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( Mixed language)
A mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism. Although the concept is frequently encountered in historical linguistics from the early twentieth century, attested cases of language mixture, as opposed to code switching, substrata, or simple borrowing, are quite rare. A genuine mixed language may mark the appearance of a new ethnic or cultural group, such as the Métis. The fusion of more than two languages is not attested. A mixed language differs from a pidgin in that the speakers developing the language are fluent, even native, speakers of both languages, whereas a pidgin develops when groups of people with little knowledge of each other's languages come into contact and have need of a basic communication system, as for trade, but do not have enough contact to learn each other's language. In a mixed language both source languages are clearly identifiable. This differs from a creole language, which generally has one identifiable parent in addition to diverse input which can not be traced to any particular language. While creoles tend to have drastically simplified morphologies, mixed languages often retain the inflectional complexities of both parent languages. Finally, a mixed language differs from code-switching, such as Spanglish, in that speakers do not need to know the source languages. The fusion of the source languages is fixed in the grammar and vocabulary, not left to the speaker. However, it is believed that mixed languages evolve from persistent code-switching, with younger generations picking up the code-switching, but not necessarily the source languages that generated it.
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