pidgin

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Will you travel further or farther for your summer vacation?
Take along our Concise Dictionary of English Usage and find out!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?conusg.htm&6
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The Word of the Day for July 2 is:

pidgin   \PIJ-in\   noun 
      : a simplified speech used for communication between people with 
different languages 

Example sentence:
      Creole, which is now spoken in parts of southern Louisiana, originated as 
a pidgin spoken between French-speaking colonists and African slaves. 

Did you know?
      The history of "pidgin" begins in the early 19th century in the South 
China city of Guangzhou. Chinese merchants interacting with English speakers on 
the docks in this port sometimes pronounced the word "business" as "bigeon." By 
the century's end, "bigeon" had developed into "pigeon" and finally "pidgin," 
which then became the descriptor of the unique communication used by people who 
speak different languages. Pidgins generally consist of small vocabularies 
(Chinese Pidgin English has only 700 words), but some have grown to become a 
group's native language. Examples include Sea Island Creole (spoken in South 
Carolina's Sea Islands), Haitian Creole, and Louisiana Creole. The alteration 
of "bigeon" to "pigeon" also gave us "pigeon," meaning "an object of special 
concern" or "accepted business or interest."