Multilingualism is a phenomenon arguably almost as old as mankind, and has existed in societies worldwide. Commonly, groups of people speaking different languages have dwelled and still continue to live near each other. While in various instances such people are part of the same nation or state living within the confines of the same boundaries, in other instances they are divided by political borders and in whichever circumstance, they have to communicate as a result of various forms of contact. When these speakers of different languages or varieties interact with each other leading to a transfer and exchange of linguistic features, language contact is said to have occurred.
Various phenomena provide for the occurrence of language contact. These include language convergence, and borrowing. Language contact yields various products such as creoles, code-switching, and mixed languages depending on the intricacies, nature and complexities of the interactions that occurs among languages. In cases where, for instance, the interaction between languages is occasioned by the movement of a group speaking a certain language into a region in which another language is spoken, one language is likely to have social dominance resulting in a language shift in which speakers adjust to speaking the dominant language.
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Language contact is a major factor in language change. Language contact, while resulting in multilingualism in some instances, may result in bilingualism in others. Facilitating the development of bilingualism is borrowing. As people speaking two different languages continue to interact over time, there is a borrowing of vocabulary, pronunciations, grammatical structures and other linguistic features. The use of either language is dependent on context and intention in most instances. While bilingualism and multilingualism is common worldwide, in various locations this ability is viewed in a pejorative manner and less valued. Bilingualism, therefore, does not always have positive associations.
Speaking several languages is a daily requirement for people in many parts of the world. The acquisition of these languages is often through simple exposure to those languages while some of these languages for a speaker may be learnt through schooling. The mastery of multiple languages by speakers and the subsequent use in all conversations results in linguistic consequences, one of which is the development of contact languages such as pidgins and creoles.
The development of creoles is closely linked to pidgins, with creoles thought to commonly emerge from pidgins. Pidgins, in their simplest definition, are simplified codes thought to have developed in situations in which speakers have no common language other than the superstrate (the socially, economically, and politically dominant language in the multilingual context), while creoles are full-fledged languages. The formation of creoles involves an expansion in the syntax and morphology in addition to a regularization of phonology and an increase in the number of functions. Normally, creoles are the creation of children who are born into multilingual environments in which the prime language for peer contact is a pidgin.
