Talk:Westron

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[edit] Creole language?

A recent edit removed the classification of Westron as a creole language, with the comment that it is doubtful Tolkien considered it one. I believe Tolkien certainly did not classify Westron as a creole, as during his lifetime the term was only applied to developed pidgins. Westron was never a pidgin: even as early as the middle Second Age Westron only had contact with closely related languages. A pidgin-like situation thus never occured, and therefore Westron cannot be seen as a creole. It was indeed a contact language, but not between unrelated languages of different development levels such as all real pidgins/creoles are. The contact between Adûnaic and the developed Bëorian/Hadorian (Marachian) tongues of Middle-earth is one which like has never occured on the real world and therefore we have no fitting term for it. It would be comparable to modern England discovering a place where Anglo-Saxon developed into a different path, and English and neo-AS would merge into a new language. -- Jordi·✆ 14:33, 6 June 2006 (UTC)