Chapte

r 3:
Lingua Franca
Pidgin
Creole

Amir Hamzah
People who speak different languages who are
forced into contact with each other must find
some way of communicating, a lingua franca.
In a publication concerned with the use of
vernacular languages in education published in
Paris in 1953, UNESCO defined a lingua
franca as ‘a language which is used habitually
by people whose mother tongues are different
in order to facilitate communication between
them.’
Today, English is used in very
many places and for very many
purposes as a lingua franca, e.g.,
in travel and often in trade,
commerce, and international
relations. For some speakers it is
a native language, for others a
second language, and for still
others a foreign language.
However, in the last two categories abilities in the
language may vary widely from native-like to
knowledge of only some bare rudiments. This is
certainly the case in India, where even though
Hindi is the official language, English, spoken in
all kinds of ways, is widely used as a lingua
franca.
Pidgin and Creole: Definitions

A pidgin is a language with no native speakers:

it is no one’s first language but is a contact
language. That is, it is the product of a
multilingual situation in which those who wish
to communicate must find or improvise a
simple language system that will enable them
to do so.
Very often too, that situation is one in
which there is an imbalance of power
among the languages as the speakers
of one language dominate the
speakers of the other languages
economically and socially.
A pidgin is therefore sometimes regarded
as a ‘reduced’ variety of a ‘normal’
language, i.e., one of the aforementioned
dominant languages, with simplification of
the grammar and vocabulary of that
language, considerable phonological
variation, and an admixture of local
vocabulary to meet the special needs of the
contact group.
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’.
Holm (1988, pp. 4–5) defines a pidgin as: a
reduced language that results from extended
contact between groups of people with no
language in common; it evolves when they need
some means of verbal communication, perhaps
for trade, but no group learns the native
language of any other group for social reasons
that may include lack of trust or of close
contact.
The process of pidginization probably requires a situation
that involves at least three languages (Whinnom, 1971), one
of which is clearly dominant over the others. When three or
more languages are involved and one is dominant, the
speakers of the two or more that are inferior appear to play a
critical role in the development of a pidgin. They must not
only speak to those who are in the dominant position, but
they must also speak to each other. To do this, they must
simplify the dominant language in certain ways, and this
process of simplification may or may not have certain
universal characteristics.
We may argue, therefore, that a pidgin arises from the
simplification of a language when that language comes
to dominate groups of speakers separated from each
other by language differences.

This hypothesis partially explains not only the origin of

pidgins in slave societies, in which the slaves were
deliberately drawn from a variety of language
backgrounds, but also their origin on sea coasts, where a
variety of languages might be spoken but the language of
trade is a pidgin.
It also helps to explain why pidginized varieties of
languages are used much more as lingua francas by
people who cannot speak the corresponding standard
languages than they are used between such people and
speakers of the standard varieties. For example, Pidgin
Chinese English was used mainly by speakers of different
Chinese languages, and Tok Pisin is today used as a
unifying language among speakers of many different
languages in Papua New Guinea.
 Superstrate language: English
 Substrate language: Austronesian and Papuan
languages

The bulk of the vocabulary comes from English (i.e.

