Language: Difference Between Pidgin And Creole

INTRODUCTION
Language is “the systematic, conventional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols in a human society for communication and self expression” (Crystal, 1992) . The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release. As we all know, language is very important since then until now and will be important in the coming era. Typically, people acquire a single language initially which is their first language, or mother tongue. There are many language types in linguistics and the ones we are focusing at are lingua franca, pidgin, and creole.
LINGUA FRANCA
Lingua Franca might be the most commonly recognized of these three terms. A lingua franca is a language used

There are important distinctions between pidgin and creole. Most of the people will think that pidgin and creole are the same languages because creole is born from pidgin language. The main characteristic of pidgin is it characterized by an extremely simplified grammatical structure and reduction while creoles start to develop to a more complex grammatical structure. Creole also have their own vocabulary which is different from its original language.
Difference from lingua franca and creole, pidgin has no native speakers. Murphy (2012: 62) stated that a pidgin is nobody’s first language/mother tongue, it doesn’t have any native speakers, it is just used as a contact language for communication purposes such as business and politic. Pidgin is also not widely used in many fields like the other types of language. The main reason pidgin is not used widely because it is lack of a certain linguistic feature like articles. Hymes (1971: 3) points out that pidgin is marginal and some people even called them bad languages because of the status of its origin and the judgments towards

When the language is rarely used by the speakers, the language will vanish. Pidgin is not frequently used because this language is limited for some purposes only such as a medium of communication between the slaves and their masters. For lingua franca, it has almost zero possibility to be a dead language because it is widely used in diplomacy, education, trades, communication and major fields. It also has a huge amount of speakers’ population in this world.
In terms of sociolinguistics prestige, lingua franca has higher prestige compared to pidgin and creole. This prestige is depending on the number of speakers, literary heritage, a degree of modernization and international standing. Lingua franca has high sociolinguistics prestige because of the number of speakers is huge, rich literary heritage, a high degree of language modernization and considerable international standing. Unlike lingua franca, pidgin has low prestige because it’s mostly used by slaves during the colonialism and not widely spread.