The best example of culture-mixing 

The Creole languages appeared during the colonization era and are now spoken in about a hundred countries. From the Antilles to French Guyana and the Indian ocean, French Creole is spoken by ten million speakers. 

The Creole language, a linguistic process rather than a language 

The "Creole language" is often wrongly referred to in the singular form. There is actually over a hundred languages of this type in the world. The Creoles are a living testimony of the ancient intercultural processes. They are of English (Jamaica, United-States), Portuguese (Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau), Spanish (Philippines) and of course French origins: the most significant Creole-speaking community lives in the former colonies of the Antilles, French Guyana and Indian ocean, with about ten million French Creole speakers.

A history bound to colonization 

The history of Creole languages is intertwined with the backdrop of colonial conquest in which they appeared. Starting of the 16^th century, the main colonial powers of the time (Spain, France, Great-Britain, the Netherlands and Portugal) are  empires.

The slave trade organised by those powers leads to a massive moving of African populations. The Creoles appear in a backdrop of exchanges exclusively oral between colonisers and enslaved populations. Every Creole is the product of several idioms spoken by deported populations trying to find a common language.

French Creoles: so far away, yet so close 

French-base Creoles have a lot in common with the French. Phonetics, as a start. In Martinique, a "nomm" is a man ("homme") and a "gason", a young man ("garçon"). In Guadeloupe, "espwa" means hope ("espoir") and "enmé", to love ("aimer"). Lexicon has also common points: the vocabulary spoken in those former colonies is 90% derived from French.

It's the differences of syntax and pronunciation that make understanding often impossible for a non-speaker. The Creoles also take French language to their own accord to create an evocative, poetic and surprising language. In Réunion, a "tantine" is a young lady, a "bibine" a beer and a "bonbon-la-fesse" (literally "buttocks candy") a... suppository!

To know more, check out the online Creole dictionary ("dictionnaire du créole en ligne").