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When speakers of different languages interact over time, their languages affect each other. The mildest result is borrowing: loanwords such as English "pizza" or "tsunami," and loan translations such as German "Wolkenkratzer" from English "skyscraper." When groups with no shared language must communicate, they may build a pidgin, a reduced contact language with no native speakers that draws most of its vocabulary from one language, called the lexifier. When a contact language becomes the first language of a community, it is called a creole, and it develops the full grammatical range of any native language.
Start with borrowing by tracing loanwords in a page of everyday English. Then compare short sentences in a creole, such as Haitian Creole or Tok Pisin, with the lexifier language to show that the vocabulary is familiar but the grammar is different. Discuss the social settings, such as trade, colonial plantations, and forced migration, in which pidgins and creoles formed. Address attitudes directly, since creoles are often wrongly dismissed as broken versions of European languages.
No language develops in isolation. Whenever speakers of different languages trade, marry, migrate, or live under the same rulers, their languages influence each other. Linguists call this language contact, and its effects range from a few borrowed words to the birth of new languages.
Borrowing is the most common outcome. English has taken "algebra" from Arabic by way of Medieval Latin, "ketchup" probably from a southern Chinese language, "tsunami" from Japanese, and thousands of words from French and Latin. Sometimes speakers copy a foreign expression using their own words. These calques, or loan translations, include German "Wolkenkratzer" (cloud-scraper) modeled on English "skyscraper."
More intense contact can produce pidgins. A pidgin arises when groups who share no language need to communicate regularly, often in trade or on colonial plantations. Pidgins have small vocabularies, mostly taken from one language, the lexifier, and simple grammar with few inflections. By definition, no one speaks a pidgin as a first language. It is a tool for limited purposes.
When children grow up using a contact language as their main language, it becomes a creole. A creole serves every need of its community, from lullabies to legal debate, and its grammar becomes as rich as any language's. Haitian Creole, with a French lexifier, is spoken by nearly the whole population of Haiti and is one of the country's two official languages. Jamaican Creole and Hawaiʻi Creole English (locally called "Pidgin") have English lexifiers. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea began as a pidgin and now has many native speakers.
Creoles often share features even when their lexifiers differ, such as tense and aspect marked by separate words placed before the verb. Linguists debate why. Derek Bickerton argued that the similarities reflect an innate "bioprogram" that children use when input is limited. Others stress the influence of the substrate languages spoken by the creators, such as West African languages in the Caribbean, or general patterns of second-language learning.
Creoles face strong prejudice. They are often called broken or bad versions of English or French. Linguists reject this view because creoles have systematic grammars of their own. Where creoles sit beside their lexifier in daily life, speakers may move along a continuum from the most creole forms to forms close to the standard language, choosing among them by setting and audience.
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