the superstrate language).
In addition, Tok Pisin includes words from various
Austronesian and Papuan languages (e.g. Tolai,
Malay).
Finally, Tok Pisin includes some words of German
origin (e.g. gumi, beten, raus)
 Tok Pisin – Word Formation
• Mausgras = moustache
• gras bilong hed = hair
• ‘grass belong head’
• gras belong fes = beard
• ‘grass belong face
• gras antap long ai = eyebrow
• ‘grass on top of long eye’
 Tok Pisin - Vocabulary
spak (‘spark’) = drunk
nogut (‘no good’) = bad
baimbai (‘by and by’)= soon
sekan (‘shake hands’) = to make peace
kilim (‘kill him’) = to kill /hit /beat
pisin (‘pigeon’) = bird / pidgin
gras (‘grass’) = gras /hair /fur
Malay:
binatang insect
lombo chilli
sayor vegetable leaf
A creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the
first language of a new generation of speakers.
As Aitchison (1994, p. 3177) says, ‘creoles arise when
pidgins become mother tongues.’
A creole, therefore, is a ‘normal’ language in almost
every sense.
Holmes (1992, p. 95) says that ‘A creole
is a pidgin which has expanded in
structure and vocabulary to express
the range of meanings and serve the
range of functions required of a first
language.’
Pidginization generally involves some kind of
‘simplification’ of a language, e.g., reduction in
morphology (word structure) and syntax
(grammatical structure), tolerance of considerable
phonological variation (pronunciation), reduction
in the number of functions for which the pidgin is
used (e.g., you usually do not attempt to write
novels in a pidgin), and extensive borrowing of
words from local mother tongues.
Winford (2003, p. 302) points out that
‘pidginization is really a complex combination of
different processes of change, including reduction and
simplification of input materials, internal innovation,
and regularization of structure, with L1 influence also
playing a role.’
Creolization involves expansion of the morphology and
syntax, regularization of the phonology, deliberate increase
in the number of functions in which the language is used,
and development of a rational and stable system for
increasing vocabulary.
 Geographical Distribution & Linguistic Characteristics

Pidgin and creole languages are distributed

mainly, though not exclusively, in the equatorial
belt around the world, usually in places with direct
or easy access to the oceans.

Consequently, they are found mainly in the

Caribbean and around the north and east coasts of
South America, around the coasts of Africa,
particularly the west coast, and across the Indian
and Pacific Oceans.
 Their distribution appears to be fairly closely
related to long-standing patterns of trade, including
trade in slaves.
A basic source on their distribution is Hancock (1977),
a survey that was intended to list each language that
had been treated as either a pidgin or a creole. Hancock
lists 127 pidgins
and creoles. Thirty-five of these are English-based.
Another fifteen are French-based, Fourteen others are
Portuguese-based. seven are Spanish-based. five are
Dutch-based,
three are Italian-based, six are German-based, and the
rest are based on a variety of other languages.
Each pidgin or creole is a well-organized
linguistic system and must be treated as such:
you cannot speak Tok Pisin by just
‘simplifying’
English quite arbitrarily: you will be virtually
incomprehensible to those who actually do
speak it, nor will you comprehend them.
You will instead be using Tok Masta, a term used by Papua
New Guineans to describe the attempt which certain
anglophones make to speak Tok Pisin. To use Tok Pisin
properly you have to learn it, just as you must learn
German or Chinese in order to speak these languages
properly.

The sounds of a pidgin or creole are likely to be fewer and

less complicated in their possible arrangements than those
of the corresponding standard language. For example, Tok
Pisin makes use of only five basic vowels and also has
fewer
consonants than English.
No contrast is possible between words like it and
eat, or pin and fin, or sip, ship, and chip: the
necessary vowel and consonant distinctions
(contrasts) are not present. Speakers of Tok Pisin
distinguish a ship from a sheep by calling the
first a sip and the second a sipsip.
 It is also becaus
e of the lack of
distinction that the /p/–/f/
some written ve
Pisin record cer rsions of Tok
tain words with
whereas others p spellings,
record the same
spellings. So fa words with f
r as speakers of
concerned, it do Tok Pisin are
es not make any
you say wanpel difference if
a or wanfela (‘o
be judged to ha ne’); you will
ve said the wor
way. ds in the same
In pidgins and creoles there is likely to be a
complete lack of inflection in nouns,
pronouns, verbs, and adjectives. Nouns are
not marked for number and gender, and
verbs lack tense markers. Transitive verbs,
that is, verbs that take objects, may,
however, be distinguished from intransitive
verbs, that is, those that do not take objects,
by being marked, e.g., by a final -im in Tok
Pisin.
The vocabulary of a pidgin or a creole has a great many
similarities to that of the standard language with which it is
associated. However, it will be much more limited, and
phonological and morphological simplification often leads
to words assuming somewhat different shapes. As noted
above in the example of sip and sipsip, it is sometimes
necessary to use this reduplicative pattern to avoid possible
confusion or to express certain concepts, e.g., ‘repetition’ or
‘intensification.’
Consequently, we find pairs like talk (‘talk’) and
talktalk (‘chatter’), dry (‘dry’) and drydry
(‘unpalatable’), look (‘look’) and looklook (‘stare’),
cry (‘cry’) and crycry (‘cry continually’), pis (‘peace’)
and pispis (‘urinate’), and san (‘sun’) and sansan
(‘sand’). Certain concepts require a somewhat
elaborate encoding: for example, in Tok Pisin ‘hair’ is
gras bilong het, ‘beard’ is gras bilong fes, ‘feathers’ is
gras bilong pisin, ‘moustache’ is gras bilong maus,
‘my car’ is ka bilong me, and ‘bird’s wing’ is han
bilong pisin.
A pidgin or creole may draw on the vocabulary
resources of more than one language. Tok Pisin
draws primarily from English but also from
Polynesian sources, e.g., kaikai (‘food’), and even
German, because of historical reasons, e.g.,
rausim (‘throw out’ from the German heraus,
‘outside’). The source may not always be a
‘polite’ one, e.g., Tok Pisin bagarap (‘break
down’) is from the English bugger up. So ka
bilong mi i bagarap is ‘My car broke down.’
 From Pidgin to Creole and Beyond

