Even after a pidgin develops into a CREOLE, the name may continue to be used, such as Roper Pidgin, also known as Roper River Creole. In addition and often prior to such academic names, pidgins may or may not be identified as such and often have specific names, retained by scholars when discussing them, such as Bazaar Hindustani/Hindi, Korean Bamboo English, français petit-nègre. Papuan Pidgin English therefore refers to the pidgin that is spoken in what was formerly the Territory of Papua, and that draws most of its vocabulary from English and is therefore an English-based pidgin HAWAII PIDGIN ENGLISH is the pidgin English spoken in Hawaii. The names given to pidgin languages by linguists refer to their location and their principal lexifier or base language: that is, the language from which they draw most of their vocabulary. In situations where speakers of more than two languages must converse in a medium native to none of them, the kinds of restructuring are more radical than in other cases and likely to be more durable. Other investigators argue that only in cases where more than two languages are in contact do true pidgins spring up. Such a viewpoint includes in the category of pidgin FOREIGNER TALK and other classes of makeshift and often transitory communication.

Some investigators claim that any two languages in contact may result in a degree of linguistic improvisation and compromise, and so lead to pidginization. There is, however, some disagreement among scholars over the number of languages in sufficient contact to produce a pidgin. The term is sometimes extended to refer to the early stages of any instance of second- language acquisition when learners acquire a minimal form of the target language often influenced by their own primary language. This process of simplification and hybridization involves reduction of linguistic resources and restriction of use to such limited functions as trade. In sociolinguistic terms, there have been many pidgins and the process known as pidginization is seen as liable to occur anywhere under appropriate conditions. For them, a pidgin is a marginal language which arises to fulfil certain restricted communicative functions among groups with no common language. The technical sense Sociolinguists in particular use the term to describe a phenomenon whose study has greatly increased since the Second World War. It should be noted, however, that Chinese ( Coastal) Pidgin English or China Coast Pidgin is now a technical term referring to a contact language used between speakers of English and Chinese from the first half of the 18c until the early 1970s. Peters noted: ‘Pidgeon, is the common Chinese pronunciation of business’ ( OED). Hall wrote: ‘I afterwards learned that “pigeon”, in the strange jargon spoken at Canton by way of English, means business’ in 1845, J. This was a TRADE JARGON used from the 17c onward between the British and Chinese in such ports as Canton. Etymologically, there appears to have been only one pidgin: Pidgin English, also known as Business English, Pidgin-English, pidgin-English, Pigeon English, Pigeon-English, bigeon, pidgeon, pidjin, pidjun. Because the word has often been used and discussed pejoratively, it carries such connotations as ‘childish’, ‘corrupt’, ‘lazy’, ‘inferior’, ‘oversimplified’, and ‘simple-minded’. The general sense As generally understood, a pidgin is a hybrid ‘makeshift language’ used by and among traders, on plantations (especially with and among slaves of various backgrounds), and between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, especially during the heyday of European expansion (17–20c). PIDGIN A term used in both a general and a technical sense for a CONTACT LANGUAGE which draws on elements from two or more languages: pidgin Portuguese a Spanish pidgin.

Academic sources on pidgin language