- When you think of creole languages, you might think of Louisiana Creole, Haitian Creole or Jamaican Patois.

But what if I told you that according to some linguists, I'm speaking a creole language to you right now, English.

We already know that English borrows from everybody, but can it really be considered a creole?

I'm Dr. Erica Brozovsky, and this is "Otherwords."

(bright music) - "Otherwords."

- To learn more about pidgin and creole languages, I spoke with Dr. Keisha Wiel, a Creolist and linguistic anthropologist who is also a speaker of Papiamentu, the Creole language spoken in Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, the ABC islands of the Dutch Caribbean.

Can you define a creole and a pidgin language for me?

- Creole languages are basically languages that were created by different communities of speakers who came together and needed to interact with each other.

For the most part, we think mostly about like colonialism for example, and those languages sort of persevered.

Pidgins are similar in that sense, but they're not as are what many linguists would say.

They're not as "well-developed" as creole languages.

It's sort of like basic communication within pidgins.

- Pidgins typically developed in situations of consistent trade or colonization or, as was often the case, regions where there was the enslavement of people.

They often had limited vocabularies and simplified grammar, sufficient to fulfill their communication purposes.

The term pidgin has nothing to do with pigeon the bird, but apparently everything to do with the English word business.

It's alleged to have come from Chinese merchants' pronunciation of business, which after dozens of years of iteration, transmogrified into pidgin.

From Chinese Pidgin English, we've adopted phrases like look-see, no can do and chop chop.

Around the same time, the term pidgin began to be applied to other languages that developed through similar language contact situations.

The pidgins that survived and are still used to this day are ones that became extended pidgins.

They developed more complex grammars and vocabularies and came to be used in all domains of life, not just business.

These include Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, Bislama in Vanuatu, Naija in Nigeria and Kamtok in Cameroon.

If you're surprised that I didn't mention Hawaii Pidgin there, that's because it's actually a creole.

Another misnomer.

My understanding is that if you speak a pidgin language, you also speak another language.

Pidgin is not your like native tongue or even the one that you live most of your life in necessarily.

But for creole speakers, is it the case sometimes that they only speak a creole language and they don't speak a different language in addition to that?

- Yeah, you'll have monolingual creole speakers, and so for instance, Haiti, most of their education is in French, but the majority of the people on the island only speak Haitian Creole and Haitian Creole is different enough from French that when many students are in the classroom, yeah, they might know some words here and there because there are some similarities between French and Haitian Creole, but not enough that they're able to fully comprehend things.

- Why are they not teaching students in their home languages?

- That's a really good question, and I preface this with saying I understand why it's not taught, even though personally I believe it's wrong.

Creole languages, for the most part, they've always been considered like a bad version of a European language.

(presenter speaks in foreign language) French, English, Dutch, those are real languages where Haitian Creole and Papiamentu and Jamaican Patois, because they're so young, they're not real languages yet.

They need like time to mature.

There is this idea of like, well, I don't want my kid to be taught in some language that doesn't exist.

That's some bad form of another language, so we have to teach them in French.

We have to teach them in Dutch.

We have to teach them in English.

- So learning in your own language is seen as a detriment to your future learning capabilities.

- For some people, they see it as a barrier.

Studies have shown that that's not the case.

(teacher speaks in foreign language) Studies have actually shown, if you're actually taught in your own language and you're taught other languages through your own language, you'll be able to learn them at a faster rate.

(class and teacher exclaim) The reality is they're languages full stop.

They have complex grammatical structures.

If you're learning Papiamentu, Haitian Creole, for example, it's not like you can just put words anywhere and be like, "Hey, I'm speaking this language."

- Teaching creole languages ensures that students who grow up speaking these languages realize that what they speak is not broken French or broken English or broken Portuguese, but actual realized languages that have grammars and lexical aspects that are distinct to them.

- I'm going to make sure that my nieces and nephews, hopefully they don't have to be socialized into this idea that what they speak is not enough, that they have to speak something else, that their language is special enough, is real enough, and that while yes, it is great to know several different languages, but not at the expense of your own language.

- Is English a creole language?

- I can guarantee you there'll be other linguists who will tell you, "No, English is not a creole language."

But when you ask them to break down why it's not a creole language, is it because Black and Brown people are speaking that language that makes it a creole language?

We don't call Montreal French a creole language.

We don't call Afrikaans a creole language, but they developed in a very similar fashion that Jamaican Patois, Hawaiian Pidgin English, Papiamentu did, right?

So why are we not calling them creole languages?

Why are we not calling English creole languages?

Because it didn't just pop out of some place, right?

It didn't just magically appear.

So yes, it is a creole language.

Short answer.

- If you speak a creole language, you know that you can say everything you need to in your language.

And as the world changes and new technologies develop, all languages evolve and adopt or create new words to fill in the gaps.

Creoles are no different.

In fact, do we even need the word creole as a descriptor to separate the languages out?

Some linguists, Dr. Weil included, are saying no.