The changing status of creoles

We know from Week 1 that extended contact between people from diverse linguistic backgrounds influences the languages that people speak, so much so that new languages can form. In the early stages of language contact, pidgins can develop. Pidgins are simplified communication systems that have a reduced grammar and vocabulary. By definition, there are no first-language pidgin speakers and they have no official status (Bakker, 2020).

As pidgins are used more frequently, they often develop and eventually become the primary language of a speech community. Once a developed pidgin acquires first-language speakers, it becomes a creole. Unlike pidgins, creoles have a full range of vocabulary and complex grammatical structures, just like any other language.

Haitian Creole

Haitian Creole or kreyòl ayisyen is a French-based creole spoken by about 9.5 million people in Haiti, making it the most widely spoken creole in the world (Fattier, 2013).

The history of Haitian Creole is not fully understood, but when the French arrived in the Caribbean in 1625, they brought enslaved people from West Africa. Their languages mixed with French, resulting in the emergence of a new language. The prestigious status of French made it the superstrate language which supplied most of the vocabulary. The less prestigious African languages were the substrate languages, influencing the grammar and sound patterns of the emerging creole.

Unlike French, Haitian Creole has no grammatical gender; tense is indicated by individual words rather than verb endings and the word for ‘the’ comes after a noun rather than before it (DeGraff, 2007). These differences, among many others, make Haitian Creole “virtually unintelligible for French speakers” (Bakker, 2020, p. 209).

By the time of independence in 1804, Haitian Creole had become the “national language of the people” but it took until 1987 for it to be recognised officially in the Haitian constitution (Brutus, 2022).

Palenquero

Palenquero is a Spanish-based creole spoken in Colombia and the only surviving Spanish-based creole in mainland South America (Gómez, 2016).

The village of San Basilio de Palenque was founded in the late 1600s by fugitive African slaves known as cimarrones. Under the leadership of Benkos Biohó, they established a settlement that won independence from the Spanish Crown in 1713 (Gómez, 2016). There, the mix of Portuguese, Spanish and the central West African dialect of Ki-Kongo developed into a creole, providing a shared means of communication among people of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Creating and maintaining their language became an “exercise of resistance” and a cornerstone of their cultural identity (Stunt, 2019). Unfortunately, speaking Palenquero later became a source of embarrassment as people were mocked for speaking what they perceived as “bad Spanish” (Gómez, 2016). By 2009, only 18% of locals were fluent in the language (Stunt, 2019). However, more recent revitalisation efforts have seen a resurgence in the language and, today, across the region, children are required to study Palenquero for two hours a week (Gómez, 2016).

Unserdeutsch

Unserdeutsch, or Rabaul Creole German, is a rare German-based creole that developed in a mission school and orphanage opened in 1897 near Rabaul in what is now Papua New Guinea. The children, born to local mothers and fathers from Germany, Australia, Micronesia and elsewhere, arrived speaking their mothers’ language and an early form of Tok Pisin (an English-based creole that we will explore later in this course). At school, they learnt German which they mixed with Tok Pisin as an in-group language. They continued to use the language into adulthood and, as speakers married other members of the community, the language developed further.

Unserdeutsch is therefore different to other creoles. It didn’t evolve from a pidgin used for communication between different linguistic communities as Tok Pisin already served that role. Instead, as we will see later in the course, it was a marker of belonging to a distinct group of people with their own identity (Siegel, 2020).

Unserdeutsch is now critically endangered. It is estimated that there are only 100 speakers, most of whom now live in Australia and are over the age of 70 (Siegel, 2020).

The status of creoles

Despite the widespread view that creoles are languages like any other, this is rarely reflected in their status. Of the 93 creoles listed on Ethnologue (2025), only seven have achieved official status (Mustgo, n.d.). This likely stems from the historic stigmatisation of creoles as “bad” forms of their superstrate languages. However, the examples of Haitian Creole and Tok Pisin demonstrate that such attitudes can be overcome and, in time, it is likely that an increasing number of creoles will become officially recognised.

References

Bakker, P. (2020). Contact and mixed languages. In R. Hickey (Ed.), The handbook of language contact (pp. 201–220). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119485094.ch10

Brutus, W. (2022). A love letter to Haitian Creole: ‘Kreyòl pale, Kreyòl konprann’. The World. https://theworld.org/stories/2022/06/23/love-letter-haitian-creole-krey-l-pale-krey-l-konprann

DeGraff, M. (2007). Kreyòl ayisyen, or haitian creole (Creole French). Comparative creole syntax: Parallel outlines of, 18, 101-126.

Ethnologue (2025). Creole. Ethnologue. https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroup/70/

Fattier, D. (2013). Haitian Creole structure dataset. In Michaelis, S. M., Maurer, P., Haspelmath, M. and Huber, M. (eds). Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://apics-online.info/contributions/49

Gómez, L. (2016). In Colombia, how Palenque’s native tongue went from a dying language to a living treasure. AZ Central. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/world/2016/03/24/palenque-colombia-dying-language-palenquero-became-living-treasure/82098228/#:~:text=They%20organized%20workshops%20with%20the,efforts%20moved%20to%20the%20classroom

Kouwenberg, S., & Singler, J. V. (Eds.). (2009). The handbook of pidgin and creole studies. John Wiley & Sons.

Mustgo. (n.d.). Creole languages. MustGo. https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/creole-languages/

Siegel, J. (2020). Contact Languages of the Pacific. In R. Hickey (Ed.), The handbook of language contact (pp. 201–220). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119485094.ch10

Stunt, V. (2019). Reviving Colombia’s ‘language of resistance’. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-49471598