A simplified language that grows up between groups with no common tongue, usually for trade. The word is itself a pidgin word: a Chinese pronunciation of 'business'.
What it really means
A pidgin is a language that grows in the gap between two others. Two groups need to trade and share no tongue, so a working language assembles itself: vocabulary from one side, grammar patterns from the other, everything not strictly needed thrown away.
The word has the best origin of any word in linguistics, because the word for it is itself a pidgin word.
From 1826 English records pidgin meaning business, affair, thing. It represents a Chinese pronunciation of the English word "business" — a word that came back to English with a Chinese accent on it. By 1859 English sources are writing about pigeon English, spelled exactly like the bird, for the reduced English used in the ports of China. By 1876 pidgin names the jargon itself, and the spelling has been altered to stop people thinking about birds.
So the sequence runs: English word, borrowed into Chinese speech, heard back by English speakers as a foreign word, adopted as the name for the whole phenomenon, then re-spelled to hide the accident.
It is worth resisting the idea that any of this is broken language. The original was described as English words arranged according to Chinese idiom — which is not a failure to learn English. It is a third system, built quickly, by people who needed to do something today and had no time to learn each other's grammar first.
Where it comes from
The spelling with -dg- was fixed later; the earlier English spelling was simply pigeon.
Myths & misconceptions
Pidgin is named after pigeons, perhaps carrier pigeons.
No. The word is a Chinese pronunciation of 'business', recorded from 1826, and English simply spelled it like the bird for fifty years. The -dg- spelling arrived later to stop the confusion the earlier spelling caused.
A pidgin is just broken English.
A pidgin has its own grammar, usually borrowed from one language and vocabulary from another. The original was arranged, as the record has it, according to Chinese idiom with English words in it — which is a system, not a failure to learn.
How it connects
- Lingua Francathe broader idea — and the original lingua franca was a pidgin of the Mediterranean.
Questions people ask
- Where does the word pidgin come from?
- From a Chinese pronunciation of the English word 'business', recorded from 1826 in the sense 'business, affair, thing'. It has nothing to do with pigeons; the bird's spelling was borrowed by mistake.
- What is the difference between a pidgin and a creole?
- A pidgin is nobody's first language: it is a contact language used between groups. When children grow up speaking it as a mother tongue, with a full grammar of its own, linguists call it a creole.