Pidgin and Creole: The Difference 

Pidgin and Creole are both products of contact and the foregoing sections of this piece will reveal their meanings, differences as well as their similarities.

Pidgin is a simplified language that emanates from the contact between two languages. It is a situation whereby two different languages, similar in no way, come together to form a simplified compromise language that enables speakers on both sides to interact. Now this does not in anyway insinuate that both languages become completely fused, however, they spare some of their lexical items that could be beneficial particularly in trading activities.

Pidgin springs up chiefly from the need to ease inter linguistic trading activities and deal with the plight of language barrier. So lexical items are pulled in from the two contact languages and a simplified version of both languages is born with which speakers of both languages can communicate. Not that communication will be as effective as that between native speakers of either language, but at least communication will be possible.

It is characterized by few lexical items pulled in from both languages, and a very simplified grammar that is not stringent. Pidgin languages usually serve as a lingua franca—a language of trade between speakers of different languages.

Creole on the other hand is the highest stage of pidgin. A creole language is what you have when a pidgin language becomes a mother tongue. That is, when a person or speaker has a pidgin language as their native tongue, it becomes a creole.

So it can therefore be said that a creole language is achieved when a pidgin language attains the status of a mother tongue. This could be as a result of identity crisis, and displacement or loss of one's culture.

Some speakers might become so adept to using the pidgin language in their day to day life and as a result may end up passing the language down to their offsprings to whom it then becomes a mother tongue.

For example; some Nigerians, particularly in the south south region tend to have a pidgin language as their mother tongue—creole. This pidgin language is most likely a mixture of the English language and their indigenous languages and as a result of being accustomed to using the pidgin variety instead of their indigenous languages, they may end up passing it down to the next generation thus attributing the status of a creole language to it.

So pidgin and Creole are similar and related concepts but they differ in some aspects in that pidgin is a contact language involving a mix of features of two languages, while creole is an advanced form of pidgin having persons who speak it as their mother tongue.