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

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Etymology
The English term creole comes from French créole, which is cognate with the Spanish term criollo and Portuguesecrioulo, all descending from the verb criar ('to breed' or 'to raise'), all coming from Latin creare ('to produce,

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Historic classification
According to their external history, four types of creoles have been distinguished: plantation creoles, fort

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There are a variety of theories on the origin of creole languages, all of which attempt to explain the similarities among them. Arends, Muysken & Smith (1995) outline a fourfold classification of

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Creolistics investigates the relative creoleness of languages suspected to be creoles, what Schneider (1990) calls "the cline of creoleness." No consensus exists among creolists as to whether the nature of creoleness is prototypicalor merely evidence indicative of a

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• Chimwiini
• Diglossia
• Language contact
• Kiswahili

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The last decades have seen the emergence of some new questions about the nature of creoles: in particular, the question of how complex creoles are and the question of whether

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