, advanced by Hugo Schuchardt, theorizes that a common origin for most pidgins and creoles exists in the form of Sabir.

Sabir

Sabir was a common pidgin in the Southwestern ports of the Mediterranean. As Portuguese mariners travelled the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans on exploratory then military/trade naval expeditions, starting in the 17th century, in what is known to Europeans as "the Age of Discovery" they tried to speak Sabir with Portuguese words in it to the natives. When English, French and Dutch mariners followed the same routes, they also adopted this "broken Portuguese" with the lexical influence of their home languages and those of the locals. This would explain similarities in pidgins and creoles as separated as Papiamento, Tok Pisin, Chinese English Pidgin and others. For example, the word for "to know" is similar to sabir (that gave the name to Sabir itself). In Spanish and Portuguese, "saber" means "to know". It came into English as "savvy". The word for "small" is similar to Portuguese pequeno and became pikinini in pidgins. It came into English as pickaninny and it has been proposed as an etymology for pidgin.

Common traits among pidgins

Since a Pidgin strives to be a simple and effective form of communication, the grammar, phonology, et cetera, are as simple as possible, and usually consist of:

A Subject-Verb-Object word order in a sentence
No codas within syllables (Syllables consist of a vowel, with an optional initial consonant)
Basic vowels, like /a/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /o/
Separate words that indicate tense, usually before the verb
Words are repeated twice to represent plurals, superlatives, and other parts of speech that represent the concept being increased

Etymology

The origin of the word "Pidgin" is not clear. It is suggested the word is acquired from the Chinese pronunciation of the business, but it may also be "Pigeon English" in reference to carrier pigeon. The Chinese name for Pidgin, 洋涇濱, originated from the name of a river that lay along the boundary of French and British-leased land in Shanghai.

That name is retained in the form Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and Pijin Blong Solomon (Solomon Islands pidgin).

Pidgin English was the name given to a Chinese-English-Portuguese pidgin used for commerce in Canton during the 18th and 19th centuries. In Canton, this contact language was called Canton English.

History

Pidgin English from "God's Chinese Son," written by Jonathan Spence

http://www.hkfilm.net/pidgin.txt

References

(1971) Hymes, D. H. Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, Cambridge University Press.
(2002) McWhorter, John. The Power of Babel: The Natural History of Language, Random House Group.
Sebba, Mark (1997). Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. MacMillan. ISBN 0-333-63024-6.

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