Language Starts Over—Creoles I Introduction 

A. As we have seen, there are no new languages in the strict sense. All of today’s languages are continuations of earlier ones: English is one of today’s versions of Proto-Indo-European.

B. But there have been situations since the first language arose when people speaking pidgins, which are not real languages, have found themselves in situations where they needed to use the pidgin as their main language. In such situations, people build the pidgin into a new real language. This is called a creole, and creoles are the world’s only truly new languages.