Maintaining Indigenous Languages in North America: What Can We Learn from Studies of Pidgins and Creoles?.

Abstract

What do studies of pidgins and creoles have to do with indigenous language maintenance? The development of pidgin and creole languages always occurs in the context of language contact, often between a European colonial language and one or more indigenous languages. All Native languages in North America have been in contact with a European language (usually English) for at least the last two hundred years. Educators and researchers in the area of Native language maintenance often comment that students are not learning the “proper” language. In many cases, young children come to school with a knowledge of only English, so they are learning the Native language as a second language. What often happens is that they learn Native vocabulary but maintain English grammatical structures and phonological distinctions. Are they speaking the Native language? Are they speaking English? Or are they speaking a “mixed” language? Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages are examples of how new languages develop over time through language contact. Perhaps the Native languages as spoken by young people can be regarded as types of pidgin languages. If we look at language learning in this way and realize that all languages change over time due to various influences, perhaps we can be more accepting of the way that Native languages are spoken today and encourage young people to continue speaking the language, in whatever form.

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