8.4 Languages in contact

　 Through out history no natural language is pure or free from influence of other languages. Due to trade, war, colonization and other causes languages may come into contact. When this occurs, mixed codes may come into being, which are called pidgins and creoles. Two or more languages may co-exist in a place, where bilingualism or multilingualism are part of the social institution.

　 The term pidgin is the label for the code used by people who speak different languages. A pidgin is not the native language of any group. It is confined to very limited communicative purposes, such as trade. Pidgins are mixed languages that are simplified syntactically and lexically. Juba Arabic spoken in southern Sudan is a pidgin.

　 A creole is a mixed language which has become the mother tongue of a speech community. The majority of creoles that still exist are based on English or French. Hawaiian creole, Jamaican creole, Guyana creole, etc. are all English-based. Creloes are not confined to certain functions of language nor reduced in syntax and lexis. Creoles and pidgins are distributed mainly in the equatorial belt around the world, usually in places with direct or easy access to the oceans.

　 Bilingualism and multilingualism are normal in many parts of the world today. In Quebec, Canada, for example, both English and French are used in the province. In Singapore, four official languages co-exist: English, Mandarin, Tamil, and Malay. Monolingualism, bilingualism or multilingualism is the result of language planning. They have different effects on the society and the individual.

　 On the part of the individual, it will be necessary to speak two languages if the community is bilingual. Some people grow up speaking two languages because their family is bilingual. This situation is termed coordinate bilingualism. Others have to learn a second language as they grow up. This kind of bilingualism is called subordinate bilingualism.

　 Bilingualism gives rise to code-switching and code-mixing. The former refers to the fact that a speaker changes from one language to the other in different situations or about different topics. The latter refers to the change from one language to the other within the same utterance. Both phenomena are interesting topics in sociolinguistics. Sociolinguists find it difficult to account for why bilingual people switch or mix the code every now and then.