Is Pidgin English just Bad English?

28 April 2005

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How una dé? Uskain nius? These two greetings, the first from Nigeria and the second from Cameroon, both mean roughly "Hi, what's happening?" Both use words from English, but combine them in new ways. It's like when we greet someone by saying "long time no see," or when we invite a friend to come have a "look-see" or use "no can do" when something's not possible. When we do that, we're no longer speaking English. It's a new language -- based on English words but with simpler grammar and vocabulary. "Look-see" and "no can do" come from a language once called China Coast Pidgin English, and was used by sailors and merchants throughout the Pacific. But what kind of bird is this "pidgin?"

Imagine for a moment that everyone listening to this program spoke a different native language, not English, but that each of us had studied a year or two of English somewhere along the way. If we all get stranded on the proverbial desert island, we'd have to use our bits of English with one another, with no grammar books, and no native speakers to correct us or teach us new words. As the years went by, we'd all become fluent in this way of talking, and we'd invent combinations that a true native speaker of English would barely recognize.

A language formed this way -- among people sharing no native language and forced to communicate in one that no one speaks well -- is known by linguists as a Pidgin (spelled P-I-D-G-I-N). The word probably comes from South Sea traders' mispronunciation of the word business.

Pidgins start out as simplified languages, but something happens when children are born into pidgin-speaking families. It's the only language the children know, and they expand it. These new languages, spoken natively by the next generation in the family, are called creole languages. There are dozens of creole languages scattered around the world, derived from European languages such as English, French, and Portuguese, but also from Arabic, Swahili, and other non-European tongues. English-based creoles are used in the South Pacific from Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands and northern Australia. Gullah in South Carolina and Georgia and Hawaiian Pidgin are creole languages native to the U.S.

Creole languages have millions of speakers. And they aren't "broken" versions of what you might think of as "real" languages. They have established grammars, they're taught in schools, and used in radio, television, and the press. The Pidgin used to open this broadcast is spoken in much of West Africa. While many people mistakenly refer to it as "broken English," it's the language of African popular music and literature, and of novels that won a Nobel Prize.

Creoles often include words and expressions that speakers of languages like English or French would recognize, but with very different meanings. For example, beef in West African Pidgin English refers to any animal whose meat can be eaten. So a pig could be a "beef." In Papua New Guinea the word Meri (from the English name "Mary") is a word for woman, any woman.

Speakers of languages with long literary traditions sometimes laugh at creole languages, thinking of them -- and their speakers -- as inferior. But that kind of viewpoint has no basis in fact. Creoles are new languages, at most a few hundred years old, and deserve the same respect as the world's new nations, many of which also emerged through struggle.

Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human rights, translated into Nigerian Pidgin English, begins: Everi human being, naim dem born free and dem de equal for dignity and di rights wey we get, as human being. Speaking a creole language with pride and dignity is one of those basic human rights.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes to us from Dr. John Lipsky from Penn State University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you'd like to ask a question about languages, go to our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.