Exploring the evolution and diversity of English-based pidgins and creoles

Is Estuary English a new prestige?

Estuary English as a new prestige standard. Term coined in 1984 by Rosewarne, named after the “banks of the Thames and its estuary” EE is to be heard in the House of Commons, the City, the Civil Service, the media and teaching professions in the south-east. The upper-class young now speak Estuary English.
Tok Pisin, It takes its name from “Talk pidgin”, and it’s spoken in Papua New Guinea and it represents one of the rare cases where a pidgin has been accepted as a national language in the constitution.

It emerged as Lingua Franca on late 19th century in the plantations.

Papua New Guinea is a country with a rugged, mountainous topography (which make many regions difficult to access and isolated), and thus unusual degree of multilingualism and cultural fragmentation has developed and prevailed.

Tok Pisin is creolizing, and it is estimated that up to a million people use it as their first language.

Singlish

Pitkern and Norfuk: languages at risk

Pitkern and Norfuk, derived from the names of the islands where they are spoken. The mutineers, who needed to evade the long reach of British retaliation, took some Thitinas, mostly women, with them and hid on the remote island of Pitcairn. No outside contacts, this developed an English contact verity with strong maritime and biblical components and a Tahitian substrate. In 1856 there was a relocation to Norfolk island due to an overgrowth of the population. Today, both languages are in danger of extinction.

Bislama and Sranan Tongo

Hawai’i Bislama is nowadays a creole, and it is the official language od the state of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. The name Bislama derives from “Beach-la-mar”, in Franch beche de mer and in English sea cucumber.

Sranan tongo has become creole and it is the development of the pidgin used by slaves. English-based creole with vocabulary from Dutch, Portuguese and languages of West and Central Africa, as well as influence from native tongues. Used as lingua franca in Suriname, and also spoken in the Netherlands.

Nigerian pidgin English : In Nigeria more than 500 languages are spoken, but in the interest of national unity English is the “official” language of the country. When Nigeria was a colony English was considered the language for the elite, for the well educated people. Actually de relationship between English and Pidgin is more complicated than one might think.

Pidgin is quite different from “regular” English in some ways, for instance the use of paraphrases to say words in English. Obviously there are several variation from the lexical and phonological point of view, there are borrowings from West African dialects and also sounds.