11 Facts About Creole languages

Creolistics, or creology, is the study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics.

Precise number of creole languages is not known, particularly as many are poorly attested or documented.

Creole languages is believed to arise when a pidgin, developed by adults for use as a second language, becomes the native and primary language of their children – a process known as nativization.

Atlantic Creole languages are based on European languages with elements from African and possibly Amerindian languages.

Indian Ocean Creole languages are based on European languages with elements from Malagasy and possibly other Asian languages.

Related searches

French-based creole languages in turn are more similar to each other than to other European-based creoles.

Theories focusing on the substrate, or non-European, languages attribute similarities amongst creoles to the similarities of African substrate languages.

The problem with this explanation is that the postulated substrate languages differ amongst themselves and with creoles in meaningful ways.

One class of creoles might start as pidgins, rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages.

Additionally, Mufwene argues that some Romance languages are potential creoles but that they are not considered as such by linguists because of a historical bias against such a view.

Mufwene and Wittmann have argued further that Creole languages are structurally no different from any other language, and that Creole is in fact a sociohistoric concept, encompassing displaced population and slavery.