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A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that has developed from a pidgin (i.e. a simplified language or simplified mixture of languages used by non-native speakers) becoming nativized by children as their first language, with the accompanying effect of a fully developed vocabulary and system of grammar. The precise number of creoles is not known, particularly as these are poorly attested, but about one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500, predominantly based on European languages, due to the Age of Discovery and the Atlantic slave trade,〔''Linguistics,'' ed. Anne E. Baker, Kees Hengeveld, (p. 436 )〕 though there are creoles based on other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, and Malay. The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian Creole, with about ten million native speakers. The lexicon of a creole language is largely supplied by the parent languages, particularly that of the most dominant group in the social context of the creole's construction, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features that may differ substantially from those of the parent languages. == Overview == A creole is believed to arise when a pidgin, developed by adults for use as a second language, becomes the native and primary language of their children — a process known as nativization. The pidgin-creole life cycle was studied by Hall in the 1960s. Creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages from which they are phylogenetically derived. However, there is no widely accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities.〔; cited in 〕 Moreover, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles, although it is generally acknowledged that creoles have simpler and less sophisticated grammar than longer-established languages. Many of the creoles known today arose in the last 500 years, as a result of the worldwide expansion of European maritime power and trade in the Age of Discovery, which led to extensive European colonial empires. Like most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally been regarded in popular opinion as degenerate variants or dialects of their parent languages. Because of that prejudice, many of the creoles that arose in the European colonies, having been stigmatized, have become extinct. However, political and academic changes in recent decades have improved the status of creoles, both as living languages and as object of linguistic study. Some creoles have even been granted the status of official or semi-official languages of particular political territories. Linguists now recognize that creole formation is a universal phenomenon, not limited to the European colonial period, and an important aspect of language evolution (see ). For example, in 1933 Sigmund Feist postulated a creole origin for the Germanic languages. Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene, argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged in trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions." Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European slaves, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Creole language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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