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- Any pidgin language that has ceased to be
- simply trade jargon in ports and markets and
- has become the mother tongue of a particular
- community. Many creoles have developed into
- distinct languages with literatures of their
- own; for example, Jamaican Creole, Haitian
- Creole, Krio in Sierra Leone, and Tok Pisin
- in Papua New Guinea. The name creole derives
- through French from Spanish and Portuguese,
- in which it originally referred both to
- children of European background born in
- tropical colonies and to house slaves on
- colonial plantations. The implication is that
- such groups picked up the pidgin forms of
- colonists' languages (Portuguese, Spanish,
- Dutch, French, and English) as they were used
- in and around the Caribbean, in parts of
- Africa, and in island communities in the
- Indian and Pacific Oceans. According to
- circumstance, in such places as Jamaica,
- Haiti, Mauritius, and W Africa there may be a
- `creole continuum' of usage between the
- strongest forms of a creole and the standard
- version of the language with which the creole
- is associated.
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