Whatever their origins, it is generally acknowledged

that a pidgin is almost always involved in the
earliest stage of a creole. The pidgin comes about
from the need to communicate, particularly when
those who need to communicate speak a variety of
languages and the speakers of the ‘target’ language
are ‘superior’ in some sense and perhaps transient
too.
Thus, pidginization seems to have happened – and
seems still to happen – repeatedly, for it is one of the
basic means by which linguistic contact is made
among speakers of different languages who find
themselves in an asymmetrical social relationship,
i.e., one in which there is a serious imbalance of
power. The fact that is especially interesting is how
similar the results are from place to place and from
time to time.
Not every pidgin eventually becomes a creole, i.e.,
undergoes the process of creolization. In fact, very few
do. Most pidgins are lingua francas, existing to meet
temporary local needs. They are spoken by people who
use another language or other languages to serve most of
their needs and the needs of their children. If a pidgin is
no longer needed, it dies out.
Creolization occurs only when a pidgin for some reason
becomes the variety of language that children must use in
situations in which use of a ‘full’ language is effectively
denied them. A creole is the native language of some of
its speakers.
The example of Tok Pisin is useful in considering how a
pidgin expands and develops into a creole. It was not
until the 1960s that the pidgin was nativized, i.e.,
children began to acquire it as a first language, and,
therefore, becoming for them a creole (while remaining
an extended pidgin for previous generations).
Tok Pisin has become symbolic of a new culture; it is
now used in many entirely new domains, e.g.,
government, religion, agriculture, and aviation; it is
employed in a variety of media; and it is supplanting the
vernaculars and even
English in many areas (pp. 448–9).
Because a creole can be related to some other dominant
(or superordinate) language a creole (or post-creole)
continuum can arise. For example, an English-based
creole can develop a number of varieties when it is in
contact with Standard English. As the range of these
varieties increases, Standard English may more and
more influence them so that some varieties will come to
resemble Standard English. This process has become
known as decreolization.
A continuum can arise only if the two extreme varieties
are varieties of the same language, as with standard X
and creolized X (e.g., Standard English and Jamaican
Creole English). When different languages are involved
there can be no continuum, as between Sranan, an
English-based creole, and Dutch in Suriname. If the total
society is highly stratified, so that there is little or no
contact between the groups who speak the creolized and
superordinate varieties, and/or if these two varieties have
separate and distinct functions in the lives of people, then
there will be no continuum. We will have a diglossic
situation.
A continuum appears to require that there be some
kind of continuity in society among the various sub-
groups. It arises from the development of varieties
intermediate between the original pidgins and the
superordinate variety.

A diglossic situation is one in which the creole and

the standard lack continuity so far as functions are
concerned, and that functional discontinuity is
generally strongly supported by severe social
stratification.