creole

According to Yule (2010: 286), creole "is a variety of a language that developed from a pidgin and is used as a first language by a population of native speakers". The process of development from a pidgin to a creole is called creolization. While Crystel (2008: 122) defines creole as "A term used in sociolinguistics to refer to a pidgin language which has become the mother-tongue of a speech community, as is the case in Jamaica, Haiti, Dominica, and several other ex-colonial parts of the world. The process of creolization expands the structural and stylistic range of the pidginized language, so that the creolized language becomes comparable in formal and functional complexity to other languages".

There are believed to be between six and twelve million people still using pidgin languages and between ten and seventeen million using descendants from pidgins called creoles. When a pidgin develops beyond its role as a trade or contact language and becomes the first language of a social community, it is described as a creole. Tok Pisin is now a creole. Although still locally referred to as Pidgin, the language spoken by a large number of people in Hawaii is also a creole, technically known as Hawaii Creole English. A creole initially develops as the first language of children growing up in a pidgin-using community and becomes more complex as it serves more communicative purposes. Thus, unlike pidgins, creoles have large numbers of native speakers and are not restricted at all in their uses. A French creole is spoken by the majority of

the population in Haiti and English creoles are used in Jamaica and Sierra Leone. The separate vocabulary elements of a pidgin can become grammatical elements in a creole. The form baimbai yu go (by and by you go) in early Tok Pisin gradually shortened to bai yu go, and finally to yu bigo, with a grammatical structure not unlike that of its English translation equivalent, you will go. (Yule, 2010: 248). When a creole language develops, it is usually at the expense of other languages spoken in the area. But then it too can come under attack. The main source of conflict is likely to be with the standard form of language from which it derives and with which it usually coexists. The standard language has the status which comes with social prestige, education, and wealth; the creole has no such status, its roots lying in a history of subservice and slavery. Inevitably, creole speakers find themselves under great pressure to change their speech in the direction of the standard a process known as decreolization (Crystel, 2006: 346). According to Yule (2010: 286) decreolization refers to "the process whereby a creole is used with fewer distinct creole features as it becomes more like a standard variety ". Crystel (2008: 122) states that a process of decreolization takes place when the standard language begins to exert influence on the creole, and a post-creole continuum emerges. However, this process is not the reverse of creolization, and therefore some sociolinguists have suggested alternative terms for this stage, such as metropolitanization. Hudson (1996: 64) says that sociolinguists call the creole BASILECT and the prestige language the ACROLECT. This range of varieties

spanning the gap between basilect and acrolect is what has been referred to earlier as "POST-CREOLE CONTINUUM". Wardhaugh (2006: 58) states that Hymes (1971, p. 3) has pointed out that before the 1930s pidgins and creoles were largely ignored by linguists, who regarded them as marginal languages at best. (Some linguists were even advised to keep away from studying them lest they jeopardize their careers!) He points out that pidgins and creoles are marginal, in the circumstances of their origin, and in the attitudes towards them on the part of those who speak one of the languages from which they derive. They are also marginal in terms of knowledge about them, even though these languages are of central importance to our understanding of language, and central too in the lives of some millions of people. Because of their origins, however, their association with poorer and darker members of a society, and through perpetuation of misleading stereotypes . . . most interest, even where positive, has considered them merely curiosities. He adds that much interest and information, scholarly as well as public, has been prejudicial. These languages have been considered, not creative adaptations, but degenerations; not systems in their own right, but deviations from other systems. Their origins have been explained, not by historical and social forces, but by inherent ignorance, indolence, and inferiority. As languages of those without political and social power, literatures, and culture, they could be safely and properly ignored, for what could they possibly tell us about anything that English and French or even Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit could not?

Fortunately, in recent years such attitudes have changed and, as serious attention has been given to pidgins and creoles, linguists have discovered many interesting characteristics about them, characteristics that appear to bear on fundamental issues to do with all languages, fully fledged and marginal alike. Moreover, pidgins and creoles are invaluable to those who use them. Not only are they essential to everyday living but they are also frequently important markers of identity. In an interview in 1978 a schoolboy in Belize had this to say about his language: Well, usually in Belize you find the language, the main language you know is this slang that I tell you about, the Creole. And youd recognize them by that, you know. They usually have this, you know, very few of them speak the English or some of them usually speak Spanish (Le Page and TabouretKeller, 1985, p. 216). The study of pidgins and creoles has become an important part of linguistic and, especially, sociolinguistic study, with its own literature and, of course, its own controversies. With pidgins and creoles we can see processes of language origin and change going on around us. We can also witness how people are attracted to languages, how they exploit what linguistic resources they have, and how they forge new identities. We do not have to wait a millennium to see how a language changes; a few generations suffice. To some extent, too, the speakers of such languages have benefited as more and more of them have come to recognize that what they speak is not just a bad variety of this language or that, but a language or a variety of a language with its own legitimacy, i.e., its own history, structure, array of functions, and the possibility of winning eventual recognition as a proper language.

According to Hudson (1996: 67), there is no clear difference between pidgins and creoles, apart from the fact that creoles have native speakers and pidgins do not. Moreover it is clear that there is no moment in time at which a particular pidgin suddenly comes into existence, but rather a process of variety creation called pidginisation, by which a pidgin is gradually built up out of nothing. From a social point of view, a creole is more important than a pidgin. Most creole languages are spoken by the descendants of African slaves and are of great interest, both to their speakers and to others, as one of the main sources on information on their origins, and as a symbol of their identity (ibid: 63).

References
Wardhaugh, R. (2006). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell Publisher Ltd. Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. Cambridge: CUP. Hudson, R.A. (1980). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: CUP. Crystel, D. (2006). How Language Works. London: Penguin. Crystal, David. 2003. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.