With the improvements in ship-building and navigation, traders had to learn to communicate with people around the world, and the quickest way to do this was to develop a pidgin, or simplified language suited to the purpose in turn, full creole languages developed from these pidgins. These are predominantly based on European languages such as English and French due to the European Age of Discovery and the Atlantic slave trade that arose at that time. About one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500. The precise number of creole languages is not known, particularly as many are poorly attested or documented. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist. Creolistics, or creology, is the study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. These three features distinguish a creole language from a pidgin. Like any language, creoles are characterized by a consistent system of grammar, possess large stable vocabularies, and are acquired by children as their native language. While the concept is similar to that of a mixed or hybrid language, creoles are often characterized by a tendency to systematize their inherited grammar (e.g., by eliminating irregularities or regularizing the conjugation of otherwise irregular verbs). A Guadeloupe Creole sign stating Lévé pié aw / Ni ti moun ka joué la!, meaning "Slow down / Children are playing here!" Ī creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often, a pidgin), and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fledged language with native speakers, all within a fairly brief period of time.
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