Pidgin

A simplified communication system that emerges when groups lacking a shared language need to interact, typically in contexts of trade, plantation agriculture, colonisation, or cultural exchange. Unlike “complete” languages, pidgins feature reduced vocabulary, simplified grammar, and elements drawn from multiple source languages to enable basic communication.

Urgent, need-driven? A form of lingustic bricolage, where speakers improvise communication systems using available linguistic resources.

Morphologically simple but syntactically rigid, stabilising into a standardised protocol? Provisional bridges between different communities, particularly where there’s a significant linguistic difference between source languages.

Always learned as second (auxillary) languages.

An inherently translocal phenomenon, emerging in trading zones and spaces of cultural encounter. Can later evolve into a creole, if adopted as a first language by a new generation?