intermixing of cultures

[Henry Kammler]

> In my layman's understanding of linguistics, isn't a pidgin a corruption of
> one tongue, while a creole is a synthesis of two or more - one that attains
> its own unique identity and expression?

No, sorry, I have to jump in here. The difference between a pidgin and
a creole is mostly a socio-linguistic one. Pidgins are contact
languages that serve as a means of communication between speakers of
different mother tongues. A pidgin in general does not have community
of native (L1) speakers, it is usually a second language for everyone
who uses it. A creole is a contact language that has evolved into the
mother tongue of a speech community. On sole linguistic grounds no
sharp line between pidgins and creoles can be drawn.

In no way is a pidgin a "corruption" of "one" tongue! Not only because
nobody in the world speaks a "corruption" but also because there is no
such thing as a pure ("one") tongue. Languages are fluid, open systems
und thus even if there were a pidgin in the world that were only based
on the language of one speech community [which is not the case], the
respective original language would already contain "foreign" elements.

Pidgins usually have two or more source languages. Often one of the
source languages predominates either in vocabulary or in grammar or
both. Pidgins develop a fully featured grammatical system in the
course of their existence. They are less stable than older languages,
though. Either they disappear when their purpose is not there anymore
(disruption of trade relations) or another language of a more powerful
speech community takes over or they become the mother tongue for a
group of people, i.e. they become creoles. New Guinea Pidgin (Tok
Pisin) has only recently made this leap, having become the first
language of a small number of urban residents while almost everybody
in the country speaks it to some extent as a second language (there
are still some 700 languages in PNG, including several regional
pidgins -- many people speak three, four or more languages).

Although there is no general rule, both pidgins and creoles (let's
call them contact languages) show certain common characteristics. For
example the morphological (inflectional) apparatus is reduced or
restructured (as compared to the source languages), words tend not to
change internally. Grammatical relations are often expressed in word
order, not by means of affixes.

BTW English has structural features that resemble those of contact
languages, and this is not totally out of place if we consider its
dramatic language history (Celtic substratum, various Germanic source
languages,  two layers of Romance influence -- Latin and medieval
French --, official language of a huge colonial empire). English has a
very strict word order and does not show much of word-internal change
(apart from the small number of irregular verbs). Not much there
anymore that resembles its modern Germanic "sister languages".

> Even my
> "pure" Norwegian half is said to contain Scots, Icelandic, Irish, Danish,
> Frisian, Dutch and even Spanish blood; hardly "pure Norwegian", if such a
> thing could even exist.

OK, simply replace ethnonyms with languages here and this is what I
was trying to say :-) language-wise. [Oh, never ask a Norwegian which
version of his national language is the "correct" one ;-)]

Another general observation that I, being from the other side of the
pond, repeatedly made is this overall concern with "blood" here. This
has probably much to do with the history of immigration and
nation-building. "We" have been pushing for decades now to remove the
discriminatory "blood" passage from the German Constitution. Imagine:
if you could prove your grandparents were Germans, no matter where
you're from, you received citizenship immediately until recently but
if you were born in Germany you don't have that right if your parents
don't have "German" blood. So I don't know if talking about blood does
lead anywhere. It's red after all.

Henry