'ore than 100 pidgin languages are currently in use (Romaine, 1988).

pidgin languages survive today in territories which formerly belonged to the European colonial nations, and act as lingua francas for example, West African Pidgin English is used extensively between several ethnic groups along the West African coast.' (David Crystal, English As a Global Language.

In time, most pidgin languages disappear, as the pidgin-speaking community develops, and one of its established languages becomes widely known and takes over the role of the pidgin as the lingua franca, or language of choice of those who do not share a native language.' (Grover Hudson, Essential Introductory Linguistics. 'At first a pidgin language has no native speakers and is used just for doing business with others with whom one shares the pidgin language and no other.

Think Progress » Bush’s Fluctuating Degree of Ability 2005Īnglo used to enroll them in informal classes to learn Fanagolo, a century-old, 200-word pidgin language that was created decades ago so that mining bosses could order illiterate miners to perform basic tasks.Ī Mile Down, Saving Platinum Miners' Lives 2010Ī pidgin is a simplified language used to help two groups with distinct languages communicate with each other.Ī pidgin is a mashup of two languages A and B used when a speaker of A and a speaker of B want/need to communicate. It is difficult to defend an American president who speaks in pidgin-English. How Social Bookmarking can lead to the Semantic Web 2006 We gave them worm tablets and would ask them politely, in pidgin English, to collect their fecal matter in buckets for us.Ī pidgin is what you get when you throw people together who have no common language and gramatically its kind of a mess. The story of a Korean uprising told in pidgin poetry.Ĭarl Brandon Society API Heritage Month Book List 2008 told me that the key to pidgin is to pick out the English words and try to make sense of them. Life and sport in China Second Edition Oliver George Ready 'no got pidgin,' and _pidgin English_ simply means a workable knowledge of colloquial English as picked up by tradesmen, servants and coolies, in contradistinction to English as taught in the schools.

Pidgin language definition