A Level English Language Website
I am not clear on the development from a pidgin to a creole. If I am correct I think this process is called creolization, but does it happen to all Pidgin languages?
By Mark Sebba
Creolisation definitely does not happen to all pidgins. Some pidgins just go on being pidgins for a long period or even a short period, and then die out because there is no further use for them.
Creolisation is the process whereby a pidgin becomes a creole. For this to happen there has to be a stable community (i.e. one where children are born and grow up) where the creole is spoken. The pidgin becomes a creole at the point where children grow up speaking it as their first language (usually because their parents have no other language in common, and sometimes because the whole community already use the pidgin as their main language, even though they also know other languages.) For example, in Papua New Guinea, there are now urban communities of people who originally came from villages in different parts of the country.
Pidgin is the main language in these communities because the original languages of the adults are completely different from each other. While the adults are still pidgin speakers (because for them, it's a second language) the children who grow up with the pidgin as their first language are actually creole speakers, and the pidgin has turned into a creole. If they have children, the children will learn the creole as their first language and so it will go on, just like any other language passed from generation to generation.
You can find out more from my book Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles (Macmillan, 1997).