Language Diversity Pidgins and Creoles Pidgins A pidgin is a contact language.

. Pidgins evolved when other people dont have a common language have contact with each other over a significant period of time. In such cases people will draw on features from both languages to construct a new mixed language that can fulfil only limited communication needs. Both parties will still used their natural language for home use. Pidgins tend to be short-lived languages; they only exist for as long as they are needed and they have reduced vocabularies and simpler, regularised grammatical structures. Interestingly, the two processed of simplification and regularisations are at work in English dialects. Standard English has lost some grammatically redundant features, for example, we no longer inflect verbs for the second person. There has also been a reduction of the number of irregular verbs. Creoles: Jamaican Creole A pidgin language can become the most important language in a community, in which case it will be passed onto children and will fulfil a large range of social functions. If this happens, the pidgin will have altered and expanded considerably and is said to have undergone the process of creolisation. African Vernacular English may have its origins in creole through the slave trade. English itself may have originated as a creole through the Germanic languages, the Scandinavian language of the Viking period or even from Latin. Jamaican Creole is not to be confused with Jamaican English. Jamaican English is a variety of English in a similar vein to American English and Australian English.