There are other theories about the origin of the term.īecause of their limited function, pidgin languages usually do not last very long, rarely more than several decades. The word, first attested in print in 1850, is thought to be the Chinese mispronunciation of the English word business. The term pidgin has nothing to do with birds. A good example of a non-European pidgin is the Chinook Jargon that was once used by American Indians and European traders in the Pacific Northwest. However, there are also pidgins spoken in parts of Africa, South America, and southeast Asia that are based on languages other than those of the colonial powers. For example, the establishment of plantation economies in the Caribbean, with large groups of slaves from different language backgrounds who came from West Africa, gave rise to a number of pidgins based on English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese. The major languages are usually the languages of the former major colonial powers, such as English, French, and Portuguese. Usually a pidgin language is a blend of the vocabulary of one major language with the grammar of one or more other languages.
Nobody speaks a pidgin as their first language.
Pidgins are “on-the-spot” languages that develop when people with no common language come into contact with each other.
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