Strangers without a shared language improvise. A pidgin is a simplified contact language that develops between groups that need to communicate but lack a common tongue, typically with reduced grammar and a limited lexicon drawn from the languages in contact.

Pidgins arise in trade, plantation, and migration settings. They are nobody’s native language at first. Structural simplification and mixed vocabulary are characteristic, though each pidgin has conventions speakers must learn.

If children nativize a pidgin, it may expand into a creole. Not every contact situation produces a stable pidgin; many yield only ad hoc jargon. Documentary work preserves pidgins that might otherwise vanish when contact conditions change.

• Simplified contact language for intergroup communication
• Not initially a native language
• Has reduced grammar and mixed lexicon
• May expand into a creole if nativized