verb
- to make into or cause to become a pidgin language; to simplify a language for basic communication between speakers of different languages
Usage: linguistics; transitive and intransitive
Examples
- Trade contact caused the local language to pidginize over time.
- The sailors pidginized their speech to communicate with the merchants.
- When different language groups meet for commerce, their languages often pidginize.
- The colonial period saw many languages pidginize due to forced contact.
- Researchers studied how the language began to pidginize in the port city.
- Economic necessity caused the workers to pidginize their native tongues.