Nativization in the context of "Linguists"

Hawaiian Pidgin (known formally in linguistics as Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE and known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaiʻi speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a second language. Although English and Hawaiian are the two official languages of the state of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by many residents of Hawaiʻi in everyday conversation and is often used in advertising targeted toward locals in Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaiian language, it is called ʻōlelo paʻi ʻai lit. 'hard-taro language'. Hawaiian Pidgin was first recognized as a language by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015. However, Hawaiian Pidgin is still thought of as lower status than the Hawaiian and English languages.

Despite its name, Hawaiian Pidgin is not a pidgin, but rather a full-fledged, nativized and demographically stable creole language. It did, however, evolve from various real pidgins spoken as common languages between ethnic groups in Hawaiʻi.

A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable form of contact 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. 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). 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. These three features distinguish a creole language from a pidgin. Creolistics, or creology, is the study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist.

The precise number of creole languages is not known, particularly as many are poorly attested or documented. About one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500. 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. 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; in turn, full creole languages developed from these pidgins. In addition to creoles that have European languages as their base, there are, for example, creoles based on Arabic, Chinese, and Malay.