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Office, E.E. Creole. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60737 (accessed on 23 October 2026).
Office EE. Creole. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60737. Accessed October 23, 2026.
Office, Encyclopedia Editorial. "Creole" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60737 (accessed October 23, 2026).
Office, E.E. (2026, October 09). Creole. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60737
Office, Encyclopedia Editorial. "Creole." Encyclopedia. Web. 09 October, 2026.

Creole

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A creole is a natural language that develops through sustained contact among speakers of different languages and becomes the first language of a speech community. In a commonly used sociolinguistic account, creole languages emerge when a contact language, often a pidgin, becomes nativized and develops into a language used as the community’s native language [1]. The classification of a language as a creole is based substantially on its sociohistorical development rather than on a single set of structural features, since creole languages possess systematic grammatical and phonological structures and cannot be defined solely by linguistic simplicity or complexity [1][2]. A creole is therefore distinct from a pidgin, which is conventionally characterized by its initial function as a contact language that is not the native language of a speech community, although the processes and pathways through which creoles emerge vary across linguistic contexts [1].

creole languages language contact nativization pidgin languages
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References

  1. John Holm. An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles; Cambridge University Press (CUP): Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2000. [CrossRef]
  2. John H. Mcwhorter. Defining Creole; Oxford University Press (OUP): Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, 2005. [CrossRef]
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Entry Collection: Language and Linguistics
Revisions: 2 times (View History)
Update Date: 22 Oct 2026
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