Pidgin
A pidgin is a simplified language. Pidgins usually develop because two groups of people need to talk to each other but do not speak the same language.[1][2] Pidgins are not usually as complicated as many other languages.[3]
Not all simple or "broken" forms of language are pidgins. Pidgins have rules which a person must learn to speak the pidgin well.[4]
Countries that use pidgin languages as their official languages include Papua New Guinea, Jamaica and some other Caribbean and Central American countries.
History of the word
Pidgin comes from from a Chinese pronunciation of the English word business. All cases given in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary mean "business; an action, occupation, or affair" . The earliest reference is from 1807. The term pidgin English ("business English") is first used in 1855, for a language. By the 1860s, the term pidgin alone could refer to Pidgin English. In the late 19th century, the term was used for any simplified language.[5][6]
A popular false etymology for pidgin is English pigeon, a bird sometimes used for carrying brief written messages, especially in the time before modern telecommunications.[5][7]
Examples
- long time no see (=we have not seen each other for a long time) is from Chinese „好久不见“ (good– long– not– see).
- look-see is also from Chinese „看见“.
References
- Bakker, Peter (1994), "Pidgins", in Jacques Arends, Pidgins and Creoles: an introduction, John Benjamins
- Hymes, Dell (1971), Pidginization and creolization of languages, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-07833-4
- McWhorter, John (2002). The Power of Babel: the natural history of language. Random House Group. ISBN 0-06-052085-X.
- Sebba, Mark (1997). Contact languages: Pidgins and Creoles. MacMillan. ISBN 0-333-63024-6.
- Thomason, Sarah & Terrence Kaufman (1988), Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics (first ed.), Berkeley: University of California Press
- Todd, Loreto (1990), Pidgins and Creoles, Routledge, ISBN 0415053110
Notes
- ↑ See Todd (1990:3)
- ↑ See Kaufman & Thomason (1988:169)
- ↑ Bakker (1994:27)
- ↑ Bakker (1994:26)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "pidgin, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, January 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/143533. Accessed 23 January 2018.
- ↑ Online Etymology Dictionary
- ↑ Crystal, David (1997), "Pidgin", The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press
