Language Starts Over—The Creole Continuum

“Creoleness” is a continuum concept. Some creoles are closer to the language that provided their words than others: Saramaccan is barely recognizable as a kind of English, but French creoles, such as the one of Mauritius, are more like French in their grammars. There are even semi-creoles that are poised between dialect and creole. Many creoles exist as continua of varieties, shading from the European language itself to one quite far from it, with no break in between. In bird’s-eye view, this sheds light on what a “language” can be, such as Spanish, which shades across dialects into Portuguese while also existing in several creole varieties as well as the Spanish-Quechua hybrid Media Lengua, while Portuguese exists as several creoles plus semi-creole varieties in Brazil.

Just as one dialect shades into another one, leaving the concept of “language” an artificial and arbitrary one, “creoleness” is a continuum concept. Once we know this, we are in a position to put the finishing touches on our conception of how speech varieties are distributed across the globe.