English-based creole languages

An English-based creole language (often shortened to English creole) is a creole language derived from the English language – i.e. for which English is the lexifier. Most English creoles were formed in British colonies, following the great expansion of British naval military power and trade in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The main categories of English-based creoles are Eastern (West African), Asian, Atlantic (The Americas), and Pacific.

Origin

It is disputed to what extent the various English-based creoles of the world share a common origin. The monogenesis hypothesis (Hancock 1969, Gilman 1978) posits that a single language, commonly called proto–Pidgin English, spoken along the West African coast in the early sixteenth century, was ancestral to most or all of the Atlantic creoles (the English creoles of both West Africa and the Americas).

List

Asian

Creole language

A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that has developed from a pidgin (i.e. a simplified language or simplified mixture of languages used by non-native speakers) becoming nativized by children as their first language, with the accompanying effect of a fully developed vocabulary and system of grammar.

The precise number of creoles is not known, particularly as these are poorly attested, but about one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500, predominantly based on European languages, due to the Age of Discovery and the Atlantic slave trade, though there are creoles based on other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, and Malay. The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian Creole, with about ten million native speakers.

The lexicon of a creole language is largely supplied by the parent languages, particularly that of the most dominant group in the social context of the creole's construction, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features that may differ substantially from those of the parent languages.