![]() ![]() Usually, in the process of finding common ground, the complexities of the contributing languages have to be shorn off. There is no cut-and-dried answer to whether a pidgin can be considered a full-fledged language. Anywhere that two languages meet, a pidgin can form. Many pidgins, in fact, can be linked back to colonialist roots, though colonialism is not a prerequisite. This is mostly because both the United Kingdom and the United States have expansive colonial histories, where communication was necessary with native people. Pidgins have sprung up all over the world, and a large number of them tend to come from the meeting of English and some other language. The difference is that one group never learns the entirety of the other group’s language. This might sound like it would be a close-to-impossible task, but it’s not entirely different from learning a language through immersion. The two groups will designate words to items and actions to convey information. ![]() Nowadays, this is called Chinese Pidgin English, because pidgin is a more widely used term.Ī “pidgin” today refers to the form of communication that arises when two (or more!) different languages collide. Instead, somewhat improbably, it comes from the Chinese pronunciation of the word “business.” Its earliest uses in the 19th century referred specifically to what was called “business English,” or the English that a Chinese speaker would learn to communicate with English businesses. The word pidgin has nothing to do with the city bird that everyone loves to hate. ![]() But what would happen if two people spoke different languages and there was no intermediary? Pidgins start to form. You can learn their language, they can learn your language, you can have some third language you both know, or you can use some sort of translation tool to facilitate. When you meet someone who doesn’t speak the same native language as you, there are a few methods you can use to get your point across. ![]()
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