The OED defines ‘pidgin’ as ‘a language containing lexical and other features from two or more languages, characteristically with simplified grammar and a smaller vocabulary than the languages from which it is derived, used for communication between people not having a common language’. Thus you can have ‘Pidgin’ (for the Chinese-English based pidgin), ‘a pidgin’ (derived from any given two or more languages), or specific varieties such as ‘Pidgin-English’, describing a pidgin in which the main derivative language is English, ‘Pidgin-French’, and so on.
It derives from a Chinese pronunciation of the English word ‘business’, a strong indicator of its social origin and value. ‘Pidgin’ has long been used in two ways, to describe an untutored form of a given language, and more usefully to describe a language used between distinct language-speakers, often based on one of their languages, with adaptations and major losses or simplifications of inflexions (word-endings) or verb case forms. Today we look at the use of the word ‘pidgin’ in First World War memoirs written during the conflict.
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