creole continuum
Basilect-to-acrolect range
A creole continuum is the range of speech varieties that develops when a creole language exists alongside the prestige language it derived from.
Speakers shift along this spectrum—from the basilect (furthest from the prestige language) through the mesolect to the acrolect (closest to it)—depending on social context: She speaks broad patois at home but shifts toward standard English at work.
- GullahSea Islands creole language
- code-switchingAlternating between linguistic varieties
- broken EnglishImperfect foreign language use
- pidginizationFormation of contact languages
- bilingualismProficiency in two languages
borrowing · standardization · interference · Haitian · register · lingua franca · mother tongue · plantation · colonial history · Jamaican · relexification · prestige · social mobility · variation · colonial · shift · Caribbean · leveling
- pidginspidgin, pidgin English, pidginization
- Portuguese varietiesPortuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Azorean
creole continuumlanguage isolate
Unrelated speech system
language maintenance · indigenous language · heritage language · substrate language