Languages in Contact: Terminology
Some of these words may have other meanings; the meanings listed below are the ones relevant to the activity
Borrowing: Adopting a word used in a different language. E.g., the word "sugar" was borrowed from Arabic.
Cognate: A word in a language sharing an origin with a similar word in a different language. E.g., "I" in English and "Je" in French are cognates.
Cognate languages: Languages belonging to the same family. E.g., Hebrew and Arabic are both Semitic languages, and, therefore, cognate languages.
Creole: A pidgin language (see below) that has become the first language of a young generation of speakers. E.g., Haitians speak Kreyol, a creole language based on French and local dialects. In Kreyol, the word for "day" is jou, and the word for "dead" is mouri or mò, compare the French jour and mourir/mort respectively.
Pidgin: A language that is the result of communication between speakers of different languages attempting to create a common language, different from the native languages involved. This language is a simplified composite of the original two or more languages. For example, a pidgin language based on English and local languages is spoken in New Guinea. In this language, for example, the word for "baby" is pikinini, and the phrase for "a baby not yet weaned" is pikinini i dring susu yet (based on the Barhorst Pidgin/English dictionary).
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