A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language that has dev

eloped from a pidgin, i.e. a simplified version of a language. Creoles differ fr

om pidgins because creoles have been nativized by children as their primary lang
uage, with the result that they have features of natural languages that are norm
ally missing from pidgins, which are not anyone's first language.
The precise number of creoles is not known, particularly as these are poorly att
ested, but about one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500, predominan
tly based on European languages, due to the Age of Discovery and the Atlantic sl
ave trade,[1] though there are creoles based on other languages, including Arabi
c, Chinese, and Malay. The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian
Creole, with about ten million native speakers.
The lexicon of a creole language is largely supplied by the parent languages, pa
rticularly that of the most dominant group in the social context of the creole's
construction, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the
other hand, the grammar often has original features that may differ substantial
ly from those of the parent languages.
A creole is believed to arise when a pidgin, developed by adults for use as a se
cond language, becomes the native and primary language of their children
a process
known as nativization.[2] The pidgin-creole life cycle was studied by Hall in t
he 1960s.[3]
Creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the langua
ges from which they are phylogenetically derived.[4] However, there is no widely
accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities.[5] Moreove
r, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles,[6][7][8][9][
10][11] although it is generally acknowledged that creoles have simpler and less
sophisticated grammar than longer-established languages
Many of the creoles known today arose in the last 500 years, as a result of the
worldwide expansion in European maritime power and trade in the Age of Discovery
, which led to extensive European colonial empires and an intense slave trade. L
ike most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally been regard
ed as degenerate variants or dialects of their parent languages. Because of that
prejudice, many of the creoles that arose in the European colonies have become
extinct. However, political and academic changes in recent decades have improved
the status of creoles, both as living languages and as object of linguistic stu
dy.[12][13] Some creoles have even been granted the status of official or semi-o
fficial language.
Linguists now recognize that creole formation is a universal phenomenon, not lim
ited to the European colonial period, and an important aspect of language evolut
ion (see Vennemann (2003)). For example, in 1933 Sigmund Feist postulated a creo
le origin for the Germanic languages.
Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene, argue that pidgins and creoles arise i
ndependently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always pr
ecede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene,
emerged among trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernacular
s for their day-to-day interactions." Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlemen
t colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants w
hose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted exte
nsively with non-European slaves, absorbing certain words and features from the
slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized ver
sion of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the c
reole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which conta
ct with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary.

The English term creole comes from French crole, which is cognate with the Spanish
term criollo and Portuguese crioulo, all descending from the verb criar ('to br
eed' or 'to raise'), all coming from Latin creare ('to produce, create').[15] Th
e specific sense of the term was coined in the 16th and 17th century, during the
great expansion in European maritime power and trade that led to the establishm
ent of European colonies in other continents.
The terms criollo and crioulo were originally qualifiers used throughout the Spa
nish and Portuguese colonies to distinguish the members of an ethnic group who w
ere born and raised locally from those who immigrated as adults. They were most
commonly applied to nationals of the colonial power, e.g. to distinguish espaoles
criollos (people born in the colonies from Spanish ancestors) from espaoles penins
ulares (those born in the Iberian Peninsula, i.e. Spain). However in Brazil the
term was also used to distinguish between negros crioulos (blacks born in Brazil
from African slave ancestors) and negros africanos (born in Africa). Over time,
the term and its derivatives (Creole, Krol, Kreyol, Kriol, Krio, etc.) lost the g
eneric meaning and became the proper name of many distinct ethnic groups that de
veloped locally from immigrant communities. Originally, therefore, the term "cre
ole language" meant the speech of any of those creole peoples.