Pidgins are spoken all over the world: Africa, the Caribbean, northern South America, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. However, it’s still widely referred to as Pidgin English. Born out of the slave trade along the Atlantic coast during the 17th and 18th centuries, it is spoken across much of West Africa today, meaning that it is technically a creole. West African Pidgin English, for example, is also known as Guinea Coast Creole English. In reality, the two terms are often used somewhat interchangeably. “A language formed when a mixture of a European language with a local language (especially an African language spoken by slaves in the West Indies) is spoken as a first language.” According to Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, a creole is defined as: It’s essentially a pidgin language that ends up being spoken as a first language. Over time, it’s possible for a pidgin to become a creole. They combine two languages in a way that facilitates communication where it would otherwise not be possible. Pidgin languages are blended tongues that are born of necessity. “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 a lingua franca.”

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a pidgin is:

So why are pidgin languages barely present in marketing and advertising content? We explore this topic below, but first, let’s take a closer look at what pidgin languages are and where they are spoken.

Nigerian Pidgin English, for example, has an impressive 75 million speakers in Nigeria, Haitian Creole has 12 million speakers and Jamaican Creole has 3.2 million. Official estimates of the number of pidgin languages vary, but Ethnologue lists a total of 16 pidgin languages with speakers spread around the globe. Pidgin languages-most simply defined as a blend of two languages-are used around the